 Hello everyone, welcome to today's session. My name is Paul Artali. I am a program manager here at the Rackham Graduate School and we are going to be talking taxes today with Ed Jennings who is our tax guru here at the University of Michigan. Before we I turn it over to add a couple of things. Number one, this session will be recorded. So the camera will be on Ed and I but know that it's recorded. So if we open up the mics you could be recorded but this with that this session will also be available after a few days after all of this If you want to review the materials also the PowerPoint will also be available to everyone who registered for this event and if during this talk you have questions throw them into your chat room into the chat box and we will do our best to answer them during the presentation and and with that I am going to turn it over to Ed Jennings to talk about taxes. Ed, how are you doing today? Good, Paul. Thank you very much Greetings folks, and I hope you had a great 4th of July holiday. A day off is always good As Paul mentioned, we've got a PowerPoint here. We've only got an hour. This typically takes two hours So we will be hitting highlights That's why they're recorded and you'll have access to this. It has some case studies And they're really the points we're trying to make Let's see. So a couple of issues and now Paul, is there any way I can get access to the document? So the the slides? Yes Do you have them on your computer or I can share? I can share my screen and people can see them Well, I have maybe it's my view I'm doing a Speaker view. So yeah, let's do some share screen. Go ahead. Can you put on the share screen and have me work it off that? That'd be great. All right, just tell me when you want me to advance the slides. Oh, no, no, no I all right go ahead then you're gonna okay. Sorry. We're good. Otherwise, you have to share it from your end And you can just is that what I have to do. Yeah, I can you want to try that? Yeah, let me try that. All right Once again, so sorry, go ahead. Go ahead. No, uh The same folks if you have any tax questions as we're getting set up here. Oh, here we go Again, make sure to throw them into the chat box and I will monitor them and ask ed as we get along ed You're you're on now, man. So we're good to go. Yep. Good. Alrighty. So thanks folks I appreciate you dealing with my technical Inabilities, which is a lifetime struggle um So one of the things we do is we want to go through and talk about basically what you're looking at a lot of times Taxation of scholarships or fellowships But in order to do that we have to put that into the bigger picture And the agenda basically talks a lot about that we talk about this on a We have a lot of questions, but there are certain main questions that you're really going to have that we'd like to give you Um Which is basically do I have a tax liability the answer is probably yes If you receive the cash stipend chances are most likely you're going to have a tax liability Well, if I do Then how much will that be and we'll talk about that and how much it can actually be and what you have to do And then you say, well, okay fine, but then how do I report it? How do I pay it? And that'll be something very important because uh, this is unlike with wages or anything else that you've had The responsibility to pay it is on you not your employer and then to whom and we have federal state Um, yeah, I don't know why we had a tea party because you're going to find we're paying more taxes to more people than ever But if you look at the agenda the very piece we're going to talk about are some of the universal concepts on taxation And that's looking at it from a federal perspective near the bottom of the agenda We do talk about the state issues and the states tend to file the Fed Part of what we're going to talk about is we go through this is how you're expected to make the payments So you'll see down there the one of the bullet points we have near the bottom Is the quarterly estimated tax payments and that'd be one of the bigger struggles So you're going to have to pay this in throughout the year and we'll talk something about that And then there are some forms that you event will file On your behalf and then you don't have to worry about that So please know where you are as to whether you're a gsi gsra Or uh, you've actually received a scholarship all has different treatment As we go through this one of the major points we try to make a distinction on two are residents U.S residents are domestic students and We're domestic citizens and resident aliens. They're all viewed as U.S citizens and they file a tax attorney and the concepts apply to them differently than if you're what we call non-resident alien Meaning as defined by the internal revenue code you are from your foreign birth Foreign born and that you haven't been here in the u.s long enough to be treated as a u.s citizen Then there are certain advantages to that And that's basically the big picture as we go through this I do have one caveat which is as the tax director here, and I've done this for 22 years We don't actually get into Answering specific questions. So you can't email me later on There's an insurance and risk issue that we're not allowed to answer individual questions and provide advice to individuals Including presidents whistle. So just letting you know that's basically the situation. That's why we have this setup So you get this educational format So hopefully we'll be able to address your questions as we go something paul mentioned make sure you keep us in the loop through the chat session First slide probably most important is humor Do realize when you're going through tax, it's very dry Once you get comfortable with it, it gets a little better, but basically And this is snoopy and it's one of my favorite things. I can tell you it's not gonna work But it's a nice try Tax purposes this slide is very important because it's a certain concept Now paul as we go through if you have any questions feel free to interject Folks again, it's usually a two-hour session. We only have an hour. So we're going to highlight But this slide is very important because it talks about some of the universal concepts As we go through one individuals taxpayers aren't just people it's corporations estates trusts anybody and everybody who makes a dollar That the congress will make sure that they're going to tax you They created a code the internal revenue code that has a slew of rules And those rules are basically going to make sure that they tax any and all income that they can Income is broadly defined And there's two types of income. There's two types of taxes. There's an income tax regime and a social security tax regime Income is on the increase in wealth. So if you earn money Interest dividends, whatever you have cap gains or wages, they're going to tax that There's an accretion of wealth. You're better off after you've received that money than you were before There's also a social security tax regime That's really supposed to be a retirement program for you when you get later on in years The way it works though is the the current generation doing all the work is who affords the older folks What i'm saying is you folks are going to afford my retirement. So thank you very much As we go through this we're going to be talking a lot about income, but not fika This is to give you comfort Fika is generally not going to apply and you'll see that as we go At the fed rate and then many states you'll see this too. You have graduated tax rates Which means uh, and you hear people say that oh, it bumped me