Taxcaster numbers were high!

[nicras12]

I wanted to run the 2016 figures as my fiancé are interested in marriage before the end of the year.  He owes back taxes, so I wanted to see what option might be best for us so I ran the married filing jointly taxcaster and also ran both of single (as if we aren't getting married) and my amount was much higher than his....and our married amount was about the same as his and mine added together (if we didn't get married and filed single).  My concern is that the refund amounts (for when I ran us as single) were WAY higher than the actually refunds from the previous year (with that information used).  Why does taxcaster show such a large refund when it wasn't that big last year?

[Texas Roger]

Are you saying you entered your exact 2016 information and the taxcaster shows a larger refund than you actually received?

[nicras12]

Yes!  Significantly larger!  5000 more back for me and 2000 more for him.

[nicras12]

Is taxable wages the same as line 43 - taxable income?

[Texas Roger]

Other income in addition to wages would be included in taxable income. Taxable income is your adjusted gross income minus exemptions and standard or itemized deductions. I would think Taxcaster would be more accurate than that. You should recheck your entries.

As an alternative, you could create new online accounts to prepare the returns on using the actual program. You can see the results without having to pay.  Do not make any changes in the account you used to prepare and file your 2016 tax return.

[nicras12]

Ugh....I'm concerned/surprised.

[rjs]

"Is taxable wages the same as line 43 - taxable income?"

NO, it's not the same. Form 1040 line 43 is taxable income after subtracting deductions and exemptions. When TaxCaster asks you for taxable wages, you have to enter the full amount from your W-2 box 1, before those subtractions. If you click the little blue "i" next to "taxable wages" on the TaxCaster screen, it tells you to use box 1 from your W-2. If you entered the line 43 amount from your tax return as taxable wages, you told TaxCaster that your income is much lower than it really is. That's why it thinks your refund will be so much higher.

[nicras12]

Okay, so I ran the numbers with the corrected figures and found that our married filing joint would offer a return of only 275.00 more than if we didn't get married and filed separately.  Ugh...for some reason we thought that marriage came with good tax benefits.

[rjs]

Resolved in comments.