Serbinski Accounting Firms

Following up for those as may be interested, I finally heard back from the CA FTB today on my protest (10 months after filing). "Based on the information you provided in your letter of protest, we cancelled the Notice of Proposed Assessment ..."

I feel like I should frame this letter or something ...

I filed a protest / challenge / whatever back in August, they acknowledged receipt, but haven't responded to my claim. Seems appropos. After all, they have little motivation to be speedy since apparently if I'm in the wrong they can charge me interest at a far higher rate than a bank pays until I ...

For what it is worth, for others who may not have elected on form 8891 and who therefore care about the details, I've found that while I can't get dividend/gain/interest breakdowns from my RRSP trustee, I am able to get them through the funds directly. My RRSP account manager helped with this ...

True. So that's squared away.

I guess that brings us back to the original question: Not having appealed or protested a proposed assessment before, I'm trying to learn what to expect. Can I make the argument in plain English, or am I better advised to work through a pro licensed to practice in front ...

Does "I don't have a problem" mean you think the argument has merit, or just that you don't care? :)

I'm not sure about the *original* FTB explanatory letter, do you have a pointer to this that you could forward?

A search just now turns up FTB Information Letter No. 2003-0040 written by Jeanne ...

I said "protest" as that is what they seem to call it on FTB 7275 that they included with the notice ("Protest (Disagree)"). Is there a separate appeal process they don't mention?

I made two claims on Schedule CA that both seem to have been disallowed:

On line 16a, I reduced the pension income by ...

Back in my 1996 return, as discussed in this thread
http://forums.serbinski.com/viewtopic.php?t=2326&view=next&sid=eb9812022b8b72aa1b7a0c19073c81c1
I claimed a difference on my California Schedule CA, in which I factored out the federal impact of a withdrawal from my Canadian RRSP. My belief is ...

Good point. As it turns out, the prior years wouldn't have seen any effect because the various expenses were far outweighed by income. Little fiddly differences of a few hundreds or thousands of interest income makes no difference to the degree of zero. :/

This year I took a long sabattical ...

RRSPs and California have received a fair amount of treatment here, but I haven't seen this angle covered, nor is it turning up in search. Apologies if I've missed it.

In 2006 I collapsed one of my RRSP accounts, for which I've previously elected and on which I've been paying CA tax on interest etc ...