up to a higher tax bracket That's what happens. So the the wealthier you are the more tax you're paying on a percentage basis on that same dollar um, then we talk about Tax returns Filed on a calendar year basis. Many people will say is 13 years or is it 13 months 14 months? It's one year and it starts from January and ends in December It's a calendar year basis for nearly all individual taxpayers It's also on a cash basis and that's very important because the question is when did you actually receive the cash? So someone told you were going to win a million dollars in december 28th And they didn't pay a t until january 2nd You don't have to put it on a return until the january 2nd year rather than the earlier year um And then we talk about worldwide income now. This is a concept Many countries have the us we're saying which is we're going to the us tax as you want income whether you earn it in ireland in Mexico we're here in the us if you're a us citizen or a resident alien We will tax you and that's one of the differences with non-resident aliens If you're a non-resident alien you have your own country And they may either tax you on worldwide income or may not But the us does not have the authorization or the jurisdiction to tax you on anything other than what you earned here in the us Because you're not an a citizen of the country or a resident alien And we'll see some of that do know most of this presentation. We'll be talking a lot about resident aliens and u.s citizens because of the difficulty that they have Where in reporting and paying these amounts? Whereas that's not necessarily a case for the non-resident aliens what we call nra's and you'll see why as we go through this So most of the presentation is geared again to us citizens and uh resident aliens You also need and this is the fika concept or the income tax the quarterly estimated tax concept You have to pay the tax as you go a lot of people think you pay it next april So 2019 ended and we would have to pay it april 15th. That's not the case Actually, if you pay it as you go You just don't see a lot when you don't want wages because the employer is paying it for you But that's one of the concepts and that's where that comes in with quarterly estimated tax payments Um Now at this point in time, I think I want to stop and make a quick break I said april 15th for this year alone because of coven We've moved the congress and states have agreed to move the individual filing date up to july 15th Which is why we're having this in july and typically paul and i are having this conversation in january march Well january february and march uh typically But today we're actually going to do it uh in july and that's the idea This is just a schedule to show you the graduated brackets And you can see that if you if you're in that you have less than nine thousand seven hundred dollars And you're single and you can see the different classifications and then you're subject to tax at 10 percent You get higher than that the same dollar is now subject to 12 percent rather than 10 That's basically all works Um now this form this slide is basically going to be talking about the actual Payment structure We talked about that if you have a tax liability you have to pay it. How do you pay it? Well, what we want to let you know very very early in this presentation up front is It may be a situation where someone's paying that tax in on your behalf But if it's a scholarship fellowship, you do need to know that you're going to have to make these payments on your path Throughout the year as you earn them Uh, so you have a w2 Anybody received a w2 before either from the university of michigan or another employer You're going to notice that when you get your paycheck at the end of the week It's not the hundred dollars. They promised you it's 60 dollars some of which they've taken out for federal income tax income State income tax the FICA tax and so forth So but they've done the withhold for years to come next april 15th Basically, all your filing is it as a tax return that reconciles all that's been paid into date with With the actual tax that you end up having to pay. So that's the idea of a w2 1042 s or for non-resident aliens What we do there is we will tell you what the tax amount is And we'll do some withholds on it at a certain percentage and again, some of your tax will be have been paid on your behalf Now 1099 is basically for again domestics and resident aliens We don't tend to give nra's a 1040 or 1099 But at 1099 will tell you what your taxable amount is what we won't do withholds We tend to use that with the price waterhouse coopers. They're the accounting firm that comes in and gives us her accounting statement Um, any kind of company or other kind of organizations that we work with With that we pay through our vendor system. We actually if it's 600 dollars or more, we have to give them a 1099 What's interesting here is if you're a student who's received a scholarship or fellowship You're not going to receive the w2 or the 1099 And that's the distinction between the domestics And the not and the resident aliens versus the nra's because the nra's will receive a 1042 s on that 1042 s If they're the need they will do withholdings So the nra's don't have to worry so much. They've less of an a burden if you As they go through the rest of this presentation Because they don't have to worry about quarterly estimated tax payments necessarily because they are necessary They payroll is actually doing a form for them and on that form. They're doing withholding for To the reporting and withholding That's not happening for the u.s. Citizens the domestics or the resident aliens No one's telling you what the amount is no one's withholding anything on your behalf And you have to make the payments in on on your own. So that's the point of this session Really as we go through it And that's more or less as we go Do know if you are a non resident alien and you got a 1042 s and you might have gotten a w2 if you're Even if you're a u.s citizen Or resident alien if you were a gsi or gsa So if that's the case if you got a form from us feel free to call those folks Excuse me with a w2. It's payroll And with a 1042 s it's payable If you got a 1099 for whatever reason I can't imagine that would be our payables office But if you got a form from us you can go back and talk to our folks and ask them Why you got one how it was determined and so forth But if you don't get a form That's where the tax departments not in a position to actually give you any tax advice You didn't get a form. So now I'm helping you do your form. We're not helping you with the form we issued So that's the idea Uh, and so the general rule on taxation that brings us back to the question Do I have a tax responsibility enough? So how much this slide answers that you folks receive the scholarship or fellowship Basically, what you've had is you your tuition has been paid for you You've also had a situation where we've given you stipends which isn't defined in the code But basically someone's given you cash Um for you to live on You've already had your tuition paid. So in which case then this is to help you live to survive rent Food and of course beer. So, uh, basically that's the point of of of stipend so then So one of that is taxable. What is it? Well, everything is taxable in the internal revenue code unless there's a code section pull it out To exclude it and there is a code section 117 that talks about qualified scholarship It's not everything you've received. It's some of it. It basically covers tuition and fees that are required as part of