New solution for financial troubles

[germdoc]

Just don't pay taxes:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...l?hpid=topnews

I hope I'm not raising partisan issues by failing to understand how a Dartmouth and Hopkins'-educated Federal Reserve president could make such a stupid mistake on his taxes. I mean, the tax system is complicated, but even a financial idiot like me knows whether or not my employer is taking out taxes.

This is further proof of my adage, which has hardly ever been proved wrong, "Great men have great flaws."

[Alex Franke]

Maybe he will help make the IRS and the tax code a bit more forgiving if he's "been there" my making mistakes like this...

I bet his accountant screwed it up, and he just signed the returns blindly trusting that they were correct. At that level I think most people use tax preparers, and a tax preparer is less likely to know the terms of his employment. (Although he really should have paid attention to this!)

Regardless, this is pretty darn embarrassing!

[germdoc]

I bet his accountant screwed it up, and he just signed the returns blindly trusting that they were correct. Regardless, this is pretty darn embarrassing!

Yeah, his accountant screwed up--he was his own accountant!

Being charitable, someone who majored in government and Asian studies and has an MA in economics doesn't necessarily have expertise in accounting...

[shoottx]

Just as a reference, I am the CFO of two Companies and I have accountants do the corporate taxes and my personal taxes.

Economics and accounting may have some relationship to tax accounting but they are not the same.

PS this isn't a defense for his stupidity, just an explanation!

[Russianwolf]

As an accountant that has prepared many people's returns, FICA mistakes are the hardest to get corrected. The general view from accountants is to let the IRS catch the mistakes and come from their side, as making sure they allocate the payments properly when they didn't catch the error is a royal pain.

I've seen a client that had to prove that he paid them independently 3 years after the payments were made.

Since FICA withholdings aren't on the regular 1040 (No FICA is except SS earnings), many of the H&R Block type accountants never even look at it on the W2. They wouldn't catch the mistake.

The ones I hated, were the ones where a person worked 6 months for one company then changed jobs. If their salary was over the SS limit, then they had to request a refund of the SS paid over the limit. Granted the limit is $107k this year.