[quote=temeculaguy]You might be the lucky winner or you might just realize the MSM has been less than honest since the majority of people benefited. I ended up about the same, perhaps slightly worse off. But my kids and step kids who do not own homes benefited greatly. I do their taxes, and those who do not itemize but were kinda on the cusp of would be buyers were the big winners, but nobody will tell you that, most polls and articles say the opposite. I still encourage those in low price and low tax states to buy, but those still in So Cal I think this may be the X factor, however I have seen no evidence yet that it impacting prices. The reality is the people that can afford So Cal homes pay enough in state taxes to use up the salt limit that property taxes are no longer deductible, self included. But no sign of that yet in prices, not sure if we will see it. The market can remain irrational longer than you can stay solvent, as the saying goes.[/quote]
Interesting… Thing thing with previous year, when I itemized, I never got the full itemized deduction anyway, because under AMT, the deductibility of SALT was already being limited for me with federal taxes. However, I always thought that even with the AMT limit, my tax would still be lower than what it is now with no AMT… I’m still trying to reconcile the difference.
For me, it no longer makes sense for me to itemize, as I have no mortgage on the primary, and the remaining mortgage is on my investment property, which goes into the expense side of that rental… And my property taxes except my primary goes to the expense side of rentals too, so that hasn’t changed.
There is one other difference. I made $0 in donations last year to charitable organizations since I was anticipating a standard deduction and because I forgot to setup a charitable trust in time last year… But my charitable contributions were not in excess of 4 digits anyway in the prior year to begin with, so I doubt that makes a significant difference.
hmmmmmmm
My tax rate might go even lower if I can qualify my rentals under QBI, lol.
What was also really weird is that when I did my kid’s taxes (as I file my kid separately due to capital gains from investments in a custodian account), TurboTax automatically qualified some of her income from REIT investments I made on her behalf as QBI… I didn’t understand that either, but since it was just a dry run estimate and I filed an extension with an overpayment on my kid’s taxes, I’ll sort that out later… But that was also weird.
Meh, I’ll figure this out later….I’m off to L.A. to do an amusement park staycation for the next few days….