Do 1 Thing and Report Your Life Change

Photo by Martha Dominguez de Gouveia on Unsplash.

It’s Thursday, which means it’s time to Do 1 Thing.

I spent part of last night reworking the sample 2018 1040-ES form I initially filled out in September (to determine whether the amount of money I was setting aside for freelancing/Billfold LLC taxes was on track) because I finally figured out how to include the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act 20 percent pass-through deduction. I kept assuming that they hadn’t included that line on the form yet and it’d be there when I got the real 1040 in 2019 (because I kept reading these articles about how it was going to take a while to implement all of these tax changes), and then I realized that the part of the sample form that read “If you qualify for the deduction under section 199A, enter the estimated amount of the deduction you are allowed on your qualified business income from a qualified trade or business” was where I could enter my 20 percent deduction.

Anyway. Long story short — and you’re going to get the full story next week — I have a pretty good idea of my 2018 AGI (which isn’t actually affected by the 20 percent deduction, since that’s below the line) and how much I’ll owe in taxes (which is affected, significantly), which meant that this morning I hopped onto Healthcare.gov and entered my updated AGI as a life change, which did in fact change the amount I’ll be paying in health insurance premiums.

More on all of this, including how it affects The Billfold’s budget for the last quarter of 2018, on Monday.

But that was my 1 thing for today. What about you?

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