2022 Taxes

Hopefully I am now done with my 2022 state and federal income taxes.  I received a refund check from New Jersey last Wednesday, May 17, and deposited it Friday.  As usual I did my taxes using the TurboTax Deluxe program.   Intuit (publisher of the TurboTax programs) tries to upsell more expensive versions of the program but I have always found the Deluxe version to be sufficient.  I filed the returns a few days early on April 12.  I submitted the federal return electronically shortly after midnight and mailed the NJ return on the way to work.  TurboTax tells you to expect to wait 24-48 hours to receive conformation that your return was accepted but in recent years I have gotten a federal confirmation in just a few minutes.  38 minutes this year.  I always mail my New Jersey return because TurboTax charges a fee to file it electronically.

I owed a considerable amount on the federal return.  This was largely because I had some US savings bonds come due (reach final maturity after 30 years) last year.  Tax on savings bond interest is deferred until the bonds are redeemed which is nice but means a big bill when they finally come due.  And the income is considered ordinary and doesn't receive the favorable tax treatment capital gains and dividends do.  Of course I knew the bonds were going to come due and had increased my estimated tax payments but not as it turned out by enough.  I still got a New Jersey refund because savings bond interest (like all interest paid by the federal government) is exempt from state taxes.

I didn't have any major issues with the program.  The handling of state income refunds is no longer a problem as Trump's changes to the tax laws mean I now take the standard deduction and don't deduct state income tax.  Although I live in a blue state the essential elimination of the deduction for state income tax hasn't hurt me because I had been paying the alternative minimum tax which didn't allow this deduction.