Taxes Suck! (And so does Aurora Loan Services)
I hate taxes. And I hate filing them
For one I feel the government doesn’t know how to properly utilize the money it gets. Unlike Australia, where the budget is in a state of constant surplus, our illiterate politicians can’t add and are always running a deficit. And as a result, they always begging for more money.
Another issue is with the reporting of taxes due. As the owner of several rental properties, I get to claim the interest on the mortgage payments and the taxes I pay. The mortgage companies send out a 1098 form every year. Unfortunately they do 3 things that piss me off.
1. They keep selling the mortgages to other companies.
This means I not only have to keep track of the payments(which I automate through online bill pay), but now I get several 1098s for the same property.
2. They don’t print addresses on the 1098 statements.
This means I have no fricking clue which property the statement belongs to and I have to waste time matching up the statements with the properties based on 9 digit account numbers. (really irritating when you have 6 times as many statements as you do properties!)
3. They make stupid mistakes.
Occasionally, they’ll forget to include the amount of taxes paid or insurance paid. If you overlook that, you’re out that deduction. Yes, it looks like you made more money but thats a BAD thing at tax time!
If my Adjusted Gross Income[thats income after deductions) isnt' under the federal guidelines for the poverty level, I'm pretty upset. And now the wife had to go get a job which totally pushed us out of the poverty level! I told her if our tax bracket went too high, I'd quit my job in protest! (Of course, that didn't go down too well).
And whats up with the schedule D filling. The government wants me to file every single damn trade I placed??? Well ok, they don't trust us to accurately report it, whcih is fine since we don't trust the government to tell us the truth either. But why the hell can't the brokerage firms provide a simple spreadsheet of the transactions? (without charging for it?). Its all computer-based trading and they all have the records in their databases.
I actually found out that Interactive Brokers (the company with the worst interface and lousiest customer service, but cheapest commissions) actually provides a prepared schedule D!!! Thats awfully nice of them.
Especially since Datek, Ameritrade, TDAmeritrade charges 10 times the commission and won't provide it. Infact they got the 1099 wrong the first 3 times!
Anyway, I was up until 4:30 am doing my taxes. One of the mortgage companies fraudulently decided that my 5 year ARM was a 2 year ARM just because the date printed on the loan docs was wrong. The fact that they never offered a 2/1 ARM doesn't matter. Aurora Loans got to screw me and the truth can be damned! Anyway, my new rate is now 10.3% on the 1st loan, and 9.5% on the 2nd loan!
Aurora also wanted nearly $10,000 to refinance a $250,000 loan! I went to Countrywide instead but they need to see my 2006 tax returns to fund the loan. Hence the rush to get the paperwork all done so my CPA can file it.
Anyway, thats it for this friday's edition of The Weekly Rant!
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June 9th, 2007 at 1:32 pm
See section 17 Capital Gains. That’s Australia’s equivalent of that pesky Schedule D:
http://www.ato.gov.au/content/downloads/NAT2679-06.pdf
There is no wash sale rule etc. in AUs so they don’t need that info.
June 11th, 2007 at 4:06 pm
Yeah, same thing happened to me. I got a loan on my investment property. It was promptly sold to Wells Fargo. During the change over process the amount of the escrow and principle balance got screwed up.