Tax pros, question.
 

I can't figure this one out. We have a moderately complicated return, I have two W-2s, a 1099 MISC and my wife also has a 1099 MISC. She has a small consulting business.

My question involves overpayment of social security tax. I overpaid the tax this year due to being employed by two separate entities during 2009. I overpaid by about $1300. I file with Turbotax. I did my return, everything was going fine until I got to the end where I could e-file. During the pages in Turbotax where they are trying to sell you audit insurance and such my refund dropped by about $1300 for no reason. Nothing was added or subtracted from my return. I went and looked at the return and the refund of social security tax was now listed as $0. I could not figure out why. So, I deleted the return and started all over. Son of a ***** it happened again exactly the same way!

Is there some situation where the limit on the social security tax is lifted? Unfortunately (or fortunately depending on how you look at it), we made enough to be subject to AMT this year and that cost us another $1100. Originally Turbotax did not have us subject to AMT but by the end of the return it did.

I'm not going to lose sleep over it, we got about the same refund this year as we did last year, but if there is $1300 out there that is mine, I'd like to have it back.

That's why I pay a guy. Same dude 10 years running. For every penny I pay him he gets me back $100's.

He's been retired forever but once a year he flys up from VA to NY and holes up in a hotel for a month, FedEx him your stuff, it's back in 5 days and he leaves nothing on the table.

You are not Turbo Tax material.

Sorry.

A good tax pro can easily save you a multiple of what he charges to do your return.

You have lots of potential SE tax issues with the 1099's and consulting bsns that simply can't be reliably worked out with a pop up checklist.

Same here. I live in Arizona and use a person I have known and trusted in Oklahoma for 50+ years. They charge $200 for my taxes but usually I get $500-$800 back due to various deductions that I never would have found.

Once it gets complicated, get a professional unless you do not mind losing money to the Govt, who is wasting it right and left. Let Nancy Pelosi pay for her flights in a Boeing to Kopenhagen herself, you need not finance it.

When in doubt hire a pro.

That goes for everything from taxes to brick laying. The real trick is finding a competent pro.

Yeah, I think this will be my last year for Turbotax. It took me almost a week of evenings to get the thing done, recheck it multiple times to try and figure out where the money was going and then refile from scratch again last night. My time is more valuable than that!

Plus, next year we will likely start funding our taxable investment accounts again so I will have dividends and such to report again. This year was easy, we just socked money into our 401k and payed off debt.

If you've gone over the maximum Social Security tax (stops somewhere around 106k gross wages = $6,621.60 in social security tax for 2009) because you changed employers over the year, good chance you are entitled to a refund of that overpaid amount.

The fact that the social security refund was calculated, but then disappeared when you went through the e-file process sounds fishy to me. It could have something to do with the W-2 data-entry screens not being completely filled out. When you e-file, you need to input ALL the little details from your W-2s (such as the employer's tax ID numbers). FWIW, If you are filing paper returns, you just attach the W-2s and can get away with a lot less data entry into the software.