taxes suck
Taxes from multiple employers and multiple states. I live in CA and go through this every year. My employer is based in Arizona, I work in Nevada, but I'm a resident of California. Oh, I also do contract flying for 4 private individuals. My taxes suck. Here's what I've come to learn:
As far as federal, if you receive a W-2 or 1099 then you must claim the money and pay the tax. If you don't receive a statement (under the table work) you're required to report that also, but who's really going to know? But if you don't report it (other income), pay the tax and get it recorded, then you can never claim that income when you need it (like buying a house). Some years my contract flying was all I had, If I didn't report it there would be some serious low spots in my income. My advice, claim everything and pay the tax.
States are different but as a general rule have similar requirements to each other. Almost always you are required to pay state taxes to the state of your residence, regardless of where you earned that income. All state forms that I've used ask you to provide the federal adjusted gross income (this is all sources) as the basis for their taxation. However, if you paid money to another state, those funds are usually retrievable. For example, I owe 2000$ to the state of CA this year because the bulk of my federal AGI was from an employer in AZ. I paid 1940$ to the state of AZ in taxes. I filed an AZ non-resident tax return, used the correct schedule to claim a 1940$ credit, my tax liability was 0$, I'll be getting that money back from AZ.
If you didn't pay any state or federal taxes, well then your screwed. You have to pay taxes my friend. Same as the rest of us. I highly recommend using the tax act online filing. Use
tax act (not tax net) link from the IRS website.
http://www.irs.gov/app/freeFile/jsp/index.jsp? I think it's easier than turbo tax and it's totally free if you qualify. I think you have to make less than 130K per year to qualify and I'm not sure if you can claim uninsurance with the free deal. Totally free, I flied last week and the federal was zero dollars out of my pocket. They try to rope you into upgrading to the state for like 10$, but I chose not to. If you have a straight forward claim it's a piece of cake, yes/no fill-in-the-blank questions. Highly recommend it.
Good luck.
