utenzi

I finally filed my taxes so 2009 is officially over and out the door. *whew* There was some last minute anxiety because one of the stock sales I made in 2009 was of a stock that hadn't been bought in 2009---and so the brokerage year end report didn't include the buy price. I usually only hold on to stocks for a few weeks to a few months so this was unusual for me. And unfortunately that stock was bought in a year that I couldn't immediately find the buy records for. There was some frantic searching but it turned out that I bought the stock in 2007 and lost a lot of money on the damn thing. I think it was something like $4,400. Ouch. That was probably why I held onto the stock for so long---I was hoping that it'd come back. It never did. :-(

What a nasty surprise. For the first time in my life I ended up owing the government a substantial--at least for me--tax bill. In addition to what I have taken out of my salary, I ended up owning over $2,800 to Uncle Sam. Ouch. And what makes it worse to my mind is that the extra tax is due on money I don't have. Stock market stuff, you see. I had some tidy gains early last year then the tide turned and those gains evaporated away. I started my portfolio with $8k, saw it rapidly increase to $20k (thus the $3k tax bill instead of the usual $3k tax refund), but then it returned back to earth--dammit--and now all I have is a so-so 30% increase from my initial investment. This tax year I'll be able to deduct my losses but that won't help on the taxes since you can only use stock market losses to offset stock market gains, not salary. This might just teach me to pick some good quality stocks and stick with them, and not to play around with fly-by-night companies. Ha! Not likel...