Filing taxes is the most American pastime, even above the so lauded baseball. Even with the ubiquity of taxes many people do not know when to file taxes, or how to file to get the most of their return. In part this is due to the federal tax code being almost deliberately incomprehensible document with extremely formal and abstruse language. Even if an individual had the background and patience to get through the tax code the sheer length, 4,037 pages in total, will make even the most determined of neophyte balk. In a code of this length, there are obviously loopholes, for both the wealthy and the working class alike. (http://uscode.house.gov/)
First things first, if you make below $5,000 a year you do not have to file taxes, and in fact you should try to avoid filing taxes if you know you do not have to, as it just causes more work on both your and the IRS’s end. However, if you have federal and state taxes pulled out of your check and you make below federal filing limits then you do want to file taxes to attempt to have a return of that money. ( https://www.irs.gov/uac/do-i-need-to-file-a-tax-return)
When you are at the point of filing taxes there are some incentives for lower paid workers in the form of Saver’s Tax Credit and Earned Income Tax Credit. (https://smartasset.com/taxes/tax-loopholes) Roughly the Saver’s Tax allows workers to save money by deducing the amount of money put away in savings by up to 50%, however this does not allow for a refund. The Earned Income Tax Credit is meant to give refund to low income workers. (https://smartasset.com/taxes/understanding-savers-tax-credit)
To quote Benjamin Franklin “[I]n this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes”, so therefore as citizens we must do our best to not only obey by giving our taxes but also to make sure we give the correct amount.
Tax by Katelyn is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.