How to Fill Out your Income Tax Form 1040

2015 and 2014 1040 Tax Form Updates: The 2015 1040 Tax form has the same line number and information as the 2014. (the amounts will be different). The purpose of this video is to help you understand what is on the main tax form so you can get ready to fill out your taxes. You can fill out your tax forms by hand or via a computerized program or have an accountant do it for you, but it is helpful to know what is in the tax form. You will usually save money if you " know before you go".
2015 and 2014 Tax form 1040 updates are put in the red bubbles in this video. For 2015 updates or other 2015 tax forms go to http:// www.IRS.gov. The main form that you file when you file your income tax is IRS Form 1040. This video explains how to fill out your tax form and how you can get more tax credits and deductions. The 1040 Tax Form does not change much from year to year. Some changes for 2015 and 2014 are explained in the little bubbles.
The Health Insurance topic can be very confusing.

Additional changes for 2015 and 2014 are about the new health care law (Affordable Care Act), And how to report and get your tax credit. Health Insurance.

There are 3 lines on the 1040 Tax form that refer to the Health Care Law. Line 46 "Excess Advance premium tax credit repayment" Fill out another form (Form 8962) if this applies to you.
Line 61 "Health Care: Individual responsibility" and you fill out form 8965 if this applies to you. Most people only have to check the box on line 61 and do not need to fill out the form.
Line 69 "Net premium tax credit" If this applies to you then fill out Form 8962.
When you use a computerized tax form or service to fill out your taxes then these extra tax forms will automatically pop up for you to fill in.

IRS Warning: The IRS reminds individuals who owe the payment that it should be made only with their tax return or in response to a letter from the IRS. The payment should never be made directly to an individual or return preparer. Most people don’t owe the payment at all because they have health coverage or qualify for a coverage exemption.

The IRS has received several reports of this kind of unscrupulous activity. In some cases, return preparers have told taxpayers to make the payment directly to them, even though the taxpayer had Medicaid or other health coverage and doesn’t need to make the shared responsibility payment at all. In some parts of the country, unscrupulous return preparers are targeting taxpayers with limited English proficiency and, in particular, those who primarily speak Spanish.
These preparers are asking for direct payment to them, but their reasons vary. Methods include:
• telling individuals that they must make an individual shared responsibility payment directly to the preparer because of their immigration status,
• promising to lower the payment amount if the client pays it directly to the preparer, or
• demanding money from individuals who are exempt from the individual shared responsibility payment.
From: HCTT-2015-17:

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Closed Caption:

