Taxation Without RepRESENTation
I miss the good ole’ days when all I needed was a pencil and 1040-EZ form to complete my taxes. This ceased to be the case around my 30th birthday when I bought my first property. Since then, I’ve hired tax preparers to handle the complexities created by home ownership…and the subsequent home-selling.
However this year, for the first time in 5+ years, I didn’t buy, own, or sell a property. I expected an easy tax preparation and was excited not to have to spend $250 worth of my tax return to have somebody prepare it for me.
That excitement has quickly disintegrated. I work for a non-profit so my previous employer’s 401(k) can not be rolled into my current employer’s plan because it’s considered a 403(b). As far as I can tell they both operate identically (money is put in there pre-tax, etc…) but still I’m not allowed to roll-over.
So in 2006 I converted my former employers’ 401(k) (which has just sat there stagnant for nearly 7 years) into a Roth IRA. To do so meant I had to first do a “rollover” from the 401(k) into a traditional IRA (no taxes owed). From there the traditional IRA was “converted” into a Roth IRA and taxes were due. It seemed easy enough when my financial planner explained it to me and logistically it makes sense to me now.
Little did I know that there would be separate 1099 form…and a few 5498 forms…for each type of transaction. I’ve got 5 pages of them. And none of the numbers on them match the numbers on the monthly statements I got from the financial planner. All I expected was a single 1099 form indicating how much is taxable. I’m so naive.
No wonder people in this country don’t (and can’t) save. Speaking of saving, did you read this week that Americans are saving less than any generation since the Great Depression? That’s scary. The last time people saved so little was when everybody was unemployed and banks were closing down and taking people’s life savings with them (FDIC didn’t exist yet).
I’m not an economist but I suspect we won’t realize the severity of this trend until the current working population (20-40 year olds, specifically) reach retirment age. With social security’s future unknown and nobody saving today, there’s going to be bleak, bleak future in 20-30 years.
4 Comments
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Cheerful! Thanks Karl!
(But you’re right.)
See my daily blog post for my struggle against the system/machine/man. I am still annoyed that I had to write a check for one bloody dollar to the state.
I’m very concernerd for all of you who are the main gay male blogging demographic (which also includes my daughters and son in law). You’re going to get pinched and pinched hard with declining benefits at work, increased taxation, high energy and shelter costs, and the consequences of neglect to the nation’s infastructure.
All you can do these days is try to take care of yourselves–nobody else is going to do it for you.
at the tender age of 35, i still have maybe 8 years of student loans to pay off. save money? i can hardly make enough of it, much less save any of it. in the wise words of ABC in 1985, “ive seen the future. i cant afford it.”