Help me understand tax on a brokerage account

Post date: 2026-03-19 07:36:49

So my wife and I have an IFP (planner) and we have IRAs rolled over from old jobs, plus a joint brokerage account where we put extra savings so it makes more money than savings. We are pretty frugal as we have to pay for our kids' college. Normally I just enter any 1099 forms in TurboTax and it doesn't seem to impact my taxes much. However, I'm doing 2025 taxes now and there's a 1099-DIV that's making a HUGE impact. More inside.

The DIV for is for about $36,000 of ordinary dividends and so my taxes have gone from about neutral to me owing over $10,000 (I usually get a refund). The dividends didn't come to me directly - I guess they got reinvested? Assume I use a planner because I hate dealing with money and have no interest in learning a ton about the markets. I trust the planner and we paid about $8k in fees last year total.

Why is this year so much different? I looked at the DIV for last year and box 1a was about the same ($30k) but I got a tax refund.

Assume I'm finance dumb - the money that went into the brokerage was already taxed, and I didn't get a big dividend check, so why the tax? Am I doing something dumb by having this money in a brokerage? Help!

Bonus - we are paying out of pocket for 2 kids' college tuition. Should we get credit for that? This is the first year I've thought I might need help with taxes. I lost my job last year but had severance; this year I'm making only about 60% of what I used to make (ageism) so I'm hoping our taxes won't be so bad.

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