It’s not really a “tax” issue per se, but what irritates me most is the IRMAA surcharge on Medicare premiums. It drives me nuts every year trying to stay short of the triggering limits. Here’s what Harry Sit says about it on his site–The Finance Buff: “In the grand scheme, when a couple on Medicare has over $194,000 in income, they’re already paying a large amount in taxes. Does making them pay another $1,600 make that much difference? It’s less than 1% of their income but nickel-and-diming just makes people mad. People caught by surprise when their income crosses over to a higher bracket by just a small amount are angry at the government. Rolling it all into the income tax would be much more effective.”
The alternative minimum tax. My taxes are complicated, so I always build a spreadsheet for myself, and I’ve found the AMT processes on paper are not intuitive and have little to do with normal logic. The calculation is just a mind-numbing series of steps involving seemingly random lines of the form. (The capital gains Schedule is not far behind.)
However, the one conclusion I did come to is that if we ever move to a flat tax, it is probably the skeleton of the AMT form that would work best.
The Foreign Tax Credit. If you paid less than $600 in foreign taxes you simply deduct the amount of foreign taxes you paid from your Tax owed. If you paid more than $600 than you you may very well deduct much less than $600 from your Tax owed.
Getting taxed on mutual fund distributions that produces a net gain of zero to my holdings once the NAV is decremented by the distribution. All logical and legal, but it feels criminal to a shareholder.
It’s not really a “tax” issue per se, but what irritates me most is the IRMAA surcharge on Medicare premiums. It drives me nuts every year trying to stay short of the triggering limits. Here’s what Harry Sit says about it on his site–The Finance Buff: “In the grand scheme, when a couple on Medicare has over $194,000 in income, they’re already paying a large amount in taxes. Does making them pay another $1,600 make that much difference? It’s less than 1% of their income but nickel-and-diming just makes people mad. People caught by surprise when their income crosses over to a higher bracket by just a small amount are angry at the government. Rolling it all into the income tax would be much more effective.”
The alternative minimum tax. My taxes are complicated, so I always build a spreadsheet for myself, and I’ve found the AMT processes on paper are not intuitive and have little to do with normal logic. The calculation is just a mind-numbing series of steps involving seemingly random lines of the form. (The capital gains Schedule is not far behind.)
However, the one conclusion I did come to is that if we ever move to a flat tax, it is probably the skeleton of the AMT form that would work best.
The Foreign Tax Credit. If you paid less than $600 in foreign taxes you simply deduct the amount of foreign taxes you paid from your Tax owed. If you paid more than $600 than you you may very well deduct much less than $600 from your Tax owed.
Getting taxed on mutual fund distributions that produces a net gain of zero to my holdings once the NAV is decremented by the distribution. All logical and legal, but it feels criminal to a shareholder.
IRMAA. It’s not a “tax”, it’s a “surcharge”.
That makes it feel so much better…