Yep he isn't telling the whole story here. Either he had a capital gain or didn't pay any taxes at all throughout the year. Losing 18k in write offs would cost around $4k at most pilot tax brackets.

For some perspective a MFJ couple with no kids or deductions would have a federal tax liability of ~$60k when earning $300k.

I don’t know how anyone comes up with enough legit deductions to exceed the standard now.

I guess it would be possible with a side business.

Of course, you could have had some crazy property and state tax deduction. I’m glad they got rid of that. Nothing personal, but it was never right for us in low tax states to subsidize people in states where they pay 5x the tax

Well there are some penalties involved that negate any interest savings and will cost you more than you could ever save putting that money in a bank account. Each year I generally always owe due to capital gains but since I pay more each year in taxes the penalties are waived IIRC, but if they weren't I would be much better off overpaying.

My effective Federal Income Tax rate went from 20% to 18%.

I’m guessing he paid 60k state and federal tax total throughout the year. That’s not how much he owed when he filed his return.

Well you didn't, the "low tax states" don't earn enough in income to pay a majority of the federal taxes paid through payroll. The blue, higher median income states by far paid out more even after their deductions.

But, I semi agree with the mentality. Actually I think it should be swapped, we should pay far more to our local states and less to the feds. But, that's for another discussion.

Ah ok. Yeah it sucks. But there is another way to look at it - there was a time when my wife and I didn't even earn half of what we pay in taxes yearly...so on one hand I am grateful for paying so much tax...

Also there are ways to slowly transition off earned income that will lower your tax %. With what we earn right now, it would be smart to investigate those ways and invest in them vs buy new toys. IMO.

It’s actually not legal to sit on that money. You have to make quarterly estimated payments and will pay a penalty if you don’t.

I'm close to finishing my taxes.
I chose to convert ~$140K in my 401k to Roth so that got taxed at 35% and 37% (crossed into the 37% marginal bracket).

Looks like I'll pay ~$27K more in taxes than 2017. The Roth conversion added $50K to my tax bill. (90K x .35, 50K x .37) Without the conversion my tax bill would have decreased.

I converted the taxable 401k because we'll be in high tax brackets for the rest of our lives (two military pensions) and I have no doubt that they'll be going after high income families pretty hard in the future. Until now, we'd been subject to the Pease and PEP surtaxes - those went away with the tax cut. https://www.kitces.com/blog/how-the-...come-surtaxes/ That's gone for now, but I have no doubt some form of it will return in the future.

This........