I’ve always did my own taxes because it’s been fairly simple to file single and using just the easy 1040 forms. This year, I made just slightly more than previous years but my tax refund check is about 25% LESS than last year … how can this be? As I’ve changed jobs and incomes I normally can guess just about how much I’ll get back but with all the talk of taxes and help this year why would my refund go down if I just made small amount more?!! Sigh …
That “slightly more” income of 2008 may have placed you in a higher tax bracket. You can see the tax brackets that apply to you (schedule X-filing single) on page 92 of the following IRS 1040 PDF file:http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/i1040gi.p…
Also if you changed your withholding allowances, that can change the results too.
Comparing one year’s refund to another year’s is futile. Each tax year is unique. If you lay last year’s return next to this year’s it should be immediately obvious where the differences lie.
The object is to break as close to even money as possible, NOT to get a large refund. When you get a large refund it just means that you lent the government a lot of money all year long without any interest in return.