A few factors worked against me in 2006 making my tax burden signifimpossible. (Never say “can’t.”) I no longer own the house i live in. I can’t claim the interest on the mortgage or the property taxes paid on it. I also neglected to change my marital status on my W4 after divorcing. I also made quite a bit of money DJing this past year and no federal taxes were taken out of that income. So now i owe $5,539. If i devoted every dollar of my full time paycheck (after taxes of course) to paying that amount between today and April 16th i still wouldn’t have enough money to cover it all. I need to set aside $131.88 every day until taxes are due to make the payment.
The thought of this brings me near tears when i think about where my $5,539 (in addition to the $5,000 i already paid in taxes through federal withholding) is going.
It turns out that you can make installment payments for your taxes but the IRS says on their website “Before requesting an installment agreement, you should consider less costly alternatives such as a bank loan.” They charge you $52 for setting up the installment agreement (if you pay electronically) plus interest on the unpaid balance until payed in full. They also may file a Notice of Federal Tax Lein. That sounded bad to me and Washington Tax Service’s website confirmed it. “A Federal Tax Lien can make getting a loan; a new credit card or signing a lease nearly impossible because of the damage it does to one’s credit rating.”
So it’s really time to get serious. I hate to do this but we’re at war and my country needs me (er, my money). Sacrifices must be made. I’m going to make $5,537 appear out of nowhere. Inspired by Kevin Dean’s similar attempt to raise money (albeit for a better cause) i will attempt to pay these taxes without dipping into my day job paycheck (still have to pay the rent, utilities, food, gas, auto loan, and credit card bills!) and hopefully not even touching my DJ income.
Taking my income since January 1st:
$5.94 - Amazon Associates
$550.83 - Amazon sales
$43.25 - Cafepress sales
$48.50 - eBay sales
$148.25 - Peerflix
$10 - Local sales
The total raised so far is $806.77 or 15% of the total necessary.
Related Posts
- Personal taxes done
- Try TaxAct for your taxes
- Money in the last few days
- Make your living room jealous
- Hawaii just got closer
cece on 
zieak on 
Tiffany on 
Karna on 
March 5th, 2007 at 6:24 pm
that sucks a$$! i’m at 9.7%, you should see my freaking house… it’s just piles of goods and boxed. if you print your shipping labels online sometimes you can save a few $ on shipping [for larger items].
i was looking for a dynamic graph that displayed my amount to goal… if you find one let me know.
March 6th, 2007 at 6:01 am
did you claim all of your expenses for your extra jobs - mileage can add up and that is 40 some cents per mile. alaska has no state income tax so you can claim sales tax. do you “rent” office space from cena? if things are sold through a web site, then the cost of the web site… be creative! (but not illegally so) and good luck. i haven’t started ours yet, hope they come out better… the irs has some publications on-line dealing with small business - scan them for ideas of things you forgot.
March 6th, 2007 at 2:16 pm
tip: shop your shipping on items you sell [if your going to sell a lot online a scale is a must have]… i just saved 3.00 on shipping one item by adding more weight to it (yes adding more weight). i found out about it because i printed the wrong shipping label for an item and voided it out because it was for a box when i only had to ship a padded envelope (thinking i was going to save on my shipping) turns out that a 4oz padded envelope costs $3 more [ny to california] than a 10oz padded envelope which i found to be the cheapest rate. so i cut up some cardboard and filled her up with extra padding. a 1lb 2oz box was about 2 dollars cheaper than the 4oz [multiply that by 100 items (300) or 1,000 (3,000) it sure adds up].
also i’m thinking about buying a 300gb or 500gb drive or dvr and “backing up” my dvd collection… what should i do with my dvd’s then [grin].
March 6th, 2007 at 5:14 pm
Mom: I claimed mileage, office space, a portion of utilities and improvements to the house, even a portion of my cell phone bill and internet access. Every single thing i could think of that is used for any of my jobs. It dropped what i owe by close to $1,000 which in a normal situation would be great.
Kevin: I hadn’t noticed quirks in the postal system like that. Strange. I’m thinking of looking over my DVDs and moving some more out on Amazon or Peerflix.
March 6th, 2007 at 9:00 pm
I could hold a bake sale or something….
March 7th, 2007 at 6:25 pm
that’s a damn good gesture tiff!
March 7th, 2007 at 7:49 pm
“i was looking for a dynamic graph that displayed my amount to goal… if you find one let me know.”
My graph above is awfully ugly. Check out this… http://www.zieak.com/ampie/ampie.swf