Taxes

[danaeris]

hmph. My total income was less than 20K last calendar year, but I still owe the IRS money -- nearly three hundred dollars. Am I crazy to feel that if my income was below the poverty line, I shouldn't have to pay any taxes?

Much of that income, btw, was from unemployment benefits.

Hmph. Grr.

But, now I must to bed. night night world.

Comments

[jadasc.livejournal.com]

Am I crazy to feel that if my income was below the poverty line, I shouldn't have to pay any taxes? Much of that income, btw, was from unemployment benefits.

In much the same boat last year and the year before. Unless you tell them to, explicitly, they don't take any taxes out of UI, so they're going to collect them all from you at the end. The gamble is that you'll be on for a short enough period that you'll have found work to make up the shortfall. This is a good theory. Haven't seen it work in practice yet.

[unseelie23.livejournal.com]

The problem is that the government does not take into account where you live when it comes to calculating poverty level, which was $9,573 for a single individual with no dependants in 2003 according to the US Census Bureau.

[auros]

You probably should not owe any income tax at that level, or at least not much. But FICA is a different story; you could earn $1 for the whole year, and you'd still owe a few cents of FICA. :-P

[weirdodragoncat.livejournal.com]

I'm confused. Last time I checked, unimployment benefits were not taxable. When I was on maternity leave from my last job and when fuzzydragon was out due to surgery, we both got UI and we were not taxed on it. H&R Block did our taxes for that year and never said anything about taxes on UI.