Taxes may be one of life's sure things, but tax returns are another story. California's in big budget trouble (read: the state is teetering on tapped-out), and the controller's office is making the only choice it sees feasible for the current situation. In order to meet debt obligations and school spending requirements, CA has decided to withhold state tax refunds for individuals and businesses that overpaid in 2008.
For those of you who aren't CA residents like me and the other Sugar girls, your states should be sending refunds per usual. While state refunds are usually much smaller than federal refunds, this piece of news serves as another reason to update your W-4 form. Why pay more taxes than necessary, when that money could be growing throughout the year in an interest-bearing savings account? Talk to Human Resources about updating your W-4; it can be revised any time.
Steve Madden
Givenchy
Maine New England
So the state's essentially stealing money from taxpayers? Nice one, Cali.
1If I were a Californian, I'd file a class action lawsuit for my money. That's theft, plain and simple.
2I agree with chat...
3Well, we do have the option of revising our W-4 form, as Savvy says. I plan on changing it ASAP.
4I wouldn't know how to revise it though...what is there to revise?? I don't have any dependents, i'm single...so i'm allowed 1 deduction.
The state is stealing from us. We just keep paying our taxes, and we get nothing back. Add to that that sales tax will be going up to 9% sometime this year.
Let's see how well it turns out for me if I decide to give the state of CA an 'IOU' for my taxes!
5www.paycheckcity.com has a W-4 assistant that will help you out with figuring out your W-4. It is extremely helpful, I just used it a couple days ago to figure out my W-4 for 2009. http://www.paycheckcity.com/W4/w4instruction.asp
6The state and the federal both prey on the taxpayer not claiming enough deductions. If everyone had a filled out a perfect W-4, and at the end of year, taxpayers owed nothing and were expecting nothing, the fed and the state would increase taxes.
It is true that Cali (I live in the California Republic) is deep in the red. Our people can't come to an agreement on the state budget and each interest group refuses to cut spending. Then the citizens voted in favor of building a ten-gazillion-dollar bullet train. And the state saw a good deal of tax revenues originating from real estate and built that growth into future years. And then we expected tons of tax money from one of our largest tax contributors...Chevron, we all know how profitable oil is when it was $140-a-barrel, now it is $40. We rank the 3rd highest state in unemployment.
But the weather is nice.
7that's really smart - and something to think about. i'm always told that it's better to not get back a large amount since it means that you weren't having too much taken out, but i'm like everyone else when i say that it's nice to get a check for a decent sum, so that i can put it towards something that needs to get paid off.
8Wow, I just don't get how the state budget is so tapped out. I'll admit I don't know much about how state budgets work, but it just seems that with the majority of the film industry working there and an excess of millionaires living in CA, the state wouldn't be broke. dienliv, gave some good reasons why this might be so, but there must be more to it.
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