Tax Day Tea Party - April 15, 2009. Visit http://taxdayteaparty.com for more information. There has been some buzz about this lately. Will this cause accomplish anything? People these days don't stick together like they did back in the day. As long as people can put gas in their cars to get to work and buy their fast food, they're not going to put themselves at risk to change anything. I'm curious as to how this will play out on April 15.

Check your IRS Tax refund here:

http://www.irs.gov/individuals/article/0,,id=96596,00.html

You can generally access information about your refund 72 hours after IRS acknowledges receipt of your e-filed return, or three to four weeks after mailing a paper return.

Free File is the fast, easy, and free way to prepare and e-file your federal taxes online.

The Free File program provides free federal income tax preparation and electronic filing for eligible taxpayers through a partnership between the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and the Free File Alliance LLC, a group of private sector tax software companies.

Visit: http://www.irs.gov/efile/article/0,,id=118986,00.html?portlet=6, then choose a company to get started.  I personally recommend taxact.com

You'll hear this from many people while you're young: "buying a house is a great financial decision, you can write off all that interest you pay." That may have been the case one day, but not today. It's a huge misconception that many people fall victim to. The standard deduction for 2007 is $10,700 for a married couple, filing jointly. Meaning, unless your mortgage interest, taxes, charitable contributions, etc. exceeded $10,700 last year (filing jointly), buying a house for the mortgage interest write-off won't help you! So keep that in mind before getting caught up in the hype of buying a home for all that tax money you'll save. Most people just do not benefit from this. Sometimes (and in this real estate) market, it may not hurt to rent for while longer.

I was listening to Dave Ramsey the other day and a 40 something year old female calls in talking about her and her husband's debt and how they are trying to pay it off. The caller basically said they are able to pay down their debt with the tax refund check they get every year, which is about $4500. Dave told the woman they shouldn't be getting that high of a tax refund and they should adjust their W-4 with their employer and have less taxes taken out of each paycheck. You could tell the women had no idea that's how taxes work. I think many people in this country think they just get free money at the end of the year (and this may be the case if you make very little money). People don't realize that your tax refund is just that... a refund of some of the taxes you've paid in. If you have no dependents and basically no write offs, and you're getting a hefty refund each year, you'll want to adjust your W-4 as well.

The IRS used to have a calculator here, but its been down for a while now. If anyone has any good advice on how to accurately calculate this information, I'd be glad to know. Going through all those IRS forms seems a little daunting and error prone to me.

So anyway, it's important to learn at a young age how taxes really work. You pay in and you may get some back in the form of a refund. You don't want to have a large refund because that basically means the government is holding your money interest free (to you, not them) for a year and then giving it back to you. It makes more sense for you to have this money in a high interest savings account so you're making money, not the government right?

It's amazing how many people I encounter who don't know that you can prepare and file your U.S. federal taxes for free if:

• You made less than $54,000 in 2007
• You are under 50 years old (for some filing services)

Here's the site to start the process:

http://www.irs.gov/efile/article/0,,id=118986,00.html

You can choose from several companies to use and many of them have different requirements. And, if your state taxes income, you'll need to purchase the state product in order to prepare and file electronically in your state.

Hopefully many of you will find this useful.