No matter what time of the year, if you look at your paystub, you see one important thing - Taxes.
How do you know if you should be preparing taxes on your own or if you should seek the advice of an expert? Well, I believe it’s good to always seek wise counsel and tax advice, whether it’s through online research or through a CPA.
One of the things I see with my clients often is withholding and how to fill out your W4, and am I overpaying at the end of the year or under withholding? Summit Wealth Group can help with this with some tax planning services. We can look at a prior year’s tax return, get to know you and your situation, and what you expect for your income this year. Maybe you have some stock options. Maybe there’s a bonus. Maybe you even had a job change, or your spouse has gone to work or left work.
Well, we can look at some of those baseline returns and enter some assumptions about what we know for this year so far, and help you to understand where we are on the path to being ahead or behind in paying taxes at the end of the year.
If you are preparing taxes on your own, take some time to look at all the various tax credits. One of the things that comes up sometimes is the Savers Credit, where if you’re young and contributing to a ROTH IRA account, and you are below a certain income limit, you can actually get some tax credits for doing that. It’s great if you have young children who are working summer jobs through college or in high school. That’s one that you can definitely take advantage of.
Also, if your state does offer a 529 plan, make sure you look at the contributions at the end of the year when you file your taxes. Be sure that you’re entering those contributions in your taxes because you may be eligible for a state tax deduction. Also, if you have adopted children in your home, or you are a foster parent, be sure to look very closely at the different tax credits associated with that. Timing the tax credits, some of the tax IDs, and how they work with the system can be very confusing. And that’s maybe one of those points when you want to turn to an expert.