Do you use a tax professional to help with the estimate or do you just figure it out yourself? I'm worried about getting the estimate wrong.

I work with my accountant to make the estimate, but you could definitely do it yourself if you understand your tax situation well. The safest approach is to slightly overestimate what you'll owe. If you end up overpaying, you'll just get that money back as a refund when you file your actual return. For a DIY approach, you can use your previous year's tax return as a starting point and adjust for any major changes in income or deductions. The IRS mainly wants to see that you're making a good faith effort to pay what you reasonably believe you'll owe.

True. I owed about $35k two years ago and couldn't pay it all at once. Set up an installment plan and the process was surprisingly easy. Just had to fill out Form 9465 and was approved pretty quickly.

Does selecting the wrong option cause interest to keep accruing in the meantime? I'm already paying a pretty big amount for my amended return from 2020 and don't want to get hit with even more interest and penalties.

Yes, unfortunately. Since the payment wasn't properly applied right away, the IRS system didn't recognize that I had paid, so interest continued to accrue for about 2 months until they sorted it out. I did eventually get them to remove the additional interest charges since I could prove I made the payment on time, but it took multiple phone calls and a formal request. The whole hassle could have been avoided if I had just selected the correct form type during the payment process.

It really depends on your credit card rewards. The fee is usually around 1.96-2.20% depending on which service you use. So on $1,300, you're looking at roughly $25-29 in fees. If your card gives you 2% cash back, you're basically breaking even. If you get more (like with travel rewards cards), you might come out ahead. For me, the bigger value was being able to delay the actual payment until my credit card bill was due, giving me another 3-4 weeks to come up with the money. That flexibility was worth the small fee.

Would the original poster and their fiancé be in any trouble here? Since technically they signed the return even with false information on it? I'm always worried about that when mistakes happen.

The taxpayer does have responsibility for reviewing their return before signing, but the IRS recognizes that most people trust their preparers and may not catch sophisticated errors or fraud. The key factor here is intent - the taxpayer had no intention to defraud the government. The fact that they're proactively addressing the issue once discovered works strongly in their favor. The IRS is primarily interested in collecting the correct tax amount and proper penalties, not in punishing taxpayers who were misled by preparers. I've seen many cases where penalties were waived when preparer error was demonstrated. Documenting every communication with the preparer from this point forward will be important to establishing good faith efforts to correct the situation.

Not OP but I've seen this happen with multiple budget prep services. They hire seasonal workers, give them minimal training, and use clunky software. Always worth paying a little more for someone who knows what they're doing and uses professional-grade software like Lacerte or UltraTax.

Thanks for mentioning student loan interest! We both finished paying ours off last year, so we might be able to deduct the interest from those final payments. Is that something we report on a different form than the itemized deductions?

Student loan interest is reported on Schedule 1 as an adjustment to income (sometimes called an "above-the-line deduction"), which means you can claim it even if you take the standard deduction. It's not part of your itemized deductions at all. You should receive Form 1098-E from your loan servicer showing how much interest you paid. The deduction starts phasing out at higher income levels though, so depending on your combined income, you might get a partial deduction or none at all.

This is bad advice. The OP already said their mortgage interest alone exceeds the standard deduction. Plus, if you're close to the line, itemizing state taxes and charitable giving can easily push you over. Missing legitimate deductions is literally giving away your money.

This is extremely risky advice that could lead to serious consequences. The IRS has specific rules about capitalization vs. expenses, and deliberately mischaracterizing capital improvements as immediate expenses is tax fraud. If audited, you'd face back taxes, penalties, and potentially criminal charges. The "my buddy does it" approach is how people end up with massive tax problems. The IRS may not audit everyone, but when they do audit someone incorrectly deducting capital expenses, it's a very straightforward case for them to win.

I appreciate the input, but I specifically mentioned I'm not trying to evade taxes. I want to do this legally. I'm frustrated by the rules, but I'm not looking to break them - just understand them better and find legal strategies within the system.