I got my W-2 yesterday, so I worked on my 1040 and 540 today (actually, I started last night, but the craptastic ISP went down while I was downloading forms). I had more forms to fill out this year than I've ever had before.
There's a couple credits people might want to look out for. If you've had long distance, bundled or cellular phone service between Feb 28, 2003 and Aug 1, 2006, AND you have copies of all your bills, you can fill out
form 8913 (
instructions) and get a credit on the Federal Telephone Excise Tax you paid during this time, plus interest of between 4 and 26%! If you didn't have phone service, don't have copies of your bills, or don't want to bother shuffling so much paperwork, you can skip the 8913 form and just take the standard credit of $30 for a single person up to $60 for a family of 4. I got almost $80 in credit because I had bills going back to 2004. I could have gotten another $50 or so if I'd had my 2003 bills available.
I also found you can get a credit for contributing to a qualifying retirement account (IRA, 401(k), etc) if your income is below a certain level ($25K filing single, $50K married filing jointly). You can get from 10% up to 50% of the amount you contributed back as a tax credit! You just have to file
form 8880.
I'll be getting over $1400 back this year! I think that's a record for me. Whoo!
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