Quote:
Originally Posted by KTP
I should hide my head in shame because we get back about $5k a year  |
That's happened to us a few times. We always find it very challenging to accurately estimate our withholding because we can't predict all of our income. For example, one year a couple of our investments paid huge capital gains which were taxable. Another year, the gains were much, much smaller so we owed a lot less in taxes. My wife's employment status has fluctuated over the past few years - full-time at one job, then part-time, then none, then part-time at a different job, then contributing 50% of income to a 401k leaving a lot less taxable income. Plus, I get a varying degree of self-employment income from medical surveys, advisory boards, ebay sales, etc. Some years that may be close to 10K, other years a lot less. If I base my withholding off of last year's numbers and this year works out significantly higher or lower, it throws off the calculations and sometimes that results in a bigger than desired refund.