Evolving Personal Finance » Entries tagged with "credits"

Tax Benefits that Don’t Apply to (Some) Graduate Students

April 8th, 2015 | 15 Comments

Tax Benefits that Don’t Apply to (Some) Graduate Students

Through the course of researching taxes for my own use and this blog, I have periodically gotten excited about some tax benefit available to the general public, only to find out that I was not eligible for it. Sometimes my ineligibility was because of my student status and sometimes it was because I only had fellowship income. Commenters’ questions on previous posts have altered me to additional exclusions that I had not come across in … Read entire article »

Filed under: grad school, taxes

Marginal Tax Brackets, Deductions, and Credits Explained Graphically

March 25th, 2013 | 30 Comments

Marginal Tax Brackets, Deductions, and Credits Explained Graphically

Many US taxpayers have a difficult time understanding what marginal tax brackets are and the differences between credits and deductions.  I will illustrate these three concepts for a hypothetical single taxpayer, Alex.   Alex’s Gross Income   Alex’s gross income is $225,000, all from his job, shown in solid red.     Deductions   Deductions reduce your amount of taxable income.   Alex has deductions that can be found in lines 23 to 35 of his 1040 in the amount of $15,000 (patterned red).  Examples of … Read entire article »

Filed under: taxes

Taxes You Should Be Paying

May 16th, 2012 | 19 Comments

Taxes You Should Be Paying

I had a really strange thought a couple weeks ago – hear me out and tell me what you think!  Have you ever considered paying yourself what you think you should be paying in taxes?   Do You Think Taxes Will Increase in the Future?   I’m not sure if there is much debate over this issue, actually.  The US national debt is 100% of GDP and we have among the lowest tax rates of our peer nations.  Something … Read entire article »

Filed under: taxes