Exercise Instructions

1. By going to Money Chimp, you can either enter your own information or calculate a married couple filing jointly that makes $62,000.

In the textbox section of the assignment link, record what amount you used (either $62,000 or your taxable income), the tax amount, "as a percentage of income," and the tax bracket. You must have 4 numbers in your submission.

2. In your reading, you discovered that everyone has the option to take the standard deduction or itemize their deductions. Assume someone (age 35) is married.

Combined, they make $50,000, and own a house on which they owe $100,000. They give 10% of their income to charity, pay 6% interest on their mortgage (they have an interest-only loan and have made no principal reductions), and had $3,200 in medical expenses. Would they be better off to use the standard deduction or itemize?

Please compare the actual standard deduction that they can deduct versus the itemizations that they can deduct from the given information. Whichever amount is higher is the one that you would want to use, as that will lower the tax amount.

3. Use Time Value of Money (financial calculator or Excel) to answer the following prompt :

I owe $5,000 in taxes. I have to make 12 monthly payments at 18%. Calculate what the monthly payment would be. Please make sure that you show your inputs and round 2 decimal points.