Tax Goof Up

Seems I messed up on my taxes for the year 2003, the first year I did any significant stock trades. So the Internal Revenue Service sent me a letter, a CP2000. Here's a tip for anyone out there who's done stock trading for the first time, and is preparing their taxes: Report everything, because if you don't, your broker will report the gross receipts on only the sales, and the IRS assumes a cost basis of zero when dealing with stock sales that you didn't report. For me, for example, they assumed that I paid nothing for stock sales amounting to over $36,000, when in fact I'd paid over $34,000 to acquire those stocks to begin with.

Lesson learned.

[Cross-posted at Between Worlds]