Monday, March 16, 2009

The IRS Says I Owe Them Much Money due to Road Home

I received a letter Saturday from the IRS. The letter said that I owed them $16,527. They said I underpaid my 2007 taxes by $13,071, and because of that I also owed $2,614 in penalties and $842 in interest.

They are claiming that I under-reported my 2007 income by $50,000. This also put me in a higher tax bracket and then my deductions for things like student loan interest payments were no longer valid. This relates to a investment of about $50 K I purchased in May of 2007, when my Road Home money came in, and October 2007, when I sold the stock to start paying Abry Brothers to start fixing our house. So on the one hand I'm lucky that the IRS isn't focussing on all of the $150,000 we received from the Road Home, only 1/3 of it. Congress decided that Road Home money isn't taxable, so while I'm sure I'll win this argument in the end, I'm also sure it is going to take much time and effort to convince the government to get off my back.

I'm curious if there will ever be day in the rest of my life that isn't complicated by Hurricane Katrina related factors.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

A day... probably. A week...probably not. A year...definitely not.