Posted on 11/07/2009 7:12:54 AM PST by joeystoy
Rarely does a single piece of mail cause one's heart to flutter, face to flush and knees to buckle.
But, then again, rarely does a piece of mail arrive with the dreaded return address:
Department of the Treasury Internal Revenue Service
That's the "Welcome Home" that greeted me this past Tuesday as I dragged myself through the front door after a rough day of earning a living, playing golf and ferrying adolescent infants from one suburban soiree to another. Imagine my surprise when I discovered that I owed our esteemed and infallible federal government... $11,589.22!
Holy smoke. What did I do this time?
Now look, I'm not the Secretary of the Treasury.
I'm not the chairman of the Federal Reserve.
I'm not a New York Times columnist who also consulted for Enron.
I'm not even a graduate of the Harvard Business School, a Fortune 500 CEO, a wheeler dealer in foreign exchange arbitrage or the chairman of the House Ways & Means Committee.
The tax code, for me, is not all that complicated.
I don't have income from esoteric foreign sources, like Timothy Geithner.
I don't keep piles of cash in my freezer like Rep. William Jefferson of New Orleans.
And I didn't make billions selling collateralized debt obligations to individual investors and pension funds while also making private wagers on the collapse of the mortgage market, like Goldman-Sachs.
(Excerpt) Read more at give-n-go.blogspot.com ...
Almost exact same story 2 years ago. Sold stock that had been given to me by my company. Taxes were deducted by eTrade at the time of the sale. The stock was considered income.
I got a letter from the IRS demanding thousands in back taxes and penalties for this income which I had already reported and had been taxed. Once the initial shock of the letter wore off and I realized that the IRS had made a bone-headed mistake I called them and had the issue straightened out in just minutes. Even the IRS guy sounded embarrassed that they had done that.
That IS messed up.
That IS messed up.
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