<human>: Sorry if this is a silly question, I'm fairly new to being financially responsible. It doesn't exactly run in my family.

After doing a lot of reading here and other places on the internet, I decided after I graduated about 2 years ago that I should be throwing as much money as I can at paying down my two very large federal student loans (a Stafford loan at 6.8% and a Grad PLUS loan at 7.4%). I've been over paying on the highest interest loan and I'm on track to be debt-free within 5 years. 

I have a modest emergency fund set aside as well, more than enough to cover my expenses for 3 months or to cover any unexpected medical, auto, etc bills. 

I started a new job last August and I won't be eligible for my company's employer-matched 401(k) until August of this year. I debated contributing to an IRA myself, but had decided to focus on my loans first, then start putting the money that used to go to loans toward retirement accounts. 

Here's my dilemma. I guess through my own carelessness/inattention with filling out W4s and monitoring paycheck stubs, I owe $1200 in taxes this year. I can easily cover that with my emergency fund money. But I'm wondering if I should put money into a traditional IRA for the tax deduction instead of paying that. Is that silly? I get that everyone has to pay taxes and I should have either been paying that all along or have planned better to pay it now, it just makes me sad to hand over that much money at once. Would putting money in an IRA even reduce my tax amount that much? 

So,

Can you condense the text into three sentences or less?
<bot>: Should I put some of my emergency fund money into a traditional IRA to avoid paying the $1200 I owe in federal taxes this year?