gah, ouch. Hrm, I need to get my W-2s and see what my real numbers are.

says you really need to do the worksheet. K and I have extra withholding, although this year we wound up with a $2k+ refund.

LarryB -- really hard to do the worksheet when you have no idea how much you're going to be making during any years period.

My income oscillates by over $50K depending on the perf of Amazon stock for the year

But Pam's company was the problematic one, which has been solved

they kept taxing her at a much lower income bracket

It was solved by her getting a raise into a much higher bracket.

for some value of solved...

Bah. I don't mind paying higher taxes on higher income. Frankly, our upper taxes brackets are way too low right now, IMHO. But also I'm guessing that's not what is meant by "solved".

lindes -- the problem with the tax system is that its overcomplicated which leads itself to being abused for the purposes of tax-optimization, particularly with regards to corporations

Speaking of which, I need to setup some time with some folks to do some tax-optimization of my accounts...

Agreed: simplification would be better. 90% for income over $1M, and that includes income of any kind (cap gains, whatever), and I'm a happy camper.