If you have not filed your taxes yet, please read this.<\/p>\n
If you have already filed your taxes, please read it, anyway.<\/p>\n
A story in the business section of Saturday’s New York Times explained that more than 4 million people had filed their federal income taxes incorrectly, and millions more were expected to make the same mistake as the flood of returns come pouring in before the April 15 deadline.<\/p>\n
The problem is that millions of people failed to file Schedule M – a new form that was included in the tax booklet this year that was sent to your home. Schedule M is important because it is directly related to the federal stimulus tax breaks that were enacted by the Congress and President Barack Obama.<\/p>\n
If you do not file Schedule M, you could be paying as much as $800 more in federal taxes than you should.<\/p>\n
The reason is that employers adjusted the withholding for workers, which amounted to $800 for couples filing jointly for 2009. But if you don’t file Schedule M and you don’t properly mark the credit on line 63 on the back of your 1040 form, then you will likely be paying too much in taxes.<\/p>\n
The IRS will eventually figure it out and send you the money, but millions of people have ignored Schedule M so far.<\/p>\n