<prompt> Human: SituationMy husband works full-time and I work part-time at hourly jobs. I also work part-time as an independent contractor working with exchange students, basically for fun. Last year I did an extra project for said second job and ended up making a little more than 4000. This isnt a ton of money, and we didnt pay a ton of taxes on it ... but it did reduce our overall tax refund by half.QuestionPhilosophical conversations about tax refunds aside, how can I be smarter about this next year? My goal would be that I dont lose money in my tax refund by making money on my side job. What can I do to achieve this goal?  <response>: Youre never penalized by making more money. What happened is you didnt pay taxes on some of your earned income 4k side job and that got taken from your refund. You didnt lose money, you kept money from the government that you owed them and they settled with you at tax time.If you dont want that to happen again, put about 13 of your side job money aside to pay your taxes. Then if you owe, you have the money to pay. If you have a smaller refund, then you can keep that 13 and use it as you see fit.To reiterate - you did not get screwed over by making more money. You made 4k and did not pay taxes on it. Your refund shrunk by the amount of tax that you owed. 