The Sun's Financial Diary

If you are living in the Northeast and is affected by the weekend storm, IRS will give you two extra days to file your income tax return beyond the April 17 deadline. According to the IRS announcement,
Victims of the major storm affecting several Northeastern states on Monday, April 16 will have two additional days to [...]

Well, I waited till the last minute to finish our taxes (thanks for the two extra days). Actually, I started the work in February, shortly after all the forms were in, but suspended it when I noticed that we had to send back a big check. I never rush when I need to pay money [...]

Last week I got an email from a reader about the difference between Traditional and Roth IRA. The question is more on the withdraw side than contribution side. After giving a quick answer, I feel I can expand it a little bit with more information on this topic. But tax rules are always complex, so [...]

CNNMoney.com yesterday has an article which listed top 5 most tax-friendly states and top 5 states with the most heavy tax burdens. According to the article,
For the 17th year in a row, the far Western state earned the distinction of being America’s most tax-friendly state.
Among them, Alaska ranked No. 1 with the lightest state and [...]

Early last week, MSN Money has an article saying that there’s a $30 to $60 tax refund that more than one third taxpayers may forget to claim, yet it could be the easiest refund one can get.
So what is it exactly?
It’s the telephone tax refund. According to the IRS website,
The telephone tax refund is a [...]

Paying too much income taxes?
When it comes to income taxes, not just how much you earn matters, your location also plays a role, a big role. So instead of trying to squeeze a few bucks from various deductions, you may want to consider relocation if you are living in one of the cities in [...]

I enrolled in the Electronic Federal Tax Payment System (EFTPS) on January 25 in anticipation of some tax payment again this year. Over the weekend, the first package with personal information and instruction on how to use EFTPS arrived, followed by another envelop with a PIN that I have to use to obtain an [...]

A Kiplinger article, “The 13 Most Overlooked Tax Deductions,” gives a list of 13 deductions that we usually forget when filling our tax returns. Among The Unlucky 13 items, I found No. 12, Reinvested dividends, is one that I never heard of. I sold some mutual funds in the past and simply used the difference [...]

Yesterday an email from TreasuryDirect arrived, informing me that the 1099 form for 2006 is available online.
2006 was the first year that our investments in Treasury bills were subject to federal income taxes. We have been buying I and EE bonds for several years, but they are exempted from both federal and state income [...]

From 2002 to 2005, I have worked in Pennsylvania while keeping my residence in New Jersey. Before 2004, my employer had withheld NJ income tax for me and I didn’t need to pay PA income tax (if there was any PA income tax withhold, I could get it back without any problem). For [...]