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| Many credits are not allowed if you are married filing separately. However, the renter's credit is allowed for individual who file married filing separately. If you are single or married filing separately, you are allowed a California nonrefundable renter's credit of $60. |
| If a single employer withheld California State Disability Insurance (SDI) from your wages at more than 1.0% of your gross wages you should contact the employer for a refund. |
| The key to claiming the credit for excess SDI withheld is how many employers you worked for. If you just worked for one employer, you will not be able to claim the credit for excess SDI withholding. If your taxpayer client wants you to give him or her a credit for excess SDI withheld and they only had one employer, tell him or her that they cannot claim a credit for excess SDI withheld. As a good tax preparer, you need to always make sure the figures from the Form W-2s are calculated correctly. This is especially true if you know that the Form W-2 tax forms are from a small company or if they were handwritten or if they are basically prepared by hand as when they are typewritten instead of computer generated. Not that computers are perfect, but it is more assuring to see forms which are generated by a payroll software. |
| Once thing to remember though, to claim the excess SDI withheld credit, you must have two or more employers. |
| If you only had one employer, then your employer made a mistake in the SDI withholding calculations. Therefore, you must ask your employer for a refund instead. You may be entitled to claim a credit for excess SDI on Form 540 if you had two or more employers during 2014, you received more than $101,636 in wages and if the amounts of SDI (or VPDI) withheld appear on your Forms W-2. Look at your form W-2 and if more than $1,016.36 was deducted, there is an error. If you have more than one Form W-2, add the amounts that correspond to SDI withholding and again if the amount is over $1,016.36 for all Form W-2s, you can claim the credit for excess SDI withholding. |
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If you discover that you made an error on your California income tax return after you filed it, use Form 540X to amend your tax return. |
| You should amend your tax return if you forgot to claim a credit, a deduction or if you simply made an adding error. Adding errors are usually caught right away by the Franchise Tax Board and maybe you don't need to file an amended return for that. You should file a Form 540X return to fix your return if the Franchise Tax Board already issued your refund or processed your return and they did not catch the error. If you missed the credit for excess SDI withholding credit for example, you can file the amended Form 540X return to claim the credit or any missed credit for that matter. Many will tell you that filing an amended California tax return is not a good idea. Maybe it is not a good idea if you are committing tax fraud or are trying to hide income to avoid paying tax. However, if everything is as it should be, with the taxpayer reporting only the correct items, credit or deductions, then there is nothing to worry about. If someone tells you that filing an amended tax return is not a good idea, tell them that you don't worry about stuff like since you don't commit tax fraud. |
| For purposes of claiming the California Child and Dependent Care Expenses Credit, if your child turns age 13 during the year, the child is a qualifying person only for the part of the year he or she was 12 years old. |
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In tax year 2014, if your wife did not work all year because she was not able to care for herself for the entire year there are special considerations to take into account. For example, if you worked and earned $21,050 and have one qualifying child for the Child and Dependent Care Credit, paid $2,000 for child care, you can qualify for $310 child and dependent expense credit. The $310 amount is 1/2 of the $620 federal amount. |
| Copyright © 2014 [Hera's Income Tax School]. All Annual Federal Tax Refresher Course rights reserved. |
| Revised: 07/09/15 |
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