I hadn't thought about that approach. How exactly do the quarterly payments work with regular withholding? Do I still need to adjust my W-4 or can I just make separate payments?

You can keep your W-4 as is and simply make additional quarterly estimated tax payments to fine-tune your tax situation. The IRS doesn't care where the money comes from - they just care that you've paid enough throughout the year to avoid an underpayment penalty. For someone in your situation with an uncertain EV credit, you could continue your current withholding but make smaller estimated payments early in the year. Then once you confirm whether you qualify for the credit, you can adjust your Q3/Q4 payments accordingly. Just use Form 1040-ES to submit the payments either online or by mail. It gives you much more control than relying solely on employer withholding.

Totally agree. It's almost like the complexity is by design to keep the tax prep industry in business. I lived in Denmark for 3 years and they just sent me a statement showing what I earned and what I owed. I could make adjustments if needed, but otherwise just confirmed it was correct. Took 5 minutes instead of weeks of stress and gathering documents.

Thanks for this! I just double-checked and my AGI is actually around $25,200 after all my mileage deductions, so I should qualify for at least the 20% rate. I looked at Form 8880 specifically and found that the software IS calculating the credit (about $300), but it's being applied against a tax liability that was already reduced to almost nothing by my self-employment deductions. So basically, I can't use most of the credit because there's no tax left to offset. Guess I need to learn more about how non-refundable credits work!

Glad you figured it out! Yeah, that's the tricky thing about non-refundable credits - they can only reduce your tax to zero, not below zero. So if your self-employment deductions already brought your tax liability very low, the Saver's Credit doesn't have much work to do. For next year, you might want to consider splitting your retirement contributions between Roth and traditional. The traditional contribution will lower your AGI, which could potentially increase your Earned Income Credit if you qualify for that. It's a balancing act between current tax benefits and future tax-free growth.

Software sequencing issues can definitely cause problems! I've also found that sometimes closing the program completely, restarting, and then re-entering certain information can trigger the software to recalculate things properly. Tax software can be really finicky.

Totally normal. My amended return from last year took 7 months to process. The "Where's My Amended Return" tool didn't update until it was completely finished. The IRS is seriously behind on processing paper forms.

Credit Karma Tax (now called Cash App Taxes) doesn't support amendments electronically. You'll need to fill out Form 1040-X manually or use different software. I switched to TurboTax for my amendment and it was pretty simple - just had to enter the info from my original return first.

This is super helpful! Did you find that having work experience before starting your MST was important? I'm wondering if I should work for a couple years in general accounting first or go straight for the MST after my bachelor's.

Having at least 1-2 years of work experience made a huge difference for me. The concepts click much faster when you've seen them in practice, and I can immediately apply what I'm learning to real situations I've encountered. Several of my classmates came straight from undergrad and they struggle more with the abstract concepts. Work experience also helps you identify which tax specialty actually interests you. I thought I wanted to focus on corporate tax until I worked with partnership structures and realized I found them much more interesting. This insight helped me select the right electives for my career goals.

That's a really good point about the research tools. I've noticed job descriptions specifically asking for experience with Checkpoint or CCH. Did your program give you access to these tools as a student or did you have to learn them on the job?

Do you know if the same logic applies to Form 8938 (FATCA reporting)? I just realized I might have needed to file that too even though my accounts are under the FBAR threshold.

Form 8938 has different thresholds than the FBAR requirement. For U.S. residents, you only need to file Form 8938 if your foreign financial assets exceed $50,000 on the last day of the tax year, or $75,000 at any time during the year (higher for married filing jointly). For overseas residents, the thresholds are much higher - $200,000 on the last day of the tax year or $300,000 at any time during the year ($400,000 and $600,000 for joint filers). So if your accounts are under the $10,000 FBAR threshold, you almost certainly don't need to worry about Form 8938.

TurboTax will create Schedule B automatically if you check "Yes" to the question about having a foreign account during the interview process. However, it won't force you to create Schedule B based solely on having a few dollars of foreign interest unless you specifically tell it that the interest is from a foreign source.