Truth is, people love to get money back from the federal government. It feels like a win, or even free money.

Wrong. It was your money to start with. You just let Uncle Sam use it for a while. Did he say thank you?

You could think about your refund as a loan you gave to the feds, without even charging interest. Or you could think about it as a pay raise you turned down. That average of $2,110 comes to about $176 a month. You could have left that money in your paycheck. Not a bad pay raise.

To adjust your tax withholding, go to your company's payroll department and fill out another W-4 form. The form includes a worksheet to help figure out how much to decrease your withholding.

It might help to read Publication 919, "How Do I Adjust My Tax Withholding?" It has more worksheets and helpful tips. You can download a copy from www.irs.gov. (Use the search function on the left side of the page, putting the form number in the first box and switching to "Forms & Publications" in the second box.)

Note that the maximums have changed. This year you can put as much as $4,000 into IRAs, or $4,500 if you're age 50 or over.

"You can make an IRA contribution as late as April 15 of the following year, but you can be aware right now and be sure you have the money available," said Mark Luscombe, principal federal tax analyst with CCH, a leading provider of tax information. "Also, sooner is better. Put the money in now, and it gives you almost another whole year of additional tax-deferred interest."

For 401(k)s, the maximum contribution increased from $13,000 last year to $14,000 this year. Don't count on your employer to make that adjustment. "Maybe some do," said Luscombe. "But it's usually sort of up to you."

For more on record keeping, check out www.ajc.com /money/.

The time-honored rule of thumb is to take deductions as soon as you can and push income into the future as far as you can. But the encroachments of the alternative minimum tax may complicate or even reverse that practice.

"If you had to pay the AMT or know you're close, you should be aware that some tax strategies may be sandbagged by the AMT," said Luscombe. "It gets pretty complicated, and you may want talk to a CPA."

That's why the rule was changed: Now your deduction is limited to the gross sales price that the charity got when it actually sold the car — not what you say it was worth when you gave the car away.

But there are exceptions, Luscombe pointed out. If your charitable organization uses the car for its own purposes or substantially modifies it, you can still claim an estimated fair market value rather than actual sale price. The same holds if the charity sells donated vehicles to people in need, Luscombe said.