Tax time tension
Posted on April 11th, 2008 – 2:09 PMBy Kara McGuire
I finished my taxes months ago, yet I still find myself scrambling. First, I had to transfer money from savings to pay my tax bill and I had to make sure that it arrived in my correct bank account before Uncle Sam’s people come to collect on April 15th. That’s Tuesday.
All week I’ve been meaning to contact the company that has my Roth IRA. That’s because prior year contributions can still be made until April 15th. And I can’t remember which of my monthly contributions went to the prior year, an issue others might have if, like me, you started an IRA randomly in the middle of the year and aren’t great at record-keeping.
If your company does a terrible job reporting whether your deposits are from the year 2007 or the year 2008, it’s nearly impossible to know whether you’ve contributed the full maximum without calling. I have a feeling I contributed$3,996.00. But I might as well sock an extra $4 tax advantaged dollars away. That would add up year after year.
The other annoying thing is that as IRA levels for 2008 changed to $5,000 and will be pegged to inflation from 2009 going forward, I need to adjust my monthly contribution to be sure that I take full advantage of this account. Why I can’t just check a box that says “I want to max out my Roth IRA so you do the math” I have no clue. Instead, I have to manually change my monthly automatic deposit.
OK, I know for those of you who are looking forward to a weekend of poring over income statements and sifting through charitable giving receipts have no sympathy for me. Here’s an idea for the powers that be. Let’s simplify the tax code.
To help you in your final tax-filing moments, the IRS has created podcast for you of last minute tips.
Happy listening– and filing!
2 Responses to "Tax time tension"
Switch your Roth to Vanguard. They do track your contribution year, and you can also set up an automatic investment plan to either max out your year’s contributions or to put in a specific amount every time period of your choosing.
However, if you do use the automatic investment, it will only put money in the current year’s Roth–you can’t set it up for the prior year during the catch-up period. I found that out the hard way, but after I called about it, they transferred my automatic contributions from the current year to the previous year.
Ditto. While I don’t yet have the means to max out my wife’s Roth that we have over at Vanguard, I can vouch that the option to auto-magically max out your contributions is there. AND they are extremely transparent with the rest of that tax stuff, such as figuring out which contribution went to which tax year - overall, very easy to use web site, too.
