How to estimate your tax refund – CNET

With the calendar soon turning to April, it’s time for all procrastinators to start thinking about filing their taxes.

This year, you have until Monday, April 18 to submit your tax return, thanks to Emancipation Day, a Washington DC holiday that falls on Friday, April 15 this year. And residents of Maine and Massachusetts have until Tuesday, April 19 to get in their returns, thanks to Patriots Day on April 18.

A bracket apart from March Madness

With any math problem, it’s a good idea to get a rough estimate of the answer before you begin your calculations. There are a number of free calculators available online that can give you a quick ballpark figure of your federal tax return or liability. Before you obtain that ballpark figure, however, it’s useful to know in which ballpark you are playing. That is, in which tax bracket your income places you.

The IRS lists federal tax rates for 2015, along with personal exemptions and standard deductions. If you know what the tax rate is for your taxable income, you will have a general idea of the amount of taxes you are required to pay.

Begin calculation

Of course, you can lower the amount your owe by claiming exemptions and deductions. To get a more accurate accounting, check out one of the many online tax calculators available online, from H&R Block, TurboTax and others.

Enlarge Image

Screenshot by Matt Elliott/CNET

With a tax calculator, you’ll get a more accurate picture of your income tax situation if you sit down with your W-2s and other tax documents. You should have these files organized and at the ready anyway, with tax day approaching.

Info needed for tax estimate

A tax calculator will start by asking for your Filing Status, whether you are filing individually, married filing jointly or otherwise. You will then need to enter your age or date of birth and if someone can claim you as a dependent.

Next, you’ll enter information about your income, likely starting with the figure in Box 1 of your W-2, your taxable wages. Look to Box 2 of your W-2 when asked for your total federal withholding. You can do the same for your spouse if you are filing jointly, and you’ll also be able to enter income earned from other sources, including interest and dividends from any investments

After entering your income, you can start knocking down the amount you owe or, better yet, increasing your refund by tabulating your expenses from last year, including deductions, credits and exemptions. Things like tuition payments, mortgage interest and real estate taxes, medical expenses, charitable donations and retirement contributions.

I played around with a handful of tax calculators and found those from H&R Block and TurboTax to be the most thorough and easy to use. And both seemed to be fairly accurate; their estimates were within $1,000 of one another and also close to what I paid last year in taxes. If I had to point you to one tax calculator, I’d go with TurboTax for the sliders its calculator provides for easy data entry. TurboTax also offers its TaxCaster free tax refund calculator as a mobile app for iOS and for Android, if using your phone or tablet to estimate your tax bill is less daunting than sitting down at your computer.