the curriculum Well, the tuition basically has been waived for you. You don't have to pay We don't give you money and then you pay it back to us. It's been waived But what's good is good news is it's it's an in-kind benefit But it's not a taxable in-kind benefit. So it's not like we have to put it on a form for you or you have to put it on Um, and then it comes down to uh fees that are required as part of the curriculum And that would include expenses that you have like, um Books that are required for the curriculum. So if you've got a thousand dollars of cash, that would be taxable But if you spent 200 of it on books that are required as part of the curriculum Only 800 is taxable. Then that's how it works. And then the non qualified scholarships is the rest of the stipend That doesn't meet qualified and that would be your taxable income So generally cash stipends that you're getting that don't cover Fees that are required as part of the curriculum will trigger taxable income And again, I believe and I've seen this throughout my 22 years nearly all these payments. I've not seen a situation otherwise But I always leave room for doubt. Um is that it should be excluded from FICA. It's not earned income And it's very important. That's why you're not getting a w2 You're not working for the universe michigan. This is for the pursuit of education Furthering your knowledge. So basically a stipend or I'm sorry scholarship should allow you to further your education It should not be considered earned income, which is what's subject to FICA or self-employment tax So when we talked about the two regimes, we're only going to be talking about income tax going forward Not necessarily FICA or self-employment tax Now real quick non resident aliens just because we've been making this distinction. Keep in mind um If you're foreign born, you can be an nra. In fact, you will be until you're here long enough And there are certain exceptions that can pull you out of that and we tend to see that with students the two most important distinctions between nra's and uh Domestics and resident aliens is the fact that You're not taxed on your worldwide income. You're only going to be taxed on your Well, the interarmical will not tax you on your worldwide income. It will only tax you on your us sourced income That may be just your scholarship or fellowship Also payroll issues of form the 1042 s which we discussed They will tell you how much of your non qualified scholarships Are what they are they will define for you what the taxable amount is and then they will do a withhold on you So basically if you're going to get a hundred bucks a month, you will only get 86 dollars a month 14 percent has been withheld So generally you don't have to worry about quarterly tax payments. So the good news is a non resident alien um You you don't have to worry as much about a tax burden as we will with the other students Now, uh, there are uh, there's even more news better news. I got good news for you better news So what was it something harry truman said right nothing better than cake but more cake? Basically, you could also be excluded from taxation on your non qualified scholarships under treaties because treaties Trumped the code the internal revenue code. So it may be a situation where you don't have to pay that So, um, again, you've got a form it comes from payroll. So if you want to know more about it and you're an nra Payroll will help you also. We have a very good active website with international center and they actually even have a Software package that you can use free to be able to compute your own taxes and file your us tax return the 1040 nr nr for non residents. Um, so generally Life is is is not as burdensome for the non resident So now we're up to a quick quiz and this is going to help set up the rest of the presentation and talking about your tax return So basically, this is what a tax return looks like. Although Conceptually, you have income what they want to bring all your income in for the calendar year that we mentioned uh, all your taxable income and then you get to have deductions and then after that we figured your tax Uh, and i'm using a 10 percent tax rate here and then there are credits to the tax So generally you can even reduce the tax so I can reduce my my tax bullet my My revenues by deductions and then I can reduce my tax by credits. It's a it's a good world Um, and the query is would you rather have a $50 deduction or a $15 credit? Um, and as the facts work out in this case, it's better to have the credit And what the credit shows you is even though it's less than dollars It offsets a smaller subset, which is your tax. So it's actually more valuable Tax is actually cash. That's the way to think of it and credits actually give you cash Whereas deductions just help offset revenue which arrives at tax So that's basically how it works. And as you can see as you go through here $100 of revenue with the deductions you use $50 you have $50 of taxable income You apply the 10 percent tax $5 you don't have any credits. So you owe $5 Well on the other column under the credit column, you have $100 of revenue You have no deductions. So you have you have taxable income of $100. That's not as good as what was But you do have a tax and the tax is $10. It's it's twice as high, which makes sense But you get this $5 credit So basically you don't have a tax if it's a non-refundable credit and if it's a refundable credit It's even more cake you get that they pay you there's a nice situation other government pay you That sets up the platform if I can real quickly for the 10 98 t Now you folks may be receiving this form if your tuition has been paid for completely by the university of michigan Then generally you're not going to be able to use this form It isn't a tax form in the sense. It tells you about a taxable income It's a tax form that tells you about a credit It could also be a deduction if you want depending upon your tax situation But this is a good news tax form The unfortunate news for domestics and resident Aliens is that if your scholarship if your own scholarship and your education has been paid for by a third party Then you're not going to be able to take advantage of and I can explain that real quick Here you basically have box one and what gets offset by box one is box five. You see scholarship So anything in box five is a counter-account to one So if one has a thousand in box five is two thousand you have a negative thousand You're not going to be able to take anything and that's basically what your 10 98 t is going to look like If you were a full ride And you receive some stipends Just to give you some background the credit basically as we mentioned There's two american opportunity credit and the lifetime learning lifetime learning tends to work for graduate students It tends to be most of the folks on the line It's basically a non refundable credit. So it's nothing one of those lines But if you want to learn more about it We have a web web link that'll tell you more about that. You may have received this form and you may want to know more about it When you receive that form you then put it on to this form on your tax return This takes the information we've given you and it narrowly tells it to your personal tax situation Um, and you can determine whether you're entitled to it or not. You can see there's phase outs and so forth So if you make so much money, you're not going to be entitled to it either um, and here is the What I like and these are these uh examples and come out of the irs publications. It's very important because we've cited some