Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

It could happen to you too

digbysblog.blogspot.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 85 posts

Re: It could happen to you too

#71

Post by vellum »

yooy123 wrote: post #70

Fucking IRS. I must say I always paid taxes and never had problems with them. 2008 I made some nice stock trading profits. Paid taxes for them all to the last penny. Actually, I taxes more than I had to, since the bank statement reported higher profits that actually occurred (must be a real gypsy bank). What the bank statement did not report, was the buy and sale of an ETF. I held it for 3 months, made maximal 1% pro…

You don't have to go offshore. The same thing happened to me. What you need to do is get an accountant or get a copy of Turbotax for that year. Then you enter in all your info and make sure you fill out Schedule D. They'll give you the person's (examiner) name on their letter. I filled out a new tax form, and sent the letter below to the IRS. A few weeks later, they said "Thanks for the info, and we'll contact you if we need anything else." That was a few years ago. Haven't heard anything since.

-------------------------------------------

Dear Examiner:

I have attached a Schedule D form, which I did not include in my 2009 tax return. According to the CP 2000 letter, the securities income reported to the IRS was $xx,xxx. But this was using a zero cost basis for stocks sold. The schedule D form I have included provides the cost basis for all stocks sold. The final total for the Schedule D shows a net loss of $xx.

Sincerely,

xxxxx

Re: It could happen to you too

#72

Post by caniszczyk »

the_watcher wrote: post #46
ChuckMcM wrote: post #27

Sigh. I understand the angst, tax organizations are the worst. However, a piece of advice. If you file a tax return in a state, and then you leave. Make sure you file a tax return the next year as well but put down zero taxable income. What I have seen states do, is take the last year you filed a return "presume" you made that much in the next year but just "forgot" to file, and then charge you for back taxes. You co…

I moved to Austin in 2011 and have worked here since 2012. I'm going to make sure to do this at the same time I file my tax return here. I don't want to give California the chance to retroactively change what I owe. Thanks for the advice!

Good move.

Re: It could happen to you too

#73

Post by aneth4 »

gcb0 wrote: post #16
aneth4 wrote: post #13

My personal and business banking is done at Chase. I've found them to be fantastic and managed to avoid pretty much any fees by following the guidance of very helpful employees. I know everyone loves to bag on big banks, but Chase has been great. Bank of America is another story - their website barely works. That said, I highly recommend anyone with significant assets open a bank account in a foreign country where se…

> and managed to avoid pretty much any fees by following the guidance of very helpful employees shouldn't they not have useless fees to begin with?

They are not useless fees. They are how the bank generates revenue so it can at least break even on tiny accounts.

Just the regulatory burden of an empty bank account is $100-$200/year, so they need a way to recover that. In general, if you do enough business, there is a way the bank can do that without charging fees, but you need to set your accounts up right.

Re: It could happen to you too

#74

Post by aneth4 »

dubfan wrote: post #44
aneth4 wrote: post #13

My personal and business banking is done at Chase. I've found them to be fantastic and managed to avoid pretty much any fees by following the guidance of very helpful employees. I know everyone loves to bag on big banks, but Chase has been great. Bank of America is another story - their website barely works. That said, I highly recommend anyone with significant assets open a bank account in a foreign country where se…

managed to avoid pretty much any fees by following the guidance of very helpful employees If their fee structure is so complex you need help from employees to get around it, they aren't "great".

Not so complex, but I prefer a helpful employee to reading through account brochures and figuring things out myself.

Basically I just needed certain types of accounts that reflected the level of transactions I was doing, and to make sure my personal and business accounts were linked.

Re: It could happen to you too

#75

Post by rdl »

fnordfnordfnord wrote: post #67
andrewfelix wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Jeez I thought our tax system was broken. This must happen all the time. Thankfully Australia's taxation is handled federally.

We have federal income taxes too. The US IRS will play the same sort of tricks for delinquent taxes (imagined and real).

I've found the IRS to be incredibly reasonable. I had a high tax bill due to non-realized gains (sigh...), but was able to get them to do a payment plan at low interest for a couple years. They were nothing but polite and accommodating.

I also spoke with IRS CID on another matter (someone was making death threats to IRS agents, and they had mail through my anon remailer). Way saner than FBI or even USSS. (I had no information, by design, but being able to tell someone that and explain how remailers worked without them threatening to seize servers was refreshing.)

Re: It could happen to you too

#76

Post by SatvikBeri »

rdl wrote: post #75
fnordfnordfnord wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have federal income taxes too. The US IRS will play the same sort of tricks for delinquent taxes (imagined and real).

I've found the IRS to be incredibly reasonable. I had a high tax bill due to non-realized gains (sigh...), but was able to get them to do a payment plan at low interest for a couple years. They were nothing but polite and accommodating. I also spoke with IRS CID on another matter (someone was making death threats to IRS agents, and they had mail through my anon remailer). Way saner than FBI or even USSS. (I had no in…

I had a high tax bill due to non-realized gains...

Do you mind elaborating? I was under the impression that capital gains aren't taxed until they're realized, would love to hear when that's not the case.

Re: It could happen to you too

#77

Post by bconway »

rtpg wrote: post #61
eqreqeq wrote: post #25

Without more details the whole story sounds iffy. Since he did not give us more details but still shared his story I will speculate that he took advantage of what he thought were some clever tax loopholes in MA. Remember that hid did state very passingly that he has a presence in MA. Specifically this: >>Again, I hadn't lived there or worked there since 2003, but I did own part of a business that was headquartered in…

As with all these stories, need to be taken with a nice handful of salt. Owning a business in MA would make it seem like you would qualify for state taxation (on that part at least). The US taxes its citizens even outside of their own jurisdiction. It wouldn't surprise me if MA taxed people that still made money in MA.

All states (that have an income tax) do. I own property, which I rent, in multiple states including MA. I need to file tax returns for the income I make in each of them. Nothing unusual there.

Re: It could happen to you too

#78

Post by infinite8s »

chris_wot wrote: post #24
aneth4 wrote: post #13

My personal and business banking is done at Chase. I've found them to be fantastic and managed to avoid pretty much any fees by following the guidance of very helpful employees. I know everyone loves to bag on big banks, but Chase has been great. Bank of America is another story - their website barely works. That said, I highly recommend anyone with significant assets open a bank account in a foreign country where se…

Rather than repeat myself, I'll just link to the comment I made about the rules that relate to civil forfeiture and Interbank Accounts for non-U.S. financial institutions. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5215598 Beware!

I think he was talking about keeping assets in a foreign location, not opening a domestic account in a foreign headquartered bank. Of course, you still have to report any foreign assets to the IRS if the total is greater than $10,000.

Re: It could happen to you too

#80

Post by oasisbob »

niggler wrote: post #69
oasisbob wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

note: be careful about how you accumulate said cash. CTRs are generated if you withdraw too quickly. This is very bad advice, as it's illegal in the US to intentionally evade CTRs by aggregating smaller transactions. It's known as structuring: http://www.irs.gov/irm/part4/irm_04-026-013.html Also, CTRs aren't inherently a bad thing, and they aren't generated behind your back. If you hit the $10k reporting limit, it's…

If you are interested in taking out 100K this year, nothing is illegal about withdrawing 2K per week as opposed to taking out 100K at once.

Unless you're doing it evade reporting requirements.

Taking out 100k in currency within a year will look very suspicious -- financial institutions run regular look-back reports designed to find this kind of thing.

Were a bank officer to ask, I don't think there's any problem with telling the truth, "I'm stockpiling currency, and am contributing to this stockpile on a regular basis to coincide with income."

Post reply on HN