Tax Day. I Don't Care Who You Are, You Didn't Write The Checks I Did today

I'm a patriotic American. I don't mind paying my taxes. In fact, I'd be happy to pay more of them if we could have a national health care plan. But I wrote checks for a LOT of money today. And it's not even my fault.

When my father died in 2006 I inherited his IRA. There was about $250K in it at the time. And I was thinking, "Great!", I can't touch it for 12 years until I'm 59, and it will just grow and grow.

That's not how this works. If your father is older than 59 when he dies, you have to start taking money out and spending it, or moving it to a taxable account when you inherit it. Didn't know that.

And my broker, who SHOULD have told me about this didn't ask me about it until just before Christmas last year. FOUR years after dad died.

Now I have a problem. I can shut the hell up, and hope the IRS never audits me. Start taking it out THIS year and just hope no one notices. The draw back to this plan is that if they DO audit me, and find out about it, and then find out that I KNEW OR SHOULD HAVE KNOWN about the problem, I'm going to have to pay the back taxes, AND a penalty. Which some quick figuring by my new accountant, put at about $10K.

23 years on law enforcement led me to believe that this was NOT the best course of action. As I used to tell my parolees, "If you tell me about the screw up, and it's not a new Felony, I'll work with you. If I have to find out about it and you lie? Your new address is Draper. Again."

So, I had my new accountant refile my 2007 and 2008 tax returns, and paid the IRS what I owed them, and the penalty which I have to send in, and then ask them nicely to please give me back the penalty money since I narced myself off, and paid the taxes I would have paid if I'd gotten better advice from my broker and my former accountant.

My accountant says that most of the time, in a situation like this, the IRS DOES give the penalty money back. But it's not required. So I wait. Maybe all summer.

Which is what I waited a few years ago to get back more than $2000 in OVERPAYMENT because my last accountant forgot that he told me to pay almost $600 a quarter that year, and had actually provided me payment slips to send with the payments, and then calculated my tax like I hadn't paid it. That's the reason I have a new accountant.

So, no matter what you paid today? I'd trade you payments. I wrote a check for $1550.00 to my accountant for doing this years taxes and redoing my taxes from 2007 and 2008. $1962.00 to the Fed's for this year. $1539.00 to the State of Utah, for this year. And to make things right for 2007 and 2008 (for some reason, the Fed's didn't require this payment in 2009. I have no idea why, but I'm glad) a check for $5699.00. So today, I wrote checks for $9211.00. I don't want to hear you bitching about what taxes cost YOU this year.

To cover this, I had to sell a technology stock that had made 150% gain in the last year. My broker said he thought it had about maxed out, and it was time anyway, so it was OK. No, it's not OK. If you guys had told me about the payments I SHOULD have been making years ago, I wouldn't be in this mess,and I'd still own a technology stock that had THE POTENTIAL TO EARN 150% PROFIT IN A YEAR! GODDAMNIT!

Any one out there know a broker who will manage a half a million dollar portfolio for three quarters of one percent each year? If so, I'm interested. Give me a call.