The Sun's Financial Diary

I have been a customer of TurboTax for a few years already. When I used the software to prepare my own taxes in the past, I always got the PC version, the software that requires installation on my own PC. I know Intuit has been offering the equivalent, online tax preparation software for sometime, but [...]

Listen to almost every politician and you’ll likely hear a similar theme coming from their mouths – lower taxes. And why not? Telling taxpayers that you’re going to lower their tax bill is how you win elections. But there’s a stark reality that America is facing right now. The low tax rates that Americans have [...]

Every year around this time you’ll hear a lot of tax experts tell you about what you need to do before the end of the year in order to manage your projected tax bill. Liquidate your flexible spending accounts. Make charitable contributions. All of these recommendations are wise. But this year’s isn’t the only tax [...]

It never makes me feel good when receiving a letter from the IRS because most of the time, it’s not going to be a good news (luckily I haven’t got into any trouble with the IRS so far). So when I saw the letter from IRS in my mailbox today, I was first kind of [...]

Like last year, I mailed out our tax forms one day ahead of the tax deadline, which is today. In the past I usually waited till the last minute to file, and, as you can imagine, it was never a pleasant trip to the post office on April 15th. I know, I could have used [...]

Yesterday, I wrote a post on why it may not be a good idea to pay your federal taxes with credit cards. The reason is that fees charged by service providers (at 2.49% of the amount paid) cannot make cardholders benefit from the transaction, unless the card has a rewards program that can compensate the [...]

The answer is Yes. The question isn’t really whether you can use plastics to pay taxes or not, but rather whether paying taxes with credit cards is worth it or not. How Much Does It Cost to Pay Taxes by Credit Cards? The IRS has two authorized partners which provide the convenience service of letting [...]

The deadline to file your tax, April 15th, is less two weeks away. It’s time to get the work done. I got my TurboTax software and all the files/documents I needed and started our taxes in early February, but haven’t touched them in more than a month after I found out that, like the past [...]