Yes- it's not a market for the faint of heart- never is really.. Got an interesting story from yesterday:
Yesterday morning I was coming in the front door of my building, and noticed a folder sitting on the table near the door. I glanced at it, and noticed that the tab on it was titled 'Enron Investment'. Yikes, I thought. The guy that owns this surely doesn't want the public looking at this.
So I looked through the file to find the owner. It was a young fellow I work with. In the folder were various trade confirmations and some other tax info. I couldn't help but notice the simply awful investments he had made. SUNW at 114, and again at 35. AMAT at some gawd awful price. ENE of course, and a couple others.
I picked up the folder, and gave it to the owner after he came back to his office later. I asked him if he lost something, and tossed the folder down. I didn't ask about his investments, but he thanked me, and said he needed that info for his taxes. He also mentioned in passing that instead of doing his own taxes this yr. he went to a CPA., and the CPA found him several hundred dollars more than he thought he would get back from the IRS.
I asked him how- did he find extra deductions? He replied that no- he added capital losses in , where he hadn't done that in previous years. He thought you could only deduct losses against gains. So I asked if he had losses in previous years too- and he said he did. I suggested to him that a certain amount of losses are allowed by the IRS (3,000 I believe) and he could file ammended returns for the previous years.
If you have more losses than the limit- you can carry the balance of the losses over to the next yr. I suggested he ask the CPA about getting past yrs. corrected.
So, anyway- with the recent past- I thought that may be a good tip to pass along to folks that lurk here. You can deduct a certain amount of capital losses irregardless of whether you have any gains- and you can carry the balance over to following years.
Hope that is of help to someone.
Regards,
TW |
