I know everyone knows this, but the key (for middle class people, at least) to getting tax refunds is just to give the government more of your money throughout the year.

Oh, blargh, ~ma all around. Let's have some good shit happen today, universe.

I am experiencing chronic insomnia. This is new! I do not like it. Today? I woke up at 4am, fell back asleep at 6, and then slept until NOON. What the heck are you doing, body? My sister says it's menopause . Which would be fine, except I'm more looking forward to menopause being over with, not going through it.

I know everyone knows this, but the key (for middle class people, at least) to getting tax refunds is just to give the government more of your money throughout the year.

I'm pretty sure the key to tax refunds is not being self-employed.

I know everyone knows this, but the key (for middle class people, at least) to getting tax refunds is just to give the government more of your money throughout the year.

When you are self employed and make quarterly payments getting the balance just right can be very difficult. It's always great on one end when I have a year where I made more money than the last year, but it also means that all the estimated payments will be off. It also happens when some of my income shifts from W2 income to 1099 income, which has happened more than once. The gross was the same, but $10,000 moved from a W2 over to a 1099, that's not fun at tax time.

eta - hey look self employed cross post.

In our case, they key to getting a tax refund is not buying a house in 2008 and getting a tax-free loan of $7500 that needs to be paid back over 15 years, unless you start renting out the house and then you need to pay it back all at once. Ouch.

I'm pretty sure the key to tax refunds is not being self-employed.

You can still send the government more of your money as you go, right?

I'm just saying -- the refund I got was literally my own money coming back to me, not any kind of advantage from any tax policies or life circumstances. I knew I was having them withhold more money from each paycheck than I would owe. So I didn't have the money throughout the year, but did get a chunk as a refund. I'm not saying it's better or worse either way.

ION, holy crap -- the FBI says it knows who stole the paintings from the Isabella Stewart Gardner. [link]

So, I got all intrigued by the concept of the cake fork (and I've been working on the Cake Boss product line all day, so, much thinking about cake in general) and starting looking for some. Most of what I"m finding are "salad/dessert" forks, but I did come across [link] and [link]

Interesting.

I was just thinking "all forks are cake forks" today as I was chomping down on some cake. This is a principle I can get behind.

The key for me this year was I paid a lot of mortgage interest, and didn't change the amount of money I gave the government from what I gave them before I paid lots of mortgage interest, so yeah, it's my own money coming back.

It's still nice to get a large chunk coming back, especially right now.

I fully support paying my share of tax, but when you are self-employed, it is so hard to know how much you are going to have to pay.

And while it's never happened to me, having income shifted from a W2 to a 1099 seems really unfair.