Personal Finance and Investing

I do an IRA withdrawal at year end and send most of it to the Federal Government. I don't send estimated payments so I avoid under withholding penalties.

I file with the standard deduction (increased for my age) and a schedule C (embarrassingly small this year) and have retirement and investment income as well. I owe a smaller amount this year as a percentage. I haven't figured out how much is due to the decrease in taxable Social Security and how much is due to the tax law changes. I do seem to be eligible for the 20% deduction for self-employed.

I had to laugh at the short 1040. I found I needed to add all but one of the schedules to the return to replace the missing lines. I still file paper because I've had issues with every tax software I've used. Issues were with having a non-taxable basis in my IRA (form 8606) and with the circular math involved in splitting health insurance premiums between the ACA and the self employed health insurance deduction.

I do personal taxes for myself, extended family members, and a sole proprietorship that grosses six figures so not all of the issues I've had with tax software were on my personal return.

Tax payers losing itemized deductions may indeed have a bigger tax bill.