Welcome to the Tweet Trends podcast. Hey, Evette, what's trending today? Hey, I'm Evette, hey girl! And you are tuned in to Tweet Trends.
It's the quickest way to find out what's trending today. Since today is traditionally tax day, that's what I want to talk about, okay? So let's get started. In any typical year, April 15th is the day that you do not want to be in a tax office.
You don't want to be stuck at your computer with your TurboTax or whatever tax program that you're using. And you don't want to be going to the post office for no reason whatsoever. Because on April 15th, typically that's the day that everybody is rushing about trying to make sure that they get their taxes in on time so that they don't have to have any type of penalty for filing late. Now, this year, because of the pandemic, the tax deadline has been pushed to May 17th.
So it gives you a little bit over a month to get it done. However, do not wait until May 16th to decide that you're going to start the process. Go ahead and get it done sooner than later because it makes absolutely no sense to be running around like a chicken with your head cut off because you procrastinated. That makes no sense whatsoever.
Go ahead and get it done. You should have all of your documents. If you don't, contact those businesses, those locations that have the forms. Maybe you don't know how to use your mobile banking and need to get forms from the bank.
Go ahead and contact them now sooner than later. Get the ball rolling. Now, tax time is usually like the dreaded time for those reasons I mentioned earlier, but just because nobody likes paying taxes. But let's try to find the silver lining in it all.
Taxes and having to pay them should force you to care a little bit. More about what the federal and state governments are doing with your hard earned money. It should make you pay more attention to the candidates and the debates and what they're talking about. It should make you a little bit more involved and less likely to just kind of blow it off like, ah, whatever.
Right? And I say it should. In a lot of cases it doesn't. But when you think about 45, there were a lot of people that supported him.
A lot of the people that I knew of that supported him didn't support him because he was grabbing women in places that he had no business putting his hands and things like that. They liked him because he had money and he was not going to do anything to the country to cause his bottom line to be affected. Therefore, when it came to taxes, he was going to do things in favor of people more like him, people with lots of money. And therefore, people who were invested strongly in the stock market and stuff like that, they're more likely to vote for people like 45 simply because they know that their money is going to be well taken care of because that guy isn't going to mess up his own cash.
Simple and plain. Right? Now, is that cool? Mm-hmm.
To each his own. There's no right or wrong answer for that. But some people may not even really understand why we pay taxes. And we all should know and understand the purpose for taxes.
It's not just to be a thorn in your side and have somebody steal all your money. That's not what taxes are. The whole point of taxes is to raise money to help pay for programs and services authorized by state and federal governments. Now, if you're on one side of the aisle or the other, you may feel some type of way about these various programs.
However, they're needed. Many of these programs are desperately needed. And I think it takes a little bit more research for most to then come to that conclusion, that understanding that you just don't look at life through your one little lens and say, yeah, but I don't need this and I don't need that and I've never used this and I've never used that. But you don't know if your neighbor has needed to use those different programs or maybe a relative of yours.
You just never know. So on the federal side, the types of programs that it helps pay for would be national defense, social security, Medicare, Medicaid, science and medical research, education, and regulating things such as water, clean air, product services and making sure that those types of things are safe. For state taxes, it goes towards public schooling, public colleges and universities, infrastructure, you know, you've got those highways, roads and bridges. We've got to keep those things together because if not, they start crumbling and falling apart.
How are you going to get to your job? How are you going to get from point A to point B? Let's see, Medicaid and then public safety. So that's where the whole defund the police thing comes from where people are like, you know, I pay my tax dollars to my state government to make sure that we can hire police and firefighters and operate prisons and whatnot.
However, people are finding that the money that is going into these various places. Well, maybe they could be used a little bit better or differently or, you know, some change to it. And therefore, these are the reasons why you would want to be well versed in what the candidates are saying, what they believe in, because that will then determine where your taxes are. And then you'll determine where your tax money does.
Well, one way to get a bigger tax refund is to withhold more money from your paycheck. Now, that sounds all fine and dandy. That just basically means that they're going to take more money out during the year and then it'll cover what taxes you owe and then you'll get a refund check, right? However, the problem with the refund check is if you possibly could have had that money during the year, you could have invested it, you could have put it in a place and it could have been working for you because you don't earn any interest off of the refund check that you get from the government.
So, basically, giving them free money to work with and then when they're done with it, they're like, okay, here's your money back. Thanks. So, is it all that great to get a really big refund? No, not really.
Maybe a small one just to say that you had that cushion right there and you were good. And then having to pay means that you took out more money on the front side and then when taxes rolled around, you had to pay. But if your money was working for you in that time period that you had it with you, then paying the taxes shouldn't necessarily be a bad thing. Maybe you would have had a chance to make that money over so that you can pay it towards your taxes and technically you did a good thing.
