Turbo Tax for Twenty-Somethings

Take out the folder where you’ve been saving relevant tax documents all year long:

Oh, you don’t have a folder like that? Fine. Grab that stack of greasy Lunchables boxes on the inside of which you’ve scribbled records of important transactions.  

Organize your paperwork. Realize you have way too much paperwork. Is that a receipt for two soft-shell tacos and a chalupa? What sort of future did you envision for yourself in which you might someday need to prove you had purchased two soft-shell tacos and a chalupa? That day will never come.  Take out your W-2.

Oh, you don’t know what that is, let alone have a copy of it? Let’s just skip ahead straight to the deductions.

 

Claim a student loan interest deduction:

If you took out $80,000 at a 4.81 interest rate (compounded daily), how long will it take you to become debt-free?

Honestly, who knows? They don’t make you take math when your major is Comparative Literature and your minor is Killing the Diamond Industry!

Perhaps they should.

The good news is that you can deduct up to $2,500 of student loan interest. The bad news is that the most influential thing your degree ever did or will do was contribute to the deforestation of the Amazon.

 

Figure out whether or not you qualify for a hobby deduction:

The IRS defines a hobby as something you do “purely for the love of it, regardless of the cost” and something for which you “expect no profit.” According to this definition, nothing fits the bill better than your tendency to bang dudebros who “Feel the Burn!” both in the supporting-Mr.-Sanders’-2020-campaign sense and in itchy-genital-STD-ridden sense.  Deduct away, my friend!

 

Tally up your charitable contributions:

Charitable giving can add up to one helluva tax break. Did you donate $10 to the Biden campaign back before we realized he was that kind of uncle? Write it off!

Did you contribute $5 to your college’s annual fund even though that won’t even cover the printing cost of the promotional calendars/glossy brochures/magnets they are mailing to you at an alarmingly increasing rate? Forget the trees! Gimme a D-E-D-U-C-T!

Did you spot your frenemy a few bucks so she could get her tragus pierced in time for Coachella because you suspected it wouldn’t look that cute anyways? Worth a try!

 

Determine whether or not you’ve been the victim of a natural disaster:

As long as the President has declared the situation “a disaster,” you can file for several lucrative tax deductions and tax breaks. Luckily, the current president has declared many things disasters. You may be eligible for tax breaks if you were victimized by any of the following: the U.S. economy, Obamacare, Atlantic City, Former Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling, MSNBC, being 50 years old, anything tangentially related to Hillary Clinton, or the U.S. electoral college system. Also, windmills.

 

Claim any homeownership tax breaks you qualify for:

Ha ha ha ha. Just kidding. Owning a home, can you imagine?!

Realize you’re $300 short on rent. Sell your plasma.

 

Stare wistfully out your window and think about how much less alone you’d feel in this cruel world if only you were filing jointly:

The IRS grants one of the largest standard deductions available to married couples who file a joint tax return. Of course, this doesn’t apply to you. Filing jointly is for winners like your college roommate Erica who contributes monthly to her Roth IRA account, has an employer who matches her health insurance contribution, and never wakes up covered in Nutella because she’s started sleep-eating condiments again.

 

Call your parents and ask if their “tax guy” can just do yours too:

Be aware that this opens the door for a series of passive aggressive emails asking when you plan on giving them a bouncing, baby grand-dependent. Or would you rather they give in to the sweet release of death cold, alone, and completely submerged in water along with the entirety of Florida?

 

Calculate the tax benefits you would have gotten had you been smart enough to have opened retirement savings account:

You may think retirement and/or the end of the world as we know it is a long way away, but they’ll sneak up on you. Erica has a 401(k). She’ll be laughing her way to the bank when her underground bunker is lined with corrugated tin, unlike yours, which will be lined with old newspapers, your undergraduate diploma, and several hundred taco receipts.

 

Buy a time machine to go back ten years and start a retirement savings account:

Once you’ve opened the account, decide to go a little further back in time and plant a few trees. Save the receipts for the time machine, you can write that off as a business travel expense and —

You lost the receipt already? Of course you did.

Water the trees with your tears of regret.

 

Get Audited:

Ask out the auditor. Charm him with your winsome smile and your well-documented love of chalupas. Soon, he’ll be down on one knee offering you a non-diamond engagement ring. If all goes to plan, you’ll be filing jointly by 2030, baby!

Just in time for the end of the world.