anyone paying income tax now?

Mailed mine yesterday(July 10) since I had to pay in. I also had to send in quarterly estimated taxes for April and June. No state personal tax to deal with in Texas.
What fun?(NOT)

the hardest part was knowing how much postage was needed. I could not figure it out at the usps.com website.

Apparently, it's 55 cents for the first ounce, 15 cents for additional ounces. My wife and I are used to doing, "It's a bit heavy slap another forever stamp on."

So $1.10 for a $0.70 birthday card, etc., based on looks!

Hey life is a learning process. And now I have a scale for eBay sales haha

So don't buy the oversize cards because it will cost you more.

Did ours in February...
First Time Efile for State... Costs $, but I finally got deductions straightened out...

Oversized cards will say on the envelope. But my wife will say, this feels heavy slap another forever stamp on.

When I look back at yesterday, we probably unfairly bash the USPS. They have lines for 6' distancing and glass at the counter. Upon entrance, the line is so long there's nowhere for about 6-10 people to even go.

But truth be told, once at the counter, the people are friendly and helpful and professional. I thought to myself, how would I like to be bashed at my job without me even doing anything wrong....

Anyhow mailed the tax return for 70 cents and I bought 20 15 cent stamps for the future.

And has anyone noticed the price of greeting cards, $5, $6 is not unusual. To me, online is not the same. And I am NOT that old!

Do you file separately in the US for State and Federal taxes?

In Canada, we just have one tax form, but easier, since we only have 10 provinces & 3 territories. The provincial part of the form, is different depending on what province we live in.

50 different states, certainly makes a single form harder to coordinate.

My wife will only buy greeting cards at Dollar Tree for $1.
Hallmark & other's need to realize they are not the only source just because Walmart carries them.

I buy Turbo Tax Premier when I see a "sale" or promo--sometimes it's $49 and get a $10 gift card or something. The acid test is Costco will sell it for $49 so it's not an inflated price. Usually at some point amazon.com will give you $10 gift card when you buy for $49...so I eFile the Federal as early as possible due to relatively large refund, but print out and mail the state since I owe and it costs to eFile.

So that includes federal and one state. I happen to work in NJ and live in PA, but due to the arrangement there's reciprocity. It works out because if I work in PA, the local township will charge 1%! lol So I don't have any 1% by working in NJ. NJ income tax is much higher yet we still pay PA. It's a flat 3.07%, no deductions at all. Any interest, stock gains, dividends, taxed at 3.07%. I do have to pay $5/day for the bridge, well until COVID-19.

I think it was 2016 the gov of NJ said we're stopping this reciprocity and making these PA folks pay NJ income tax. Sometime around Thanksgiving, it quietly went away. We were bracing for an add'l 3+% in income taxes, so we were glad....

Trivia of the day. Imagine this common scenario--living in NJ, working in Manhattan i.e. NYC. Anyone know how income taxes work there? Hint, not to worry, NJ income tax is so high that NJ folks still owe NJ after they are done paying NYS!

I used Turbotax and e-filed both the Federal and NYS state returns back in May but set the debit date for what we owed to be on July 15th.

Statement from the program:

New York State requires most taxpayers to file electronically if they are using tax software to prepare their return. Please note that there is no additional fee for e-filing. The law also provides that once you've paid for tax preparation software, you can't be charged an additional fee for e-filing.

For several years I worked in Connecticut but lives in NY. I paid for the CT software but printed out and mailed the CT returns as I did not want to pay for CT e-filing

that I sent my check at the USPS on a Saturday, and by the Wednesday, the check had cleared.

I actually want to hand to USPS--I know it's unnecessary especially that I have a scale so I know the postage needed, but I want that so-called cancellation done showing on time, and warm and fuzzy knowing I handed it to the clerk. Also, since with the state we'll always owe, the only confirmation that they received it will be the check being canceled.

When I paid 2 of my property taxes this year in person at the bank? One of the checks was not canceled for about 5 weeks and that bothered me (the county was normal but the township was in limbo). Should be in < 5 business days. I think it was due to COVID-19 and the town offices being limited (around 3/31)....btw in PA we have 3 property taxes and the big one is due 8/31. Our assessment doubled for 2021, but I am not afraid. My understanding is the mill rate is lowered and it should be about the normal increase, and limited by law to 10%, which is the exception...

I always use Turbo Tac Premier which includes e-file. To much hassle for me to do other. It can be lost in the mail (not likely) or human data entry error entering a paper return which makes it a hassle when the IRS computer kicks it out. Just me. At one time I would only do paper mail in returns and stopped well over 20 years ago and never looked back.

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Done my taxes in Feb and used Turbo Tax Had refund back in two weeks. E-filed state then sent a check, all done Been using Turbo Tax for over 40 years.

...tax planning and preparation, I paid no taxes last year and have actually gotten a refund for the last 5 or 6 years prior to that. My financial guy was impressed. I use TurboTax for my federal taxes and I use the Ohio tax department website to file my state taxes.

This is the smart thing to do. But I use the tax refund as "forced savings." You know, you don't miss it if you don't see it. I know the sensible thing is to put it in savings monthly and earn now 1%, then pay the school taxes in August.

There was a guy or vendor who took us out to lunch last year. He did the exact same thing for decades, planned carefully so that he would either get a refund of nearly $0, or owe very close to $0. Suddenly, because of the tax cuts and jobs act, he owed almost $8,000 for 2018. You guessed it, northern NJ, small 1800 sq ft home.

This is where again I just wonder if anybody knows how the average person feels with changes that "appear" to hurt them....