Ah ok. So basically it’s probably worth doing.
Mostly I’m just trying to figure out an idea of what I need to set aside so I don’t get screwed during tax season, but honestly I think because of how little money I’m going to make off Lyft, it won’t be an issue.
I usually tell my clients to save right around 15-20% of what they make through self employment and that should cover them pretty well
Awesome, thanks 
I can almost guarantee that people don’t want this once they understand what that would entail.
Figuring your tax can be extremely easy. The complications come from all the benefits the law gives you.
Let’s break this stimulus thing down into a language people can understand.
1. Who qualifies?
Any taxpayer who is not a nonresident alien (duh) nor claimable as a dependent and is within the federal adjusted income range specified as:
If your FAGI (Federal Adjusted Gross Income) is less than or equal to those amounts you will get the full credit as denoted later. If you earn more than those amounts you will be phased out of the credit subject to the following rule:
How much money will I get?
The credit is $1,200 ($2,400 for joint filers) plus an additional $500 for every qualifying child for which one could claim the child tax credit (basically any directly related dependent under 17 years of age at the close of the tax year). It doesn’t look like there’s a cap on the number of children as far as I can tell.
How do they determine this?
The IRS will first look to your 2019 tax return, in the case there is not one then they will look at your 2018. If neither of those exist then they will look at your form SSA-1099 (social security distributions) or RRB-1099
(Railroad Retirement). If you have not filed a 2018 or 2019 and you don’t receive social security or railroad retirement benefits then you will be deemed as ineligible to receive the credit, so tell old people who don’t file and don’t receive those benefits to file ASAP if they want this credit.
There is also a provision in the law for a public awareness campaign to hopefully provide some clarity on this.
How and when will I get my money?
If you had your return direct deposited, then they will put it directly into that account. If not I assume they’ll mail it (the law doesn’t explicitly say that, but that’s what precedent tells us).
when will you get it? The law literally says ASAP… lol. The only limitation on that is it has to be made before the end of the year gee… thanks…
Will this affect my taxes?
The short answer: well yes, but actually no.
But y’all probably want to know how so.
The check you will receive is simply an advance payment of a refundable credit
The best I can figure out is that because normally you’d just get this money taken off your taxes at the end of the year as a federal credit it would not be deemed taxable. A credit simply works against your taxes, dollar for dollar, and being refundable simply means it’s not limited by the amount of tax you owe (you can get more back than you owe in taxes, i.e. it’s free money).
Now don’t quote me on that, but that’s the best I can figure based on my reading.
One other neat provision in the law to note
Charitable contributions
Normally, these are treated as part of the Itemized Deductions with some limitations and requirements thereof. Now, the limitations are slightly altered for cash/check contributions (nobody was hitting that anyway and all they did was raise the amount you can claim so that’s not a big deal)
The big deal is they’re now allowing certain “over the line” charitable contribution deductions. You can now claim, as a normal adjustment to your income (lowers your taxable income by x dollars) up to $300 of your charitable contributions provided they’re by cash or check only. No goodwill, bags of clothes, salvation army, furniture, etc. But now, even if you don’t itemize you can claim some cash donations (not raffles for charity, they have to be purely charitable) to lower your taxable income so make sure to save those receipts
Thats line 8 or something on your tax form from what I was reading (dont have that stuff on me at work)
" You can find your adjusted gross income on line 8b of the 1040 federal tax form."
This is topic worthy to be honest.
My wife and I are filing jointly and are trying to maximally leverage our education expenses, totaling just shy of $40k. The service we’ve used has recommended a single $2k credit from the AOTC/LLTC (it doesn’t distinguish between the two), and I thought that we a bit low…
FWIW, I’m certain I’ve exhausted my AOTCs, as I’m well into graduate school at this point, but my wife has certainly used fewer than her four AOTCs.
Is there a more effective way to leverage our expenses?
a single 2k credit would be 1 of you claiming the Lifetime Learning Credit.
If you’re both in school, at the very least you can both claim a credit, provided you have more expenses than scholarships and grants showing on your 1098-T.
Ideally she should be claiming the AOTC if possible (a portion is refundable and it’s just a much, much more advantageous credit to begin with) and you the LLC, provided there’s enough tax liability since the LLC is non-refundable (it only goes up against whatever tax liability you have, if you have none then you get no credit).
Because you file jointly and she can possibly claim the AOTC, then you can’t bother with the Tuition and Fees Deduction which is only seldom more beneficial than the other options.
Since the LLC is non-refundable, any contribution toward our refund resulting from our education expenses must be my wife’s AOTC, correct? I’m assuming the only credits we’re considering are the LLC and AOTC.
Well that’s not the whole story.
Non-refundable means you’re simply limited by how much tax liability you have. So if you had 1000 as your tax but 2000 as your credit eligibility, you can take 1000 of the credit to render your tax to be 0.
That does, in a way, contribute to your refund as it frees up other money you would otherwise put against it, like your federal withholdings or other refundable credits (such as earned income credit, a portion of the child-tax credit, etc.).
In looking at the service’s generated return, your deduction was correct - the only credit we’re receiving is the LLC. A closer look led me to Form 8863, Line 25. The corresponding instructions are:
A student has completed the first 4 years of postsecondary education before 2019 if the educational institution has awarded the student 4 years of academic credit at that institution for postsecondary coursework the student completed before 2019.
She has been awarded at least four calendar years of credit but not four academic years. This is further supported by her academic classification of Junior.
This revision has yielded us two credits, her AOTC and my LLC - what you described as the ideal case. Do my thoughts seem correct?
yeah that sounds right.
Thanks for your help. You’ve saved us ~$1k. Please have an internet beer on me. 
what about those who have no taxable income (va pension) and im not required to do my taxes as explained by the vba i dunno if i qualify
I would think you qualify, but I’m not sure how they’d determine that since afaik you don’t even receive a tax form for that.
In any case, it’s not explicitly stated in the law from what I could gather so you may need to contact the VA in order to determine how it applies to you.
Edit upon having a think about it
Did you live with knife all year?
Does knife have reportable income?
If the answer to both of those is “Yes” then you are actually potentially claimable as knife’s dependent which would render you ineligible to receive the stimulus check.
However, you may still be a special case so I’d still get ahold of the VA to see how it works for you.
So, if you do $300 in monetary donations to, say a soup kitchen, and take the standard deduction, you can deduct that in addition?
Am I understanding that correctly?
Yes that’s exactly how it works
woot!
The IRS just today (3/31/20) finally released the information on this in their news feed.
Some things to note that otherwise weren’t mentioned in OP.
If you want your stimulus check direct deposited and they don’t have that information from your tax return, you can elect to have it deposited via a web portal they should be setting up soon™.
In direct contrast to my reading of the law, it appears as though people who don’t normally have to file, must file a simple return in order to receive the check.
The part of the law that says this:
Additional information can be found here: https://www.irs.gov/coronavirus