I had to tell someone yesterday that it was too late to save him $9,500 from his tax bill.  That’s because he’d already filed his 2008 tax return and THEN sent it in for me to review.

I can tell you exactly what would have happened if he’d sent in a draft of his return for review two months earlier.  I would have looked at it and stopped it right there.  I would have shown him how we would change his 2008 return so he paid $9,500 less. Plus, we would have then been able to take the loss back 5 years so that he would end up getting a refund of at least $25,000 from past returns.

The problem is that the tax strategy involved an election that had to be made on the original tax return.  It wasn’t made and there was no way to fix it now.

Waiting two months cost him $34,500.  If it seems like you’re paying too much in taxes, you probably are.  Don’t wait!