- Joined
- Jul 10, 2022
- Messages
- 3,676
Just glancing at what you said, business expenses stand out....that would do it for me in trying to understand.Well, I’m not exactly offering to share my tax returns, but we had a mortgage, charitable contributions, business expenses (back when employees could have those) and college expenses.
Our deductions were well over $40,000, closer to $50,000, but our income was modest.
Things were tight. We had three kids on college at the same time.
The deductibility of those expenses eased the burden somewhat. That’s the real intent of deductions, easing the burden on important expenses, not just pandering to lobbyists for certain interests…
Sometimes, I feel penalized for earning a decent living and living modestly. At the height of our itemized deductions, they were around $15k. You can see that even that is far short of the standard deduciton which came about I think 2018, and not that much more than the old standard deduction. There were times I have thought, why didn't I borrow more money for a bigger home...the interest is deductible. But imagine what would have happened with the new rules...