I'm trying hard to not allow the stress to settle in on me.  But the house back in Jtown may have gotten one more laugh.  I knew I'd have some impact to my taxes selling it because of the rental, but right now it is looking ridiculous.  I'm still hopeful that there is an error on the part of the tax consultant, but I haven't heard back yet.

The issue:  capital gains.  To summarize in plain speech, the IRS thinks I made a bunch of money on the place *laugh*.  I sold it for $26,500 more than I paid for it back in 1999.  Of course that's not what I cleared on it thanks to fees etc.  Let's be generous and say it was worth $1000 more in my pocket for each year I owned the place, ignoring the 10s of thousands of dollars that were put into siding, fence, new windows, adding a front porch, a new kitchen in the apartment, etc.

Because of the little one I wasn't sure how my taxes would look this year, so I continued at the same pre-baby pace for withholdings knowing full well I was giving the government an interest free loan.  My quick calculations and the initial numbers at the tax office were about the same, I was looking at $7500ish coming back.  Well if everything is right, she told me the capital gains will eat up most of it.

Seriously, how is 28% of what I "made" on the WHOLE house (not just the rental portion) what you want from me?  That simply cannot be.  She has the whole list of everything I did there at the house (and apartment) through the years (as was provided to the real estate agent when I listed it) and it feels like none of it 'counts' to help me out.  I did come up with a few other things, but I'm not sure if they can help me either since they were done in 2016 to ready the house (like the unexpected need to rerun the sewer from the apartment, deal w/ the critter issue, or the apartment furnace going out).

I'm ill about it.  I wanted to put some money back into my slush fund after all of the work I did around the house here last year.  I wanted to throw another mortgage payment or something out there to scoot further ahead.  I justified my living room furniture purchase with this planned influx.  But most of all I wanted to take what I instantly get back for having the baby here and put it into her savings.

Previous year's tax consultants and my real estate agent made it sound like it wouldn't be anywhere near this bad, so I'm really hoping we're missing that whole "the apartment is only 1/3 of the property" thing.  I don't want $2500 stolen from me either, but it's better than $7500.  People that buy up rental properties - do they not get hosed when they want out?  What about if they pass away?  Is the estate raped too?

Dear Government, taxation is theft.  We never really own our home, which is bull.  You f those of us that work hard at every turn and hand over what you've stolen from us to people who are often too lazy to work for themselves. Do not mistake this for charity.  Charity is never given at the end of a sword.