Here are 5 really bad surprises buried in your tax return — courtesy of Donald Trump

The first hit you’re going to take is from inaccurate withholding tables, from there it just gets worse.

The weeks leading up to April 15th often are filled with anticipation and one looming question — will I have to stroke a check to the IRS or will I receive a welcomed tax refund? Oftentimes, it’s not until the email or call is received from your CPA that the anxiety produced by tax season begins to subside.

As we near the tax filing “home stretch,” we wanted to suggest that in this first year of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, you may want to brace yourself for some surprises. While many provisions of the Act were designed to reduce overall income taxes, other aspects of the new laws could actually cause that number to go up. If that unwelcome surprise happens to you, here’s a list of possible explanations:

“You’re under-withheld”

Anyone involved in tax preparation faced numerous delays in the rollout and understanding of how the new tax provisions were applied.  These delays impacted the availability of the tax withholdings tables used to guide payroll deductions.

View the complete April 3 article originally posted on Salon on the AlterNet website here.