irs publications They will help you to better understand a lot of the concepts we're going through Tax is a ripple effect. It's like throwing a pebble into the into a pond You get these ripples and every time you hear something you pick up a little bit more And these are pictures provided by the uh, I like pictures Provided in publications by the irs. This is from 970 This is your major publication that you want to be looking at if you want to know about Uh, your tax situation if you receive a scholarship And the second bottom the box the second from the bottom Says were the same expenses paid entirely with a tax-free scholarship grant Uh, and the answer would be yes, then you can't use this That would be for both credits the american opportunity and the lifetime learning same question same issue And the reason is you're not out of pocket So if you're not out of pocket, you're not going to be entitled to it. Um And that's how it works. So again the form seems like a good a cake form, right? It's good news. It talks about a credit which we just went through his accident Bottom line is chances are if you've got a full ride, you're not going to be entitled to that credit So it's a form. You're not going to be able to use But if you did pay for some of your education at any time during the year You may be able to use this even if you paid for it in march For or in the early term january for the first term and then the the latter term you ended up the fall term You ended up getting a scholarship. Again, you're all within the calendar year So you may be able to take the form for what you paid for Where you wouldn't be able to take the credit for the scholarship So it all depends on your personal situation, but form to know about if you need to know Now irs, uh, interesting the chances of you being audited are doubled in the sense that they audit us They audit you. Um, that said the chance of you being audited is less than 1% Yes, I had a couple questions here from the box. I thought that was a good time to ask them if that's okay Sure. All right quick question. Uh, Amanda asked if we received could we're talking about the 1098 t If we received a raccoon travel fellowship included on the 1098 t for research travel expenses How do we report that I would assume if it's on the 1098 t it doesn't need to be reported. Is that correct? Right, it's not income. It doesn't say that form is not mentioned The irs does not use it to determine what your taxable situation is You're going to have to sit down and figure it out based on the formula that we have to fit That anybody has to figure out which is how much was your scholarship? What was used for part of the curriculum only, you know what you spent that on and that's how that's going to work Yes, gotcha and brian asked, uh, if he if he gets va benefits from a parent Who served through the gi bill does he have to pay taxes on that? Uh, that would be something I'd have to go back and put the documentation on from the gi bill Okay, they would they should specifically address that. Yeah, okay. Cool. Thank you again Go with this what we're trying to do the concept of if somebody gave you a form You have a right to go back and ask about that for okay and orisa asks, uh So again about the 10 90 80 if you were to take box five and subtract that from box one The leftover negative balances taxable income Well, actually that in theory I'd say that's probably very close to a ballpark number But if again the form's not used for that So the irs doesn't use the negative and then go over to your tax return and see if that number was transferred Um, uh, right now they don't anyway. Um, basically, uh, it's a good rule of thumb to say well, wait a minute That must represent my stipends because box one is your tuition Box five is your tuition is stipend. So maybe be the stipends But again, that number could even be reduced by the fact that you say well, wait a minute I used a lot of this as part of the curriculum. I bought a lab top I bought some books and all of it was required. Uh, and that could work and that could reduce it Thank you. We're gonna we're gonna talk about like a qualified educational expenses In a few moments, right because i'm getting questions about that too Um, well, I will go through and see how we come back to that. Uh, this isn't really about 10 98 t's though. So I got yeah, that's fine So now we're into what I think is very important because it takes us from what's taxable Which is currently the scholarships and fellowships and it's going to talk about how we put it on the tax return Again, this is a tax return from january To december and it includes it's a bucket everything that happened in that bucket if you earned interest That gets included with your scholarship If you got paid dividends that gets included Um, and so forth. So that's basically how it works. There's a filing threshold though So to the extent your stipend was less than 12 000 dollars You can see there's a standard here if you're single you get an automatic deduction of 12 200 that means If you don't have anything else interest dividends or anything else you only have 12 000 dollars You're you're gonna put that on the return. You're gonna end up with 200 a negative 200 dollars now. It's a deduction It doesn't get you a net operating loss. It's a standard deduction. Let's think of it as non-refundable But the bottom line is you don't know any taxes. You don't have any taxable income Your taxable income has to exceed 12 200 for the calendar year that we're talking about if you're single Uh for you to even have taxable income. That's one of the deductions you get So when we went back to that slide you had the 50 you get 12 200 dollars automatically just for breathing Whether you're a good person a bad person, uh, whether you had a good year bad year Now there is an exception as we go through here for dependence and you have to figure out if you're dependent And that would matter for some of the income. That's an excess of the scholarship Do know that they treat scholarships as part of the The earned income only for determining the standard deduction. So whether you're a dependent or not you get the full 12 200 if the amount of the Taxable income that you receive was 12 200 or excess of that. So you do get that deduction And some people say well, why file then I got 12 000. I have a deduction of 12 200. Why do it? Well, the 12 000 may have been wages, uh, let's say from wendy's and wendy's as a w2 Issued you w2 as an employer. They withheld taxes on you. So you want to file the taxes to get a refund Yeah, and they owe you because you shouldn't have to pay any tax on the first 12 200 dollars. So that's how that works So you may want to be filing a return even when you don't know the tax line This will walk you through whether you're a dependent or not typically, uh, although some subjective standards, um, basically you have two two classifications child and relative and to be a qualifying child of the one objective standard is your age if you're Uh, 24 years of age or older anytime during the calendar year, you're not going to be a qualifying child Now if you fail that you could be a qualifying relative. And then the question is did you exceed the 4200 Of prong three the criteria on earned income and in this case gross income does include your taxable scholarship So to that extent then most likely if you fail a you tend to fail b if you fail as a qualifying child You tend to fail as a qualifying relative, but that's all depending upon your age and how much money you've gotten scholarship the taxable scholarships But then that's