.......

 

income tax doesn't mean you get money back. your acctually suppost to pay the gov money but im getting you didn't make enough money last year for them to tax you 100%.

 

If you do the math in the 1040EZ form that was sent to you, you will see that they use values derived from things like your marital status and income to place you at a predetermined return rate. This rate is used to rebate you a fraction of what you have paid in...not the full amount that you paid in.Thereis afed tax in order to recieve tax from citizens.
If you were a single parent with minimal income, the rates would cause your fractional return to become a full return because of your personal status.

 

You can get it all back. Find an independent tax preparer and pay him to do it. Should be less than 100 bucks. They know all the tricks and have a lot less concern for corporate guidance than the chains.

 

Just spend some time on the IRS website if you really want to get into how things are working. Add up all of your gross income from your W-2's plus any other earnings, probably a statement of interest from your bank showing how much interest any accounts you had accrued in interest. Look up tax table on the website, take how much you made, subtract the standard deduction, and find the total on the chart. Then you'll know how much you are supposed to pay in. Then take the total of all your federal withholdings from your W-2's and subtract from them the number you got off of the table. This should be roughly the same number turbo tax is giving you. If not then there's something extraneous going on that I missed or somethings wrong.

 

Gonna have to get out the 1040A then, 1040EZ is ment to be simple...

 

This is correct... - You get 100% of your income tax back until you hit the $20,000 mark, then you will start having to pay taxes on your income. - So your first job would probably be the first 20K or so that you made - all your witholdings would come back - but your second and third jobs would be above and beyond the 20K mark, thus tax would need to be paid on those jobs, and your employers held it for you, so the taxes held and your taxes due should be close to each other. (Hence the low amounts returned)

Being someone else's dependent affects your "no tax" status as well.

 

Take a look at the tax brackets, they will give you a rough estimate on what you should get back. Also, depending on if you take a standard deduction or itemize your return will vary. I know you said you are a dependant, but I really don't know how to that way. I use Turbo Tax online and have for the last few years, I think it's great, found me a $1650 credit this year, w00t!

http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com...xBrackets.aspx

 

ok... when you say $20,000 , you mean making $20,000 a year right?

well i made well below that with all 3 jobs combined.... (im a student with a local part time job)

so why arent they giving back 100% then?

 

As far as I knew, you paid 10% on the first bracket. Then after that, you pay 15% on the difference between what you make and the first bracket. So, lets say you made $10,000. 10% of first $7,825.00 is $782.50. $10,000 minus $7,825.00 is $2,175.00. So 15% of $2,175.00 is $326.25. That would mean that you were supposed to pay $1,108.75 ($782.50 + $326.25). So take your federal witholdings and compare it to that number. Keep in mind this was a simple example and standard deductions as well as personel excemptions were not included in it either.