Filing your taxes: refund vs pay

Do you prefer to get a refund every year at tax time, or have to pay, or break even?

  • Refund baby!

    Votes: 12 37.5%

  • Prefer to have to pay.

    Votes: 2 6.3%

  • Want to come to close to zero as possible (i.e. pay a little or get back a little).

    Votes: 18 56.3%
  • Total voters
    32
EdJonesJeeper said:
If you equalize your taxes to pay even each year you can take 1/12 of your normal refund out of your paycheck each month and save for a full 12 months(or longer) considering you we're a good boy for Christmas.

More time = mo $$$

It's no harder to set up an investment account as it is a Christmas account.
Click to expand...

I hear ya loud and clear...and don't disagree. I'm just saying, with my experience dealing with other people's money, when it comes to tax refunds and Christmas cash it's more about setting the cash aside so it's there and less about the ROI. The average Joe just doesn't set those kinds of accounts up for the long term. Not to mention, too much effort (I realize it doesn't take a whole lot) to find that sweet spot and balance to get the most out of their money. On top of that, their main concern would be over a 12 month span, I'd fancy a guess that the $100-200 that they saw as a return would get eaten up by letting someone else handle their money...I know my charge rate would eat that in an hour or two.
 
Contrair to ALL of you Mofrares... :flipoff2: Simple economics...

Pay as little as possible and invest more than enough as you go along into even just a simple savings account to pay the remainder at the end of the year. Since when does the gov account for interest on any money paid???

We're talking a case of beer here...:D
 
Won't let me edit again but..
Remember! You live in a state that double taxes any state refunds. so you are loosing double interest by not investing into a return account for state taxes.
 
The wife and I prefer to come as close to zero as possible. We don't want to be writing a big check, and if we get a big refund, then we know we just gave the gov't a loan.

As far as savings goes, the wife and I have numerous savings acccounts setup. Each one gets a certain amount automatically deposited in it every month. It makes saving for certain things easy.
 
My dad used to prepare taxes for years and his motto was you ideally want to owe the government one dollar. Reasoning being that you then have not given them a 0 interest loan throughout the year and you haven't underpaid to the point of owing scads of money when you don't have it. Also, it used to be you about never got audited if you paid them. That's changed in recent years, though.
 
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