Blowing your tax returns thread 2017

[Zontar]

So by now most of you have gotten your tax returns (if you get them) and have either banked it or blown it. So as we do each year let's share what we blew ours on.

Here's mine:

That's a complete blu ray collection of Macross Delta's 9 volumes and a box set of Space Battleship Yamato 2199, both of which had to be imported form Japan since neither has been licensed and both have native English subtitles.

Cost me about 1100$ US (plus another 200$ for import fees and shipping) because I'm just that much of a weeb. Worth it though.

 

[Zontar]

I saved it, as I did last year. It's not even new money. The government shouldn't have taken it from me in the first place.

This is true, but having your standard tax bracket income tax removed each week from your paycheck before getting a return on what's been overcharged is simpler then trying to calculate what your proper income tax would be each week given your deductions. I know up here due to how many things are deductible it wouldn't realistically be feasible to even attempt that.

 

[Dirty Hipsters]

I didn't get a tax return, in fact I ended up owing $15 because I worked too much overtime last year.

Tax returns are bullshit though. It's money that the government is returning to you, but then you have to report your tax return on your taxes for the next year as income, so the money in your tax return basically gets taxed twice.

 

[Avnger]

paying back loans... >_>

 

[Shoggoth2588]

I haven't got much from the Government this time around but I still spent it on a few things:

Who Censored Roger Rabbit
Showcase: Justice League Volume 1
New Teen Titans vol. 3
screen protector for my Switch
I Am Setsuna (Switch download)
Wonderboy 3 (the remake on Switch)

Also I've been eating more regularly...I blew more money than I should have on not-great Korean food which sucked but the following day I had quite-excellent Korean food after...I also bought a laptop off of a friend of mine so I should be able to play actual PC games in the next few days. I'm debating on whether or not I want to get tickets to see Iron Maiden (leaning towards Yes)

 

[lacktheknack]

Still haven't gotten it back.

 

[tippy2k2]

I'm on Team "Stupid Adult Responsibilities" and fired just about everything into my student loans and getting a root canal (Yah!).

I'm about to buy a new putter so I suppose to make myself feel better, I'll just tell myself that's tax return money...

 

[Poetic Nova]

I have to wait another month at the least. But I do hope to get a 3DS finally.

 

[Saltyk]

Sitting in my bank account giving me a nice comfy monetary cushion. It'll probably stay there as long as I can allow it just in case I need it. Not to say I haven't bought a few small things here and there, but I'm not going out to buy something major at the moment. I like having a small safety net. In case I need new tires or something else.

 

[Tsun Tzu]

Paid partial amounts on a couple bills and got new tires for my car.

Yay adulting.

Though I think I might have gotten more back on my return than I was supposed to, no matter what TurboTax says...so I fully expect that to fuck me some time around November.

 

[Kolby Jack]

I bought a 48 inch TV. It's pretty awesome.

 

[Elvis Starburst]

Bought an entire new computer build, though I did have to throw a few hundred into it myself to afford the thing. All of my parts should be arriving by the end of the week!

 

[PsychedelicDiamond]

Not doing anything of that sort. I was unemployed for a while last year and early this year so I had some pretty high costs applying for different companies to get a job, which are fortunately deductible. Overall I got back around 900 ?, little of which I have spent yet. I'm not a very rich person and I feel like we're looking towards a pretty uncertain future. We have a proverb here "Spare in der Zeit, dann hast du in der Not", meaning, aproximately, that you shouod save your money while you can so that you'll have it in times of need. And that's a pretty good rule of thumb, you can never be too sure of your future, I learned that the hard way.

Don't wanna lose my job again and have to live off of 220? a month.

 

[Chimpzy_v1legacy]

Still waiting on my ?1100 return. Should arrive around mid October.

Don't have anything planned that requires money, so I'll probably do some small investing with it.

 

[Kyrian007]

All went to finish paying off my car, which replaced my last car that got smashed by a drunk while sitting in my driveway. Insurance gave me a whole lot more for my old car than I would have felt comfortable charging anyone had I sold it, but I still wound up quite a bit short of what my new car cost me. With my tax return I almost completely paid off the car, a little less than a year early.

 

[sanquin]

No tax returns for me, but I do get a vacation bonus once a year. And I generally save 1/2 to 3/4 of it to have something to fall back on in times of need, and the rest I spend on something for myself. Maybe a new computer part, maybe fixing something non-essential on my motorcycle, maybe something for my drum kit, etc.

 

[Smithnikov_v1legacy]

Actually sensible spending; got a new refrigerator.

 

[WolfThomas]

Nothing I didn't get much. I got a large untaxed government incentive payment earlier in the year and if it wasn't for all the deductions I made I'd still owe the government money.

Tax returns are bullshit though. It's money that the government is returning to you, but then you have to report your tax return on your taxes for the next year as income, so the money in your tax return basically gets taxed twice.

This confused me because in Australia we don't have separate tax and federal taxes, you don't have to report your last year's refund here.

 

[Addendum_Forthcoming]

I offloaded a shitload of assets, so I ended up having to pay a ton.

I can't really complain, as turbulent as the last financial year has been on my finances I still made some decent gains. I wouldn't be paying CGT if I didn't make gains after all. So I might reward myself by spending a few weeks vacationing somewhere I can just lounge about in the sun over the next financial year ... how they manage CGT in Australia it actually doesn't make a whole much of a difference beyond whether you're a company or not. The differential between low and high income brackets is like at best 15-20% deviation.

Usually you can count on a 50% discount to CGT if you're just an individual investor as long as you held those assets for more than a year. So, you know ... still can't complain. I practically doubled my investment principle in AGL over a two year period. Kicking myself I didn't buy more. That being said, their div yield wasn't as generous as some other options I had, and you have to factor that in ...