where you got to go and call your parents. What did you do on the tax attorney? You take your the dependent is that's who's going to take you your parents So you call up and ask are you guys taking me on your tax return? That's how it works Um, but it won't make a lot of difference though because you'll really get The $12,200 up to the extent of your qualify Let's go to our first case study We've got a graduate student. They're single and I've been working with the single bracket 14,250 which is in excess of the 12,200 So we have to figure out we have is it taxable income? And yes, all of the scholarship fund is absent or uh Less the tuition. So yes, we do have taxable income. We could be a dependent. So how would that look? Here's the first page Of the 1040 here's what it looks like guys and you'll see the uh, the single up there under filing status The name Jane Doe I made up the Social Security number and then we get the standard deduction and I put you in as a dependent Now I go to the next slide. It's the same slide except you can see where it says standard deduction You're no longer checked as a dependent. So you either are or aren't and the point here is in comparison What's the difference if I'm a dependent or not? There is no difference You basically have 14,250 you have to report now. This is important because you have no other income Just the scholarship and it's taxable scholarship. You subtract out the 12 200 You end up 2050 at a 10 bracket. It's 206 dollars. So it works That's how the tax return works. And that's what we talked about revenues less expenses or deductions Taxable income times the tax. You don't have any credit in this case. So you have the 206 dollars that you have to pay Uh, interestingly, you don't have to pay this on a quarterly basis because it's under a thousand dollars. That's what's important Uh, and we'll get to that when we get to the quarterly estimate Uh, here's another case study Two different scenarios. One someone gets a grant award of 15,000 dollars to do research And they use it for rent and living expenses. That's the purpose Downs taxable to me and the other one you've got 25,000 dollars of a grant 9,000 covers tuition a thousand covers the books for curriculum that are required for the curriculum And 15,000 for rent and living expenses So in scenario a 15,000 sounds like taxable income. What's the taxable income in the alternative? It's 15,000 We talked about tuition being excluded because it's for tuition And the thousand dollar expenses would be excluded because it's required for the curriculum So even though you got a 16,000 dollar cash stipend only 15 of it's taxable because a thousand went to the books that were required So what's it look like on the return? Well, you've seen this page Now we go to the next page 15,000. I get my 12,200 deduction. I got 2,800 and I owe 200 and 81 dollars That's the same for both answers. And what's interesting is in this case that, um, you don't again estimated taxes You won't have that to worry about but also you're not seeing the math I'm not bringing in 25 less 9 less 1 to get to 15. I'm not doing that You know, all the IRS wants to know is what's your tax? That's it put it on and you're done Quarterly as many tax payments. This is the tough part folks You go through that slide and you end up owing more than a thousand dollars You're going to have to pay that in throughout the year Basically in four quarters. This year is a little odd because the two quarters have been merged So there's only three quarters this year, but this year has been that way. That makes total sense based on code But you have to figure that out a lot of times it's a it's a case of cash flow management as well You may just want to pay it right away Your first quarter payment for the 2020 will be due pretty much the same time you're filing your annual return for the 2019 year Again, 2019 your return is due in April 50 Then your first quarter payment for 2020 is due April 50. Now just to keep in mind that's one way to actually Keep the concept separate, but then understand how they apply together Um, so let's go back. One thing I mentioned is when you have a tax return You're doing quarterly estimated tax payments. What's what am I filing next April? Next April is a way of saying here's what happened last year But you basically have to have paid in 90 percent of last year during the year Now when you work for employer, they do that for you But if you don't then you're going to have to have done that on a quarterly basis And then when you get to April really you're just reconciling. So I paid in a hundred. I actually owe 110 Here's your ten dollars. That's all that's all you're doing in april The real work is being done as you go through the year. Remember pay as you go That was one of the concepts. Um, and you have to do your quarterlies as you go Quarters are april 15th june 15th september 15th and january What's interesting here too is it's not even like three every three months It's three and a half two and a half three and a half and four and a half. It's just the way it works There is also estimated tax payments at the state level And then for at least in michigan It's where you're going to be over 11,765 dollars with taxable income I will say i've never heard of the state coming back and asking for estimated tax payments Whereas the fed will ask regularly in fact incorrectly many times they'll come back and ask for it You say I paid it in and they go. Oh, sorry. Just check it. So do keep in mind Um And then of course here's the form the 1040 es now you can also do this electronically Um, but there is a form and it's very helpful. It's supposed to get you through this payment voucher for due january 15th 2020 Here's a record that you can keep in mind to keep you On track current um for many people who uh, you know don't like accounting The best way to do this you just ballpark what you think your amounts going to be Now if you're going to get the same stipend this year you got last year you use last year's throw that up there You get your deduction now in this case it only shows the 12,000 But it'd be 12,200 if they increase it for 2020 it'd be 12,400 or whatever the increase is And then you come up with your income like you normally do you take 90 of it That's all you have to file and divide it by four You can also turn around and say I just want to pay in the whole 1802 And the very first quarter You can pay earlier. You don't want to pay later. You'll get hit with a pound Um, but that's how it works Uh, a lot of times people don't get paid quarterly. They get paid Semi-annually then you only need to do two Uh in the two quarters that it falls So that's basically how it works And I always like to annualize it make it look like an actual four-year return understanding what I'm going to have then I get the full deductions and then I come up with whatever my tax liability is What you're really just working with what you think your tax liability is you can do it on the back of an apcan if you like Um, uh, and particularly when it's low enough. It's just a 10% tax break Add quick question on that Just a quick eric asks can I do additional withholding instead of making quarterly payments? That's a great question. I hope everybody understood that. Um, what that really is is allowing you to do your How do you want to manage that that means somebody whether you're married and they're working? Uh, your spouse or you've got another job and you have an employer doing withholding You can go to your employer and say I want you to withhold over withhold And that way it'll cover