It wasn't bad. It wasn't money coming out of your pocket. It was money that you made off of that money or some of it, hopefully not all of it because that's pointless as well. But other questions that people have is like, what happens if I don't file by the 15th?
Well, it's not the end of the world, but you may have to pay some type of penalties. Well, what happens if you don't pay your taxes at all ever? If you are maybe self-employed, paid in cash, you have no home or car loans, no bank accounts, never filed or paid income taxes in the past, then you can probably slide under the radar and the IRS won't even know that you exist. They'll be like, whatever.
However, if you have any of those things, you'll probably want to go ahead and file your taxes. Now, as far as getting audited, if you make a modest income and you do your best to file on time and do what you're supposed to do, there's a very small chance that you're going to get audited. However, if you make a lot of money, those tend to be the people who tend to get audited because their taxes, honestly, my opinion, are way more complicated than your typical Joe Schmo that makes money here, there, you know. So if you have extra stuff, those tend to draw red flags and the computers at the IRS, they'll look for those things, and then, hence, you end up possibly getting audited.
Now, as far as filing jointly or separately, that type of stuff right there, or should I even file because of the amount of money I make, who can I claim as a dependent, those types of things, you probably want to talk to a tax professional about that. And hey, I attempted to call one. Yeah, let me tell you how that went. If you go online, you'll see so many companies that say, hey, call us, we can give you tax information, tax advice.
If you've got questions, we've got answers. And I said, you know what, I'm going to call one of them to see what type of services they really do provide. But rather than going to one of these little companies, I'm going to the big dog. So I looked up the IRS phone number that they clearly say that you can call and get assistance.
You can get help. Just call us. Talk to a person. And I'm like, okay, that's what I'm going to do.
And I did. And let me tell you this, the prompts that were on the call were as complicated, if not more complicated than the dog on tax code. How crazy is that? I'm sitting here and I'm like, I think this is the one.
I think that's what I need. And it was amazing that I even got to the end of the prompts where it sounded like they were actually going to be able to connect me with a person that was going to be able to assist me. And I recorded it. Let me share it with you.
Hi, I'm first. Let me start by saying thank you. You guys are on it. I had no idea that someone would be on the line this fast, considering all the prompts that I just went through to get to you.
So I don't know who needs to get those kiwos, but that was so awesome. I have a, I guess, pretty much a basic question because today is normally tax day, but the extension is May 17th, correct? However, I keep hearing from people that there are still some people that need to adhere to today's date. Is that true?
I'm sorry, I'm peat your question. I've had some people tell me that they still need to adhere to today's date and I'm trying to figure out what am I missing? Did I miss something somewhere along the line? All right, when did you buy a tax return?
I haven't. That's why I'm kind of concerned. What my last time that I did it last year? You wanted to know about?
Right. But so my question is that I've talked to some of my friends and they're saying that they don't have that extension. They still have to get it done today. But it was like, I wasn't quite understanding that.
So I want to just kind of reach out to find out. Do I need to be running out to H&R Block right now? Or is that who does today's date still apply to? Our tax law law, Miss Laney is fine, so they'll be able to advise you if this was, what's the due date and who does it apply to?
Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Please hold the line.
Two seconds after she transferred me, I got a recording saying that because of the high call volume that I needed to either try later on or the next business day. And the call was disconnected. Thanks for tuning into today's episode of Tweet Trends. Hopefully you learned something from this.
One big takeaway is that if you waited until today to try to get some answers or information about your taxes from the IRS, you waited a tad bit too long because when you call them, although they may answer really quick, nine times out of ten, you will get an answer at some point in the call saying that you know what, we're busy. Try us on another day. Yep. So outside of that, hopefully if you didn't understand why we pay taxes to begin with, did you have a better understanding of that?
Where those tax dollars go? And just maybe this was that little tidbit that Jim that you needed to now open up your mind and be like, you know what, I'm going to pay more attention when it comes to these elections, both federal, state, local, to make sure I'm hearing what these candidates are saying because depending on what the things are, they believe in that very well could affect my taxes in some way, shape, or form. And I want to be informed, right? So do me a favor before you head on out and go start working on your taxes because don't procrastinate.
Don't wait until next month on the 17th of then realize that you never did them. Take the time. Now do it slow because you're probably going to need it if you got to reach out to somebody for assistance. Yeah?
So go ahead. But before you go do that, run on over to Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, all these places you can find me at HeThat's at H-E-V-E-T-T-E or just look for the hashtag Tweet Trends. Alright, have a great weekend. Don't enjoy it too much if you haven't done your taxes.
Get it done. Get it done. And I'll see you back here on Tuesday.