

Freelancers: Pay Your Taxes - zrail
https://www.petekeen.net/pay-your-taxes

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thoman23
Or don't...and invest that money during the year. It's trivially easy to earn
more investing than you will pay in interest to the IRS at the end of the
year.

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zrail
I'm all for investing my own money, but investing the IRS' money seems really
risky. I still owe that money to them, even if the market goes down. You could
theoretically do some fancy tax lost harvesting, I suppose, but I would want
to be very sure of my math.

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damm
Depending on what kind of Money Market account you have the interest can be
low or high; and you can determine your risk.

Basically if you can hold onto the money and save it; the interest can make it
easier to pay the IRS.

... It's not like the IRS will give you interest if you pay quarterly; or a
cut of your taxes.

Lastly, it's stupid to overpay your taxes thinking your going to get money
back from the IRS. Put it in an bank account and get interest.

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zrail
A money market account is a different story. That's fine, that's where my
quarterly payments live. When the OP said "invest" I assumed they meant "put
that shit in equities and let it ride".

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damm
There's numerous equities (safe and not) to invest in; usually the higher the
risk the better the payout. This is really the only choice you get to try and
make is how much can I try and save up?

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zrail
My opinion, and that's all it is, is that the moment the money comes in, some
percentage of it is _no longer my money_. It's the government's, whether I
like it or not. I don't play games with other people's money. Making a little
safe interest on the quarterly float is fine, but I'm not going to risk losing
it, because I don't want to incur their wrath, and I very much don't like
being in debt to an entity who can force my 1099 payers to withhold on my
behalf.

Maybe an unpopular opinion, but I'd rather be safe and in the IRS' good graces
than try to earn a margin on their money net of their penalties and interest.