some of my tax payments that I'd have to make on my own for my scholarship All the IRS cares that gets paid in they don't care by hope So if your employer pays in your amount of tax or the services you're doing for them And the tax for what you're incurring with respect to the scholarship. That's fine The employer is going to do what you tell them to do you do that on w4 And they go ahead and make the adjustments And it may be where you don't even get any cash because there's just enough to cover both But bottom line is you can avoid quarterly payments by working with Either your own situation or your spouse's situation if you file a chart Where you actually have Access to an employer who can do withholding on your behalf Um, so to get back and so that's a great question So you do want to be able to manage your correlation with tax payments It doesn't have to tie exactly to the amount they at the end the IRS just wants your money They don't care how you get it there and again, that's why you can pay it in all their early They don't really care. They want your money as much as they can you're not going to get any interest on it So it's just to their benefit. So they're willing to take um penalties The internal remember code is like the worst parent in the world They don't do anything appropriately in the sense that there's no positive Reinforcement ending along these lines and if you do anything wrong, they will tell you by penalize Uh, and that's what happens here. So basically if you don't pay in 90 percent of the current year's amount 100 percent of the prior tax. So if your stipend goes up, you may really just have to pay in last year's tax You may have to have Be subject to penalties and again, if you're under a thousand dollars, they're not going to subject you any There's no it don't take offense at this but bottom line is there's more cost in the paperwork Of telling you what you owe and then you actually owing it and then them coming back and hitting you with a penalty for it It just doesn't make any sense. So basically they let it go for that as a think of an administrative threshold But there are penalties and uh, you don't want to be on the list because once you get on a list They like you on that list. So you have to do a lot to get off that list. So try to avoid your under payment codes Ed, um Good question. You can talk about penalties and stuff. So good question here from uh, Michael in the box He just wants to clarify when after the current tax deadline, which was july 15th When would the next round of estimated taxes be due? September 15th, September 15th. Thank you. I'm gonna put that in the box. Thanks, Ed And then january 15th. Yeah, it's on the one slide that we went through. Yeah It's got the court release and um, and that doesn't change The only reason it may change is that the 15th falls on a saturday or sunday You get to go to the next working day that monday And again, you can do these online. Uh, you just always want to make sure you keep Proof that you paid it because again, they can come back from time to time and say we never received it, which Particularly in a covet. They've been under a lot of stress and I think the IRS has done extremely well under a covet Um, but just the same they may feel they've lost it and it's up to you to make sure you paid it so So now we're dealing with uh, uh, I think we're up to multi-state. Um, this is just a dave berry joke. I find it very funny Uh, I am funny with my jokes They don't no matter how funny they are they're less funny the further along we go. So anyway, uh, just seems to be But just the same, uh, in this case now we're talking about state filing apartments. I'm tend to get a lot of questions on this With states, you got to keep in mind that there are you're paying to the state Tax on the same dollar you earned that you paid to the federal government So there is double taxation between fed and state. However, there shouldn't be double taxation between states So how can that arise? Well first every state Um, basically has to determine whether one's a tax regime. There are some states that don't have an income tax regime Tennessee, florida So if you're from those states, you may want to think differently about how to handle this than you would otherwise Um, and then most states that actually have a state Income tax regime Follow pretty much the fed and in this case Excuse me I don't know of any states that have any differences between what we've talked about with the fed on scholarships and fellowships Uh, they define NRA is the same and so forth. So I'm not seeing any difference Um, where it gets tricky. So now basically where you're from is really the question What state are you from if you're a u.s citizen or resident alien? You have a home state You're a resident of that state. What state is it? Um, and multi state becomes an issue because if that's not michigan Then you basically have two states. You're earning scholarships and fellowships in the state of michigan Um, but your home state's going to want to tax you on those scholarships and fellowships because Worldwide income just like the fed they're going to tax you on your worldwide income. They don't care where you earned Um, your concern may be double taxation But it won't be and because there is a credit form that allows you to offset what you paid to one state to the other There is a gap and this is where the strategy comes in if the state your home state has a higher tax rate than michigan's Then there may be a situation where you're paying more tax in Overall then you would be if you only filed with michigan And basically that's where people then agree To want it or opt to want to change their residency from their home state to michigan So again, you can find that situation that situation arises where your home state has an income tax regime Not florida. You're from florida. This isn't your concern and it's higher than michigan, which is 4.2 percent And that's a flat rate. We don't have a progressive rate So then you want to go back to your home state and determine if you're actually having a higher rate We have an example here with south carolina Is it 5.5 percent? And it's just a smaller percentage. It doesn't seem like much you'll find out how much more money you're actually paying in tax Because you're paying more to south carolina than you would be if you change your residency to michigan And we'll go through that so something to consider changing residency as you can see is based on intent There's nothing more than that you can change your residency this year and go back to south carolina if you like for the next year changing residency It's like walking a plank The more a documentation you have the safer you're off that plank. So if you have a driver's license in michigan, then that works If you have a voter registration in michigan, that helps if you have your Address in your name the lease in your name then that will help But basically these are documents that help prove that you are a resident of michigan You'll find michigan has a very active website. It's very conservative That's very tough for students actually, but if you read through it You can get a sense of what they're getting at In fact any of the publications even the iris publications are written In favor of the irs they wrote them That's not necessarily that they give you a rule and that's not necessarily the full aspect of the rule There's some planning with that But you wouldn't know that with the way they wrote it. You're only going to know that if you pull up a cch Which is a commerce clearinghouse booklet Or any of