I Paid My Taxes But The IRS Says I Didn’t!

Sometimes people pay their taxes on time but the IRS says they didn’t. This is a result of the IRS not “posting” the payments correctly on their computer. You should always write on your checks your name(s) as they appear on your tax return, Social Security number(s), form you are paying for, i.e. “1040” if paying with your return or “1040ES” if making estimated tax payments, and the year you are paying for, i.e. “2009” if paying with your 2009 return or “2010” if making estimated tax payments with the 2010 voucher. That’s probably the biggest error in posting that occurs- the payment is applied to the wrong year.
So if you receive a notice from the IRS saying you owe taxes that you think you paid here’s what you do:

Call the IRS right away and tell them. Get the cancelled checks showing all of your payments. Make copies of the front and back of each check. Then send them to the IRS with a letter explaining what happened.

3 Reasons Why You Need a Trustee

1. To Take Care of Your Assets for Your Children- If you have minor children they will need someone to manage your assets for them. Even if you only have a house and a few investments, if both you & your spouse die in a car accident, say, your children will probably have to go live with someone else. In that case your house will have to be sold and the money will have to be reinvested in stocks, bonds, cd’s, etc.

Who will do that for them? You will need someone to deal with a real estate agent, sign a listing agreement, decide on a listing price, negotiate with buyers, sign the sales contract, perform all the tasks that a seller must do to complete a sale. So even if you have children who are no longer minors, would they be able to do all that? Probably not- many adults can’t do it. So if you haven’t appointed a trustee (by writing it in your trust document) the court will appoint a stranger to do it for your family.

After the house is sold the trustee will have to manage the investments of the trust to get the highest rate of return (income) possible while keeping the assets safe. That’s the main job of a trustee, to safeguard the assets for the beneficiaries of the trust (usually, the kids) and make distributions according to the trust document.

2. To Provide Flexibility in Making Decisions- If your children are young the trust will have to be managed for many years. Oftentimes parents will set up the trust to give discretion to the trustee regarding how much to distribute to each child each year, that is, the trustee decides. If children are young that would mean giving living expenses or a monthly allowance to the guardians of the children, the people who are taking care of them. If kids are going to college, they might need money to buy a car, for example. That would be an extra distribution that the trustee would have to decide on. Most trustees may give $ 12,000 to buy a used Honda but would not give $ 100,000 for a Lamborghini.

Even if your children are in their twenties, oftentimes, clients set up a time schedule for distributions of principal, that is, all of the assets that went from you or your estate to your trust. Usually if there are no problems with, say, drug or alcohol abuse, parents will write in their trust that the trustee should distribute one third of the principal when a child reaches age 25, one half when they reach age 30 and the balance when they reach age 35. This helps to give out the assets when the children become a little more mature. You must have a trust to do this.

3. To Give the Trustor (You) More Flexibility in Describing How To Distribute the Assets- You can also describe in your trust other reasons you would want your children to receive distributions, such as, for education. Your trust document can include a definition of education. You may not want to pay for basket weaving school but you may have a child or grandchild who you know will never go to college. However, if they were interested in a trade school, you would probably want the trustee to pay for that as well.

You can describe other things you would want your trust to pay for, such as, giving a child money to start or buy a business, or for the down payment on a house.

If you have a child who has a drug or alcohol abuse problem, you can provide that they must be clean and sober for one year subject to testing before they receive any distributions.


These are only three reasons to have a trust. There are many more. Stayed tuned for future blog postings! Or subscribe to our RSS feed. You can get more trust and tax tips from our monthly newsletter. Just subscribe below! Or you can always call us at the Law Offices of Patricia Rowe 925-256-1000. Or you can visit my website at www.PatriciaRowe.com !

Estimated Tax Rules Change After Many Years

Do you know that the federal estimated tax rules have been changed for the first time in more than 55 years? For those of us who do not have W-2 jobs where our income taxes are withheld from our wages, we must pay our income taxes through estimated tax payments that are made kind of quarterly- that is, April 15th, June 15th, September 15th and January 15th of the following year.

For many years taxpayers were required to pay 25 % of the tax they expected to owe each quarter, subject to exceptions. Beginning in 2009 our estimated tax is due in the following amounts: April 15th- 30 %, June 15th- 30 %, September 15th- 20 % and January 15th- 20 %.

Don't Forget The Exceptions to Avoid Penalties

Don't forget- you can avoid the penalty for underpayment of estimated tax by paying 100 to 110 % of prior years tax. Use this option when your income tax liability is increasing from one year to the next. If your 2008 income is down and you expect your 2008 tax liability to be les sthan 2009, just make estimated tax payments equal to the 2008 tax on time in the required installments as shown above and you will avoid any underpayment of estimated tax penalty for 2009.