Exclusion when selling home

I'm not cozy enough with that portion of the tax system to even guess. A lot of what is in the tax code seems to be left to luck. Along the same track, if your kid is born on Dec 31st you can claim them for the entire year.

I do suppose that there has to be some sort of objective cut-off point but you would think there would be some sort of provision to handle an end-of-year death.

You know, I googled this subject after posting, and checked out this one website where this question was asked....

without looking back at the answer...it's like this....

if your spouse dies and you don't sell the house by the end of the tax year, they use a step up basis to figure the base cost of your house.

Normally, you would use the cost of the house substract from its current fair market value to figure the capital gain.

In this case, you would take 1/2 the original cost of the house, PLUS 1/2 of the fair market value as of the date of the death and you use that as the current base.

I ran those new figures, using several different scenarios, and compared it to the usual way of doing things, and this way, it doesn't seem you incur any significant gain, if any.

Well, that's good. At least this way, someone who has lived in a home and watched it appreciate significantly over the years will not have to pay through the nose if they sell their home.

Maybe they should do the same thing with babies.

take it easy on new year's eve -- no excitement

DAMN YOU! BREATHE!

Actually, New Year's Eve is a rest up day.

My anniverserary is New Years Day.....so, I feel pretty good about that.

Smart Chai - getting married on New Year's Day - much smarter than New Year's Eve as lots of people do. You are then taxed the "marriage penalty" rate for the entire year while you were only married for that year for a few hours.

You on the other hand did the smart thing. I have advised lots of people to do just that - simply wait one day and save money. Some people just take romance over money.

oh we just wanted the day off every year.

My husband has been married so many times, but somehow, I "stuck"

Let's see, Wife #1 and Wife #2 were the same woman....they married out of high school, for 6 years...divorced....remarried about 8 DAYS later...stayed married for another 6 years.

Wife #3 is the mother of his daughter, now 25...that lasted 6 years too.

Wife # 4 was less than two years. He and I both married others at the same time, even though we'd known each other (in the biblical sense) for several years...then we both left our spouses and ran off with each other.

We just passed the 12 year mark.

His wedding dates:

Christmas Eve
New Years Day
St. Patrick Day
Halloween
Ground Hogs Day

His brother says "That boy sure likes wedding cake!"