these tax booklets turbo tax anything like that will help you to get through that understand what you have and what you don't have But don't expect these publications to help you with your planning. They won't they're just trying to collect money The publications that will help you will be again cch master tax guide or turbo tax or something like that But again the double taxation it's because it's based on cash Is really where the issue comes up and california is always the case. They have the highest tax rate 13 point I don't certain 13.5 or something like that Michigan's 4.2. So when you get to the 13.5 percent bracket basically California is going to tax you on 13.5 less the 4.2 percent that you paid to michigan And where if you change your residency you would only be paying the 4.2 percent to michigan You wouldn't have to pay california. You change your residency. So they don't get that extra money. You get the extra savings. That's the strategy Now michigan state tax return has some issues Basically, it's very straightforward and we'll go through an example But they do have a homestead exemption credit that doesn't that applies broadly to more than just the homeowners It applies to leaseholders as well So if you've been in the state for more than six months or more you might be entitled to it Interestingly, it's a refundable credit. So that's the good news. So you may want to look into that see if you're entitled to it So here we have a case study $8,000 when I'm talking about a lot of money. No other income. I try to make it very simple That's not necessarily the case the student's not claimed as a dependent by another taxpayer. So they're there What we call independent and the student is a resident of michigan and qualifies for the homestead exemption So how does that look? Well, here's the michigan tax return. You can see name number and so forth and you see line eight 2019 residency status residents you check that box If you want to be a resident of california, you would check non resident And if you switch to residency during the year, you would check part year. It's very important You can see you get an exemption amount, which is very much like the standard deduction at 12,200 But in this case, it's 4,400 and you subtract that from the 8,000 because that's a deduction against revenues And you end up with 3,625 at a 4.2 percent to 5 percent tax rate. You come up with $154 of tax That's what you owe to the state of michigan Now it's small enough I don't think you have to do on a quarterly basis when you come down the second page and you start with the tax And then you come down to line 25 and they say property tax credit And you actually have the homestead credit $425 which is more than 154 Which is why you're getting back 271 The state will give you money That's the refundable credit The homestead credit. So you want to see if you if you can qualify Here is the form you'll have to attach a form which explains them how it works And you talk about your salary you talk about the amount of rent that you're paying The second page, whether they want to know about wage Or income thresholds and phase outs and so forth But at the end of the day you can see from the calculation you're at 425 And does the homestead homestead credit have to be for a homeowner or is homestead more about your Where you live permanently it can be for uh leaseholders as well The idea is and rent you're paying the property tax. That's what the landlord does They stick the property tax into the lease rate So in which case you should be entitled to it not all states take that rationale but michigan does That's why it works for students. I do recommend you check the web page at the michigan department of revenue Because they're very particular about that Um about students. They're so on students again. It's written very Pro state, but at the same time it will give you guidance as to exact details If you qualify into their standard you clearly qualify Um, so you've got a sense for now we go to multi-state. We've talked some about this You've got the non-resident or part year non-resident is you don't want to change your residency And I wouldn't if I was in florida. I'm not paying any tax. That way all I'm paying to michigan is 4.25 on my scholarship amount. No more um, if I had interest dividend or any other kind of money that I obviously earned out of the state of michigan michigan can't tax that and florida is my home residency isn't going to either So i'm in my best scenario if I don't change my living and contrary if i'm from california Which has a higher tax rate to michigan and I have interest or dividends or any other kind of money that i'm earning Outside the state of michigan. I'm going to switch my residency I don't want to be a california resident because I have to pay it a higher tax bracket When if I switched to michigan i'm in a lower tax bracket and we talked about how to do that through a 10th documentation now how to do that well pretty much in the first year. It's a part year term um Part of the year you're in california part of the year you're here unless you start in the winter term um, and then you file a tax return to california based on the taxes that you Taxable income that you have earned during that period and then you file with michigan for that So you're filing two separate returns, but really for one year one's proportion of the year the And the other return for the rest of the year. That's how that works Non-resident is where you've changed your residency. So in the second year you could file one tax return And it would be for michigan You don't have to worry about filing for california because you're no longer a resident california and you're only going to be taxed on a michigan return So you're a case study $30,000 that's your tuition and stipends. That's the michigan money Then you have 70 dollars of interest income. That's south carolina money as of right now So before you go into the calendar year, you go, I think I want to change California's a 5% michigan's a 4.25. We're talking about 0.75 percent not even a complete percentage difference Does it matter? Is it worth it all? Well one you'd only have to file one tax return michigan be changed Two, I think it's going to save you some money So here's what michigan looks like and again, we've seen the 4400 the 30,070 You you put all that in there turns out the 70 comes out Because up on box 8b you have non-resident So there you want to say and you you attach a schedule one and you say the 70 dollars belongs with another state And michigan goes, okay So we're just going to be attaching you on the 30,000 the stipend and tuition that you received in the state of michigan And you say yes, so you subtract out the 4400 you ended with 25 6 you have 1,088 That's your tax You bring that over we're not doing the credit here at this point in time So that's what you owe 1,088 now you move over This is the schedule you want to show them again line 4a is non-resident you look through here You've got 30,000 plus the 70 is 30,070, but michigan only gets 30 and other state gets 70 So south carolina theoretically is only getting 70 dollars of taxable income Okay, so let's go to the south carolina return that name number so forth you get your exemption amount That's a pretty generous. So you have your 30,070. Why is it 30s? I thought the schedule for michigan said 70, but it's a home state They're going to attach you on your worldwide income and you put that's double taxation But they're going to give you a credit and that's what we're going through So 30,070 less the 4,190 gets you 25 i owe 1,294 