The income tax season is starting, and I'll always remember a professor telling me: "I pay the minimum taxes possible during the year because I don't want to finance the state." The vast majority of taxpayers with stable incomes won't have any surprises when they check their draft tax returns. However, those who have more than one payer, have changed jobs, or own shares or rental income will most likely have to pay.
It's worth noting that having more payers doesn't mean paying more taxes. The personal income tax payable depends on the total income, and if we don't notify the different payers, they will withhold individual amounts of tax without knowing about the others. Now, let's suppose that, once the tax return is filed, we can't pay it by June 30th. What can we do in this case?
First, the Tax Agency itself allows us to pay in installments: we can pay 60% of the total in June and the remaining 40% in November interest-free. Another option is to admit that we have a debt we can't afford to pay and, from there, divide the total amount into separate monthly installments. In this case, we will be charged interest, but only the price of money, which will always be cheaper than financing through a bank loan. This would be the third option: borrowing from the bank to pay the amount when due and repaying it in several installments.
An important warning: if we split the payment into, say, 10 installments and don't pay the second, the Treasury will demand the entire amount all at once. And if we don't pay, they'll start imposing 20% surcharges until they seize the entire amount from our checking account. Therefore, be very careful not to settle tax debts. Let everyone decide whether my professor was right or whether it's worth paying taxes month by month even though we finance the state.
