found something new on 08 tax form

[Goldy1]

My husband was going thru our taxes for 08 last night. As most of you know, you can chose to take the standard deduction or itemize.

We only paid about $2500 in interest on our mortgage last year(it is almost paid off) an ddon't have much if anything else to itemize. Therefore the past 2 or 3 years we have taken the standard deduction in lieu of itemizing b/c it gave us more from our return.

This year there is a line that asks you if you paid any real estate taxes. I took this to mean, you can take the standard deduction and also get to write off some of your interest if buying a home an dpaying mortgage interest.
This was a nice surprise.

[momof1in150]

As of right now this is only for 2008. Obama hasn't said if he will ask for it to be extended.

[Goldy1]

Oh ok so it was new:I knew it was new.

Yes, one more reason paying down a ton of principal wasn't the greatest move on our part. Then again, I can' t knock us for paying down principal. We did it for our best interest toward our goal of paid off mortgage. We still did some investing and saved some. If we dont' pay the interest, we don't need the tax deduction for it.
I don' think we noticed anything else new to the tax form that applied to us for this year.

We have our first child due in March. My husband played around and put a child in the tax form to see how it would affect our taxes hypthetically. Surprisingly not really much at all! So much for the joke of a child being a "tax deduction". LOL
My hubbie was born 12-31 so he is the butt of that joke often..lol.

[skylovessea]

Originally Posted by Goldy1

We have our first child due in March. My husband played around and put a child in the tax form to see how it would affect our taxes hypthetically. Surprisingly not really much at all! So much for the joke of a child being a "tax deduction". LOL
My hubbie was born 12-31 so he is the butt of that joke often..lol.

I guess it's different for everyone. We had our son in January of 08 and we were excited for taxes this year because we assumed we would get a lot because we had a "big tax break" this year (lol) and we were shocked to find out that we got a little over 2000 extra dollars just from having a child!

[irmanator]

The child tax credit and eic are dependant on your income.

to the one born on 12/31, i was due to be born on that day and was born 1/05 and they never let me forget how i messed up their taxes that one year. lol

[kilapapipa]

Where is this line? I do not see it on the 1040 or is it in schedule A for itemizing but then it wouldn't seem like you get to deduct it without itemizing.

Thanks

[TBH]

Oh, thanks, Goldy! I'm so glad you gave me a head's up. This is going to be a scary year for doing taxes because I have four times as much self-employed income as I did last year. It's a good problem to have, but I'll be anxious until I find out if I was setting aside enough to pay my taxes.

[project15]

Originally Posted by irmanator

The child tax credit and eic are dependant on your income.

to the one born on 12/31, i was due to be born on that day and was born 1/05 and they never let me forget how i messed up their taxes that one year. lol

Haha, me too, Jan 5. My dad always seems to slip in how I cost him that 1 extra year of tax deduction.