How to Pay Taxes on Jury Pay

Now that tax time has come you need to tie up all those loose ends. You need to know what to do and how to claim that jury duty pay you received last year. Although the laws change each year, it's fairly easy to include your jury duty pay on your tax form, and it's illegal not to include it in your income.

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• Money management software (optional)
• Tax preparation software (optional)

1. Keep records. You need to know exactly how much jury duty pay you received, so you need to keep accurate records. A great way to do this is to use a money management software program like Microsoft Money, which you categorize all your income and spending.

2. Determine the form you will file. If you are filing a 1040, just put the jury duty pay in a different place than if you were filling a 1040A or 1040EZ.

3. Add your jury duty pay to your gross income in the space indicated on the form you are using. Include any reimbursement for travel to and from the courthouse because this is taxable as well.

4. Claim your jury duty pay as an above-the-line deduction if you were required to give it to your employer in order that you may receive your normal pay. If this is true for you, then you'll need to use Form 1040.

5. Consider using tax preparation software. This definitely makes paying taxes on things like jury duty pay even easier. Since jury duty pay doesn't come into play but every few years, it's nice to have the software fill out the form for you. TaxCut software is a great program for this.

Resources

• Click here to buy TaxCut software to manage taxes with jury duty pay.