Investment
Taxes
- halochie
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- halochie
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- permabear
- allancoleman
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» allancoleman - owe tax
In response to owe tax posted by halochie:
Although my bucket number one that I fund my living expenses only has a year or so worth of living expenses left in it now , halochie , at one time durning the hey day of too easy lending practices when I managed to unload most of my real esatate , my bucket number one had 5 to 6 years of living expenses in it and I didn't want that taxable interest to affect my income level for my Roth conversion strategy I've been doing every year . The less taxable income I have in my interest bearing accounts , the more I can convert to Roths that particular tax year .
-- posted by allancoleman
» halochie - owe tax
In response to owe tax posted by allancoleman:
I learn something everyday and have to slow down on my craziness. Getting a letter from IRS is recipe for a heart attack. The worst part of it was coming home with my kids and having a nice conversation to turning into a growling bear after opening the letter. 
I can always blame it on the treasury for emailing my statement instead of hard copy.
-- posted by halochie
» allancoleman - owe tax
In response to owe tax posted by halochie:
I strongly dislike dealing with the IRS too , halochie . Usually when I'm done with my TurboTax , I run a comparison of my return against other returns in my bracket and I usually pay more which is fine with me . Figure if the IRS audits me I'll probably come out on top if I usually pay more than most tax payers in my tax bracket . But then I don't have a lot of the writeoffs like mortgage interest , etc , that most tax payers have .
And you're very correct that a lot of 1099 paywork that we usually received now goes straight to the IRS and we don't even have to send a lot of our 1099s in with our returns anymore . Years ago , my returns always had a bundle of 1099s stapled to it . Now , there are very few additional items stapled to our returns cause the IRS has already gotten it and the IRS doesn't need another copy .
I'm still part of the old foggy crowd that insists on paper instead of email statements . I don't necessarily save all my hard copy statements , but I only weed them out at the end of the calendar year to keep just what's important . Rest now goes to the nice little shreader I bought the wife when she dragged our our taxes to begin in January of this year . She loves that shreader like she enjoys our weed eaters we have here in Hawaii and Alaska . .
-- posted by allancoleman
» permabear - owe tax
In response to owe tax posted by allancoleman:
Allan,
You must love numbers. Computer program or not. I haven't done my own taxes in years. I leave it to the accountants. There are so many rules and changes in laws to keep up with. Better to let the pro who does it full-time deal with it. And if you ever do come across the day that the IRS comes calling, again much better to have a pro handle it rather than the stress of handling it yourself. Just my opinion as always.
-- posted by permabear
» allancoleman - owe tax
In response to owe tax posted by permabear:
I am kind of a " numbers " guy , permabear . I ' love ' counting my money . ... or lack there of so far this year . . Actually my wife is our tax expert and has done them by hand without a computer or accountant for decades now even when we had five rentals in four different cities in two different states at one time all with different depreciation schedules . Used to take her weeks and months to get our taxes done in the past . I was the first to get computerized due to my corporate job when I was employed when I was given a laptop by my company and I haven't looked back since . Although the wife doesn't like to depend on TurboTax , she can appreciate how quickly TurboTax can fill out a IRS worksheet automaticly from our return that used to take her hours to do . And I love playing with my TurboTax for my tax planning . By the time I get done fudging my numbers every which way but outright fraud , I get a real good idea how our tax code works . I really like plugging in a really outrageous number into a line item and then push ' enter ' and see how the bottom line changes .
So far the couple of times I've had to deal personally with the IRS , I've won all my arguements even the one I took clear to Washington , D.C. decades ago . Like I said , I usually don't try anything tricky or a really big deduction that'll stick out unless I've got all my 't's crossed and 'i's dotted to back up the return and on a return like that I'll actually attach my additional back up data to support that particular line item . And now with TurboTax's automatic " audit " and " error " feature , it's really hard to file incorrectly .
-- posted by allancoleman
» allancoleman - owe tax
In response to owe tax posted by halochie:
I was doing a spreadsheet for one of my surfing ohana ( family ) to show them my losses through February 29th , halochie , and I came up with $146,909 in my Invested portfolio or 5.34% and $139,639 in my Total portfolio counting living expenses and real eatate and that amounted to 3.81% . Certainly nothing to get excited over . And I expect my losses to be less after Monday , March 31st and to disappear toward year's end .
Sometimes it's better to look at my stock market losses in comparison with all my total assets and realize that although it's not good , it's certainly nothing to panic over and sell out at the bottom . I can certainly carry them longer if necessary to await the fullness of time .
-- posted by allancoleman
» allancoleman - Lower capital gains rate
Excellent link to a SF Chronicle article on the " Tempory lower capital gains rate " :
http://www.diehards.org/forum/viewtopic....
I am of the same belief that Bob Brinker expressed on his radio show today to a caller that this change in the tax code that is supposed to last for tax years 2008 through 2010 may not last past this tax year . I have been saving the sale of my company ESOP shares that I converted to common shares when I retired in 2000 for just this tax break and intend to keep myself in the 15% marginal tax bracket this tax year to take advantage of this tax code break instead of the usual 25% marginal tax bracket in which I usually do my sizeable Roth conversions . I will still do a Roth conversion this tax year but instead of the $80k I did last tax year or the $120k and $125k I've done in the past , this year will probably only be $1k to $5k depending on other income factors later this year like the possible sale of any real estate : No real estate sales , higher Roth conversion . Real estate sale , lower Roth conversion .
This will be a particularly interesting tax year because my effective tax rate on the $80k Roth conversion last year was 13% so this tax year it should be a lot less on the $1k to a possible $5k Roth conversion .
-- posted by allancoleman
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