lol, presumably you have to be pretty decent income to end up with a unexpected 5000 tax liability at end of year. Blows my mind for someone making a good income that $180 a month is enough to make political decisions.

It’s Long Island, one of the most expensive places in the country to live.

“I voted for Trump. I thought he was going to be good for this country, but when I got that phone call, that’s it, I’m done.”

Well that just about sums it up really ... good for the country actually means good for me

"That's it, I'm done."

Sees 'suspicious' brown person walking through neighborhood

Reads Grandma's facebook post about partial-birth aborted fetus parts being put in dog food

Hammers a dozen TRUMP 2020 signs into her lawn

I tried to warn some of my friends at work to check 2018 withholdings against their estimated tax liability, but they all either dismissed it outright or looked at me all glassy-eyed like they had no clue how to do that.

Starting to hear the complaints now.

"Stole deductions"

Employer is a financial services firm looollolll

These people are both MSNBC #resisters who are big Joy Reid fans, so not really Trumpsters getting woned.

It's important for comparison purposes for some people to go back and calculate what your AMT would be under the old rules. As a resident of a high tax suburb of Boston, I have been getting hosed by AMT for over a decade. This year, I am not going to pay AMT. I've only done preliminary entries, not including capital gains and dividends, but based on W2 income, I'm receiving about a $11-12k tax break compared to what I would have paid under the old AMT rules.

I do see the "stolen" deductions, which are quite significant: $16k exemptions, $23k excess SALT, but with the lower brackets and no AMT, it doesn't increase my tax.

So it looks like this structure encourages HSAs, mortgages, and charitable deductions in low/no tax areas. I'm OK with removing the deductions for SALT and mortgage interest, and with the AMT reform. I'm not OK with the massive tax breaks that it gives to people around my bracket and up.

A bit late on this, but totally get it then. I had to refinance my loans before we got married because I knew I'd get ****ed on REPAYE/PAYE too.

Considering going into some sort of public service law at this point but probably can't because my $1500 a month payment will eat us alive. Oh well.

Which just goes to prove again how "anecdotal" evidence can be very powerful and compelling evidence when it happens to ME.

Few people pay attention to the specifics or the details of any newly enacted policy. But when those specifics or those details come back and impact ME, then I am OUTRAGED since I now feel LIED TO.

I don't blame those people very much. People in general, including me, are not always financially savvy. Many people blissfully skate on many financial decisions in their lives, often without any adverse consequences. But sometimes "bad" things do occur and you sometimes feel embarrassed and even taken advantage of, especially if the outcome was foreseeable but you "chose" to be blissfully ignorant of what was happening.

Yes, and in Trump's case they are actually being lied to. He tells complete lies like that his tax plan will reduce taxes on the middle class or that his administration is trying to protect people with preexisting conditions.

When he speaks, he doesn’t even know if he’s lying.

He’s just saying whatever makes him look/feel good. Almost as if he thinks he’s a Jedi that can will his wishes into truths.

Already answered

Another small point about the AMT: if you were paying AMT under the previous rules, your deductions were already being "stolen" (except for mortgage interest and charitable donations, as with the new law.) With the lower brackets, you are now likely paying less, even taking the standard deduction.

Using turbo tax is great when you have 1 w2 and some random other small things

That works for years

Then you turn 59.5 in October of 2018 and take out your entire 401k (about 50k) to pay credit card bills.

You know if you wait until you are 59.5 they take nothing out.

Anyway. You do that.

You go to do your taxes on turbo tax in feb of 19

Oh **** I owe 5000 in federal tax what happened?

What happened is the person with no accountant didn’t realize that the 401k distribution, while not subject to penalty, is still taxable.

True story.

Yeah, there's a reason it's called "tax-deferred" and not "tax-exempt."

Have you used the calculators to price out the payments with each of you trying different plans and filing statuses? There's a trick to it if you and your wife have disparities in either income level or student loan debt.

Repaye takes into account both you and your wife's income and student loan debt even if you are married filing separately. IBR does not take into account your spouse's numbers at all if you are married filing separately but does take into account if you have kids.

Because of the way that Repaye calculates your payments (there is a formula where it apportions payments based upon a theoretical share where you and your spouse pay an equivalent chunk of money proportioned out to the size of your loan), if you have a big disparity in income, and/or if you have a big disparity in student loan debt size, it can actually make sense for the one of you that has smaller loans to be on Repaye while the other one is IBR, because Repaye will calculate a smaller payment for the smaller loan spouse because it assumes the bulk of the payment should be made to the other spouse's loan while the other spouse is in fact on IBR which is just a flat rate payment of 15 percent of disposable income (income that is above i think 400 percent of poverty level) if you are married filing separately. It is very complicated but you should use the online calculator from the student loan .gov website to try out every permutation, it makes a HUGE difference, and if you're in public service like my wife and I are it makes sense to try to get the loan payments as low as possible since whatever isn't paid after 10 years gets forgiven anyway.

The student loans game... pretty sure you could start a consulting business just teaching people how you could game the student loans system.

I actually spent a lot of time writing in law school/college about how the student loans system really isn't a loan system at all but more of a preferred equity stake in the students. In effect, it functions as a subsidy and a ~10% tax on student loan borrowers.

Due to the structure, it basically makes sense to borrow essentially infinite amount (if needed) to go to any decent university (read places that can get you backoffice jobs... so think state schools, T2, even some regional T3) if you have a good chance of graduating.

But... for reasons not quite fully understood, African American students are very resistant to taking on loans, or even applying for financial aid at all. Just reflexive/cultural aversion to debt is a big part of it but there is a lot more going on. One student I was tutoring for example straight up told me he understood that his expenses would be taken care of but he needed to help his grandmother (that raised him) out and that's really hard to do when any wages he earned would have decreased the aid packages available to him.

I really don't know what the right answers are in college/grad school financial aid but I do know the whole "student debt crisis" conversation people are currently having are just missing the mark. There is no "student debt crisis" as you'd typically understand debt crises. The system (the federal loans at least) has a lot of checks that basically makes it impossible for you to default due to financial difficulties unless you just don't talk to the servicers (which admittedly makes you jump through hoops). The real crises is in worthless diploma mills taking federal money to confer useless degrees and the people that need the subsidies the most declining to partake in the system.

The right answer is what Europe already does.

See also: health care

I'm inclined to agree but a major consequence of the current American system is those most able to pay, pay the most. Furthermore, it also allows us to essentially export American degrees (see Chinese students paying full sticker). It is also just factually true USA dominates top ranks of world rankings for all kinds of academic output and university rankings. Having a **** ton of money got a lot to do with that.

Having the best schools in the world in turn attracts the smartest/brightest of the world to move to US... which is helpful for a huge number of reasons.

These are pretty desirable features IMO.

Off topic but I once had a case where one of our international college students went out to the bars, got drunk, and got robbed for like 20k in cash, because he was carrying his tuition money around with him and was basically flashing it every time he went to pay for a drink. I really felt badly for the guy, expensive lesson learned I guess. Exporting our education to foreign students at full sticker is definitely a feature of the system.

They need to make some sort of caps on various expenses for schools that accept students receiving federal financial aid. As it is now students feel like they have a blank check so universities are in an arms race with each other to have the shiniest climbing wall or whatever.

Did you see the 97% rejection rate? It's not that simple.

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article...an-forgiveness