For me the tax break was one of the unexpected bonuses to being a SAHM. When we both worked and only had one child, about 20 - 25% of our income whent to taxes. Now that I am at home and we have three children only about 6% of our income goes to taxes.

The amount of your tax refund is not the amount that you should be looking at. You need to look at your tax liability - how much tax you actually owe on the money you earn. The amount of your refund is dependent on how much tax you had withheld - which may be too much or too little (depending on the exemptions you claimed on your W-4 form and what your income stream looks like (regular or irregular paychecks, bonuses, etc).

To approximate the incremental tax liability on just your income - find just your W-2 income on the tax chart in the back of the tax booklet and see how much the tax you would owe.

well this year was the fist year that i had no w-2's after becoming a sahm and let me tell you we changed dh's witholdings on his check between state and feds we got over $8,000 back thats is nuts i don't like the government keeping that much of my money...we could be using that in our retirement savings and to pay bills instead.