hello this is sarah and this is another
episode of how to do your own taxes
thanks for joining us today we're going
to talk about the main form every
individual has to file when they do
their taxes every year and that form is
called the 1040 1040 where you find that
is the irs.gov website other places you
can find it is
you can call the IRS 800 number and tell
me which one to send you go to local
post office they do have that form and a
few other forms
unless they run out they often do you
can also go to the local tax office
obviously if you have a computer the
easiest thing to do is to look it up on
irs.gov any of the tax forms that the
IRS wants you to fill out
you can put the form number and the form
whatever description is right in here in
the search box and you'll find it like
that
we're going to go find 1040 form right
here
now when you do your taxes and it's all
done you can come back to the same page
and click right here
click on your refund you can also click
over here about your recent you can
click here about free filing now the way
it is with free filing this is the first
year that the IRS has kind of gone
together with a quite a number of tax
companies
H&R block a number of other online
companies
the IRS is giving them money for doing
your basic tax form and the basic one is
this
1040 form but keep in mind that when you
do that if you have extra forms
you may be charged more for extra forms
so don't assume that all your whole
taxes filing your taxes going to be
totally free
it may not be and you don't even qualify
for the free filing
if you make over 58,000 dollars so just
keep that in mind
here we go to this to the form right now
and you'll see right here the first
thing you do is your name and address
and social security number as always the
good thing to do is to just plain print
out this form
the reason why do this is I can make
notes in the side i do a rough draft of
it first
and so I go down all kind of fill it all
in loosely and then see what I need to
find if I have forgotten something or I
need more information that I've sort of
loosely filled then the filing status of
course is single or married or filing
jointly exemptions as yourself and your
spouse and your children's names or
anybody who is dependent on you
the first big category here is of course
your income income is any place that you
get money from now if you get any kind
of form from any source that says this
is income
it needs to show up on right here
because what the IRS does is they take
the forms like them
the w-2 form you put the number of the
amount of money right over there or if
you've got a 1099 form they take those
numbers and they add them all together
I mean they kind of coordinate if
somebody said you make some money and
you didn't report it then
not a good thing they're gonna now audit
you which is not a good idea
you don't want that taxable interest
that of course comes from places like
banks or some places
here's a little thing you need to watch
out for this is attached schedule b if
required
when you have somebody else do your
taxes sometimes they will file these
schedules that are not required say on
the sexual inches
if you didn't make at least fifteen
hundred dollars in taxable interest
you are not required to do this
and there are several different places
like 45 on the tax form that you may not
have to file because you didn't make
enough money but they will file it just
because they can now charge another
thirty bucks
so just keep that in mind if you had a
house a rental house that information
gets here if you don't have any idea
where it goes
put it right here under other income now
you add all your income together and it
goes right down here on line 22
now the next big category section here
is adjusted gross income
what is this is this is a whole bunch of
different deductions that you get to
take which is called above-the-line
deduction is if you ever hear that term
when you get all these deductions
that's what's called adjusted gross
income a lot of things are calculated on
the adjusted gross income AGI
if you come across that those initials
you add all this up
put it over here and deducted from your
income now it's going to be less than
your total income so it's adjusted gross
income
now the next page is tax and credits
this is where you are figure out how
much taxes you owe and any credits that
hopefully you can qualify for
here's the first big thing and that is
itemized deductions schedule a now you
can choose to have to schedule a or
standard deductions and what that rally
really means is that if you have a look
on schedule a and you'll see if you made
a lot of contributions if you had a high
mortgage interest if you had or some
other things that qualified like a high
medical that would go on the schedule a
however for 2010 the standard deduction
is 11,400 so it could be that it's less
than that so you just choose the
standard deduction if it's to your
advantage and you you all that added up
to about fifteen or twenty thousand and
obviously you do the schedule
the next exemptions the exemption for
each person is 3654 2010
this changes every year so if you had
for that would end up being 14,600
deduction
so by the time i got the standard
deduction here of 11,400 you would now
have deduction of twenty six thousand
dollars
now you go over to the tax table say you
had forty thousand dollars by the time
you got to this line so you go over to
tax table and find forty thousand
dollars and married filing jointly if
that's what you're doing fine how much
taxes you owe
well that is your taxes so that's what
goes on this line 44 now unless you made
over seventy two thousand dollars
you don't oh and it is alternative
minimum tax so you don't worry about
that too much every year
this amount changes for 2011 in 70
almost 75,000 all the numbers change
some of the things don't change but all
the numbers change the next section of
this portion is very important and that
is a bunch of credits
what you want to do is get as many
credits as possible
so what are credit means suppose you
have residential energy credit
now remember read every single line here
so you can see if you qualify for any of
these credits
now suppose you had five hundred dollars
for this residential energy credit you
put it right here it goes here but it
you get to deduct it from here suppose
your own five thousand dollars
now you only owe 45 hundred dollars and
this is before you get to calculating
how much you've already paid every
single credit
this is where a lot of people just don't
take it because they don't look at these
little forms right here here if you
don't put it down
you don't get it the tax preparer if you
take him to someplace if you don't tell
him you know have it
you get to take all that against your
your income tax taxable income right
there and it comes down here is the
total amount of taxes that you owe
now there's a few other taxes have to be
added a lot of people don't know these
so it may be applied to you you will
usually have gotten some sort of
something in the mail unless you're
self-employed and then you know what
this is scheduled as e any of these
other forms we will cover on a different
video you go down to the next big
section that's about of taxes you've
already paid plus some additional
credits so if you got a w-2 or 1099 you
had already paid all these taxes
you'll put them out of taxes you paid
right here you could have had making
work pay credit
that's am dollars now it goes up to as
much as two thousand dollars in 2011 is
acting just like tax payments all these
creditors first-time homebuyers credit
as acting like as a payment for taxes
and here's a lot of other forms if you
don't know what these forms are you go
back you go right here
write down that number of that forms a
form 8802 or whatever it is so you add
up all of these credits additional child
tax credit many people qualify for that
american opportunity credit that's an
education credit
now you add all those up and to
hopefully you're going to get a refund
hopefully every year you will go through
your tax form and compare it to last
year's tax form if there's a difference
if you go to Saks repair
you need to have questions well it's
hard to have questions if you haven't
read the tax form hope you get a good
refund thanks for listening
goodbye now