I already received (and spent, unfortunately) my refund.

Doing taxes can be interesting… like a Japanese TV show interesting

-Free e-filed Federal using Turbo Tax Free
-Free e-filed State (CA) through ftb.ca.gov
-Refund coming my way.
-In and out in < 2 hours.

Priceless.

BTW, did anyone else know that Bush’s “Federal Stimulus Check” was just essentially an interest-free loan? I guess it’s my responsibility to find out about that, but it still burns me that politicians spin that $hit.

Tell us up front, it’s a frigging interest-free loan, then, maybe people won’t be so damn confused as to why the stimulus check seems to “take money away from your refund.”

R

I very well might actually use that link.

I’m maybe buying a house later this spring and I want that 8k Obama first time homebuyer stimulus money/refund on this years taxes. According to some online searching my options are to file now, then file an amended return later, or get an extension, so that e-extension link might come in handy.

Anybody wanting to give me free tax advice, is there any reason to favor one of the above approaches over the other?

For all you extension filers, don’t forget

if you are going to owe money, you need to send the IRS money along with your extension.

Otherwise you will be paying some interest on what you owe.

If it is a small amount it usually does not matter too much, but if you owe a lot then it could be a lot.

I did end up using the extension. I have more questions that befuddle me if Ben or anybody wants to answer.

Okay I’ve had my little Ameritrade account to play with the last couple years..long story short while I traded various stocks/funds in that span, while at one time I was up about $4000, I ended up pulling out when the market crashed and all, sold everything I had. At that time in the aggregate I was DOWN about 1500. I know because I kept track of how much money I put into the account, and of course how much was left when I removed it all.

I guess I dont understand how taxes work on this at ALL.

Is every stock buy and sell taxed separately? Or do they just look at the aggregate? Like I said I know as a total account I ended up down like 1500. But I have no idea how that broke down amongst my various stocks sales.

The problem was when I was trying to efile, I got a 1099-B from Ameritrade, but A) it doesnt list the buy date on stocks (at least ones I didn’t buy in 08). And when you are inputting stock trades in the efile, it asks for a buy date, or at least whether the stock was held over/under a year etc..so confusing, since some of these stocks I probably bought sold many different times, who knows how much/if was over/under a year? How in the hell do say, day traders keep up with all this?

It also asks for a “cost basis” on the efile for each stock, which I understand is basically what I paid for it. I dont know how to get this either, it’s not on my 1099-B (you’d think it should be).

Any ideas? I filed an extension for now, also cus of the house thing.