Taxes -- ooooh the pain!!

Well all I gotta say is that lovely Uncle Sam has one hand in my pocket while the other hand is pilfering my homestead!

That's right boys and girls, the IRS has effectively blocked us from at least one "self-sufficient" goal this year, all because of the sneaky way they handle capital losses. So we have to decide what necessity least critical to get this year: solar panels/wind turbine, water well, soil amendments or winter transportation.  Wonderful options, eh?  Just forget about a tractor :`(

Ain't it just interesting how you must claim all of your Capital Gains as taxable income for a given year, but they only allow you to deduct $3k in Capital Losses a year then force you to carryover the rest? Tricky bastards! They're banking that you won't get as much benefit deducting the losses in the future or get stuck carrying over until you die so they never have to let you deduct them. If that weren't the case, we wouldn't owe anything!  I can understand limiting it so you can't have negative AIG or don't get a refund when you'd otherwise owe (ok, from their perspective, I can understand it), but you should at least be able to use it to reduce the amount you owe to $0 if you end up with an underpayment at the end of the year. Because, seriously, the snafu "income" amount that screwed us and made us go over the taxes withheld would have been completely offset by our "losses" if we'd been able to claim them.  Arrrrgggg

Oh well, just another "little fee" to the powers that be to get us off of the grid and out from under thumbs, I guess.  2010 should be the last year Uncle Sugar's fiddly little fingers will be digging in our pockets... and if we're really luck, we won't even get screwed on the 2010 return, but I'm not holding my breath.  grrrrr