That makes so much more sense! I was worried my entire income would get hit with the higher rate. What about the freelance income though? Is that taxed differently than my regular job income?

Your freelance income is subject to both income tax (at the same progressive rates as your W-2 income) AND self-employment tax, which is an additional 15.3% to cover Social Security and Medicare. This is because when you're self-employed, you're paying both the employer and employee portions of these taxes. You can deduct business expenses from your freelance income though, which helps reduce both taxes. Things like supplies, software subscriptions, and potentially a portion of your home office if it's used exclusively for the freelance work. Just keep good records of everything!

This is correct! I work as a tax preparer and see this mistake ALL THE TIME. The home office deduction is only for self-employed people (Schedule C filers) or certain statutory employees. Regular W-2 employees can't take this deduction anymore after the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.

Thanks for this straightforward advice! Do you have to attach any special forms or documentation when you write "NRA" for your spouse? I'm worried about my return getting flagged for review if I just write that in.

No special forms needed when filing separately with an NRA spouse! The IRS is completely familiar with this situation. Just write "NRA" in the space for the SSN and proceed normally. I've been doing it for 7 years and never had a return flagged or questioned. The only time you need additional forms is if you're claiming your spouse as a dependent (which you generally can't), filing jointly (which requires an ITIN and a special election), or if your spouse had US income. For a simple MFS with an NRA spouse with no US ties, it's very straightforward.

This is really important advice! My friend got stuck with a huge tax bill because her estranged husband in Germany had unreported income when they filed jointly. The IRS came after her even though she had no idea about his finances!

That's really helpful advice about spreading out the withdrawals. Do you think there's any advantage to starting withdrawals now versus waiting closer to the 10-year deadline? I'm wondering if we should just let it grow for a while since our income is pretty high right now.

It really depends on your current income situation and future expectations. If your income is particularly high right now, it might make sense to delay distributions until a later year when you might be in a lower tax bracket. However, if you expect your income to increase in coming years or if the account might grow substantially, earlier withdrawals could make sense. There's also the benefit of tax-loss harvesting opportunities in down markets. I'd recommend running some projections with different withdrawal scenarios to see what makes the most sense for your specific situation.

Is there any situation where growth in an inherited traditional IRA would actually be tax-free? Maybe the advisor was confusing it with something else?

This seems to be a common pattern. Was there anything in their contract about what happens in case of rejection? Did you sign something saying fees aren't refundable?

The contract had very fine print saying fees were "earned upon submission" regardless of outcome. They also claimed their "proprietary review process" determined we were eligible, which gave us false confidence. Looking back, there were red flags - they never asked for documentation of actual business impact or government orders affecting us. They just wanted payroll records and made big promises about getting "maximum credits.

We used them for our restaurant. They were thorough but incredibly slow. Took them 3 months just to prepare our claim after we provided all docs. Their fee was reasonable (15%) but they only collect after you get paid. Still waiting on our money 11 months later, but at least they check in monthly with updates.

Is there an easy way to figure out the state difference? I'm in New York and now I'm wondering if I've been leaving money on the table for years.

For New York specifically, the differences can be significant because NY has a pretty progressive tax rate structure. The easiest way is to run the calculations both ways using NY's tax tables, which you can find on the NY Department of Taxation website. The key thing to check is whether you and your spouse would fall into different tax brackets individually versus where your combined income lands. Also, NY has some credits that follow federal rules about filing status, so if you'd lose certain credits federally by filing separately, you might lose the corresponding NY credits too. I usually just run a quick calculation both ways in our state's online tax calculator to see the difference. Takes about 15 minutes but has saved us hundreds some years.

The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act significantly reduced the impact of AMT for many taxpayers by increasing the exemption amounts and phase-out thresholds. But it's still something to consider for higher incomes, especially if you have lots of certain types of deductions or exercise stock options. I got caught by this too, but in reverse - filing separately actually triggered AMT for us when jointly didn't. It's definitely worth running the numbers both ways if you're near those thresholds.