Occam's Razor

The tax code giveth and the tax code taketh. In 2014, the tax code tooketh, to the tune of about $3000 in checks I did not expect to write to the U.S. Treasury and Virginia Department of Taxation. Ouch! No one likes paying taxes and I don’t like paying mine anymore than anyone else, but I particularly didn’t like it this year when instead of getting refunds I was writing four figure checks. Because of my success in previous years I sort of assumed that it wouldn’t be a problem in 2014 either. So I kept things on autopilot. I didn’t change withholdings or exemptions. I figured it would sort itself out.

But it didn’t. And the answers of why I suddenly paid so much more in taxes when the tax rates haven’t changed were lessons for me and maybe for you too if you read this. What were the causes?

• We lost an exemption when our daughter moved out. She was employed all year but lived with us until October. She paid for her automobile expenses but otherwise lived off house fare and got free rent. I assumed because we paid most of her expenses we could still claim her as an exemption. An exemption is worth almost $4000 off your taxable income. If you are in the 25% tax bracket like we are, that’s about $1000 in taxes. How much of her expenses we paid does not matter to the IRS. What matters is how much money she made and since she made more than $3,500 we could not claim her as a dependent. So in our benevolence to help her acquire the savings she needed to live independently, we were also taxed for the privilege. Ouch!
• We started earning interest again. We put a lot of our cash into Ally Bank, an online bank, which pays about 1% interest. 1% interest is not much, but it beats the .01% we were getting through the credit union and USAA Savings Bank. It’s nice to earn interest, but it’s income so you have to report it. $219 in additional interest effectively cost us $53.50 in extra taxes.
• When I retired I was paid for six weeks of accrued annual leave, a significant lump sum of money for which I was disproportionately taxed. There is wisdom in retiring on the first of the year. That way your lump sum applies to the next tax year when your income will be less. I didn’t do that and retired August 1. Despite our retirement for five months of 2014, our earned income was just $16,500 less than in 2013. This was largely due to the lump sum paid on my retirement.
• My business income went up but I didn’t want to pay quarterly taxes on the income because of the paperwork hassle. It worked out in the past by making my four-digit tax refund three digits. This time it worked against me.
• I could not claim my health saving account deduction. Last year I got the full $2500 credit. Since I wasn’t employed all year in 2014, I actually only put about $1700 into the HSA, but there is no requirement for money to accrue for it to be paid out. $2500 was paid out. The end result was that I could not claim the credit at all, so that effectively cost me $625 in taxes.
• I hassled my wife to put money into her employer’s 401K while I kept putting money into her IRA. Because her 401K money was tax deferred, her IRA money was not. It’s good to save money but because it was not tax deferred it effectively cost us $812 in extra taxes. Hey, it seemed like a good idea at the time! On the plus side some day I will be able to take out the money we put in for 2014 and not pay tax on it.
• Because I made more money consulting, I had to pay more self-employment taxes. Cost for the extra income: $128 in taxes.
• Our cars depreciated, so we paid fewer personal property taxes, which added $33 in taxes.
• Our mortgage is almost paid off, which means there is less of a mortgage interest deduction. That effectively meant $150 more in taxes.
• We gave less to charity. This is mainly because my wife stopped going to her temple and feeding them regular checks. I didn’t think to make up the deduction with other charitable spending. This effectively cost us $566 in taxes.

The above was slightly offset by some good things: lower earned income, more consulting income and of course the pleasure of being retired. But I have learned that tax-planning vigilance is needed. Moreover, I learned that major life transitions can cost you a lot in taxes if you don’t anticipate them. When we lost an exemption, it was not entirely bad. We won’t be paying for our daughter’s expenses in the future.

2015 will not be any easier for us tax-wise, as we will be relocating and buying and selling homes. But it was clear that I was not withholding enough money for income taxes. I tried a number of online calculators but even the IRS’s calculator is really deficient. It turned out to be easier to estimate income, deductions and credits in a spreadsheet based on the fields in a 1040, calculate my estimated 2015 tax from it and then figure how much I needed to increase my withholding so not to end up in this situation again. It’s about $500 more a month.

I hope in 2016 I find I am not similarly surprised.