Yes, we did take that deduction; it helped, but not a lot.

Believe me, we were also very confused (and very distressed), and we asked our accountant many, many questions. The self-employment tax is by far the largest part of the hit for us; I believe (though I am not a tax specialist) that it is exactly double what salaried employees pay for employment tax.

You are right about the “income tax” calculation part of our taxes — that portion of our tax bill is fairly small — but the “self-employment tax” part of our taxes is based on nearly the whole amount of our income, because our deductible business expenses were unusually low last year. I would have thought that was just unfortunate for us personally, until I started hearing pretty much everyone else I knew — and I know a LOT of people, in person and online — who were facing surprise bad tax news. Then I started poking around and researching…and that’s when I wrote the article. My apologies if the title of the article (not my original choice) implies I’m any kind of an expert here: I’m not. I’m just a taxpayer hit unexpectedly hard this year and trying to figure out why.

Anecdotally, I’ve started asking anyone who will tell me if their tax bill is higher this year. Even salaried employees — anyone I run into during the course of my day. I’ve talked to exactly two people whose taxes didn’t go up. One person said theirs were about the same; one is paying less. I know that’s “anecdata”…but it’s still telling.