Wow, I just went over just under 2,000 in michigan and now i owe this this is high Where's this credit coming in? Okay. Well, there's your 1,088. So the difference is 206 So folks in a sense because you didn't change your residency from south carolina On the 70 dollars you ended up paying an additional 206 Dollars and taxes so again Well, and it's just a 0.75 of a difference. So my my my thought is you may want to question your home state Whether you have a tax Income regime and if you do whether the rates higher than michigan's and if that's the case whether you want to change That's it. That's your residency issue Um, so we do have a chart here to go through just to give you some comfort um And then just a couple questions. Well, I have taxable income most assuredly If I were your tax person, I'd tell you to prepare for it. So it's substantially This income covered by wages Uh, you were a gsa in the beginning of the year for a couple months And then you received a scholarship for nine months of the year probably not In which case we got to go to step three Do any of the exceptions apply? Yeah, it turns out i'm under a thousand dollars. I don't have to do quality estimate attachment Turns out it's more than i'm going to have to Look at paying in quality estimate attachment Um, then step four, uh with payments you get to manage it. That was one of paul's questions How do I do this? You can pay it all up front. You can pay it all one quarter You're not to go through all four quarters. Just pay it in the first get it done You're over with then I have to worry about a lot of opportunities there um And then of course keeping mine step five is really just a reconciliation When you file that april 15th or that return on april 15th Basically somebody should have been doing a withhold or you should have been doing quarterly estimate attachment payments throughout the calendar year In which case next april when you go to file the return You just explain to the irs how the payment structure went and when you get some back or you owe a little That's the idea and that's the concept paul do you have any other questions that uh I have a couple of questions here. Um, let me go through through here So one question If I receive my first stipend payment in august, do I begin paying quarterly estimated taxes in september? So some taxes some people still asking about uh the quarterly filing Yeah, uh, yeah, I think that's fair. Uh, your first quarter is january and march And then it's um april and may for june 15th And then it's going to be june and july in august for september 15th. So yes Yes, I think september 15th would be your first quarter due and that would be for this year as well So this year your first quarter is july 15th and then you get paid in august, you know, I have to worry about july and Nothing happened there But if you get paid in august, then yes september 15th still is so nothing's changed Those two quarter payments are still out there this year september 15th and january 15th because Because they haven't changed covet hasn't picked them up and the irs hasn't extended and I don't think they're going to extend They want their money now. So at that point one more quick question I'll sum it up as basically Someone's worked and made income in three different states. Do they File in each state separately or how does that work? That's great. I think a lot of that comes down to more facts and circumstances than we have but conceptually Yeah, first, what's your home state? Uh, and it may not be any of those three states and you may have four But generally you have to file in your home state if it has a tax income regime And then the other three states you'd have to see if they have income tax Worked in orlando, larda, and I'm gonna have to worry But to the extent you did theoretically what's happened is the employers in those states have withheld State income tax for that state So you're gonna want to file any way to get it back Even if you're not entitled if you're entitled to a refund even if you don't owe a tax But uh, just the same. Yeah, if you owe a tax that state's definitely gonna look So you're gonna need to file in those states That tends to have we see that one for certain students who come in As a as a first-year student here is first-year graduate student because they've worked in various states Yeah, you gotta you're gonna have to work through that That tax returns as you go Now what I have is the last page just to before we sign off These are some of the publications a 970 is what we talked about again It's written by the irs for the irs But a lot of this is stuff to give you some guidance Of what we talked about again the ripple effect Publication 17 is very helpful just for the broader the bigger picture and tax returns If you have withholding or estimated tax questions and again all of these include illustrations You've got publication 505 and then non-resident aliens there is publication 550 So they're still out there. They're very active and uh, The you know, I think they're helpful. Just keep in mind they're written by the irs Because there's always plan tax planning. That's you know, we were a little bit there's every word is a legal term And there's a definition School of court cases are defined each word So there's always going to be planning but overall the irs will give you the bare facts And if you meet the irs test and can still qualify them clearly, you're not gonna have And again a couple questions here on uh sorry on basically like What counts as an educational expense and what counts as um So for for expenses that are untaxable income to do students need to support Uh, the claim with receipts and things can you just I know it's we're running out of time But can you score to speak to that broadly? Well, I can say if you expend anything that's required for The curriculum and you're not going to then include that stipend amount on the tax return You're going to need to be able to prove that that's exactly what it was So it's substantiation and uh, you're going to need a receipt and a lot of times students move So they put in a shoebox and they carry with them put it on your laptop Make sure you keep that if you want and go forward But irs officials when they audit you it's always two years after the fact they're going to sit down and say Yeah, well, how come you didn't put that thousand dollars on them based on our case study on the return? You said why spend it on books that required part of the curriculum proved to me they were required Well, here's the email and then proved to me you bought them. Well, here's the receipts So, yeah, you do have to keep a receding aspect in mind as you go through this You have to look at it from you know an irs perspective who's always asking the question show me Cool. All right. Well, I think we're out of time. So, um, I do want to take a moment and say thanks to everybody I appreciate you letting me bore you to death About an hour on taxes paul. Thanks for sitting this up in facilities Thanks, ed. Um, I think said We will be doing different, uh, you know, we we've revisited taxes a few times a year At here at racco man the recording. So please come back as you have questions There's things happen come back and we can answer some of these questions But also a recording of this will be available for everybody In the next few days and we will email everybody as well. And before you leave I will put the slides in the chat box one more time. So you can take a look at the slides as well Ed thanks. Always a pleasure Thanks folks. I appreciate it. Have a good one folks Take care