<prompt> Human: So, I apparently owe the IRS 11,000, which came out of nowhere. I asked my tax preparer throughout the year if I would owe anything and he said - no - but as of yesterday I do. I always assumed I would owe after selling my 2-Family but he assured me that we had no cap gains. We didnt really prepare for this. We have the 11,000 but it would wipe out much of our oh shit reserve fund. Do I have options when it comes to paying this? Can I push it off? I am installing solar in May and I am looking to get back 15,000 on next years return because of it. Any chance I can defer the 11,000 until next year? Assistant: You SHOULD be able to contact the IRS and get on a payment plan of some sort, so maybe you can absorb most of the cost in the refund youll get next year.The important thing here, though, is to find out WHY you owe this money. Its quite a leap from youll owe nothing to you owe 11k. If you lived in your house for 2 of the 5 years after the date you purchased it, you shouldnt owe any capital gains on it.Human: It was a duplex 2-Family. I guess I owed on the gains of the rental portion of the sales. Prior to selling, I converted into condos, so that I could sell each unit individually. Not sure why he kept saying I owe nothing at first, since everyone I talked to and everything I read would suggest otherwise. But he was dead set on it. Needless to say, this is the last year I will be using him.Assistant: I assume that you were filing a schedule E and had depreciation and other costs to offset the rental income and capital gains? If you really owe 11,000, that means you made a very healthy profit. It sounds like you should suspect this guy has no idea what he is doing and you should pay another cpa to check his work. If there are significant errors, you should make a case for a refund. Human: It was. I made lots of updates to the whole house and rental portion: new electric, new porch, new siding, new roof, new windows, new heating, etc. Bought the whole place for 250,000 .. sold each unit for about 250,000 each. I hounded my tax guy over the summer asking if we owed capital gains. I was sure we would. He insisted we didnt. We took the profits, put a hefty down payment on our forever home in the woods and paid off all other debt. This allowed us to max out our 401k contributions and IRAs. We set up our emergency reserve and now try to live moderately so we can save up for another investment. We are fortunate to have the funds to pay of the IRS, but it really dents our reserves short term in case we encounter one of those oh crap scenarios. Assistant: I find this really interesting the condo flip you did. Can you talk a bit more about this... was this a gem find in a hot location or something like that?Human: I bought in 2010 during the tail end of the recession. The housing market was still very low, but this 2-Family was priced far lower than market values even in that market. It was not in a hot market by any means. The house itself was probably on one of the most aesthetically unpleasing streets in the town. However, the town itself is very commuter friendly. I was like 25 at the time and was in one of my move back home periods because I lost my job in 2009 due to the same recession. I was in the process of building back my savings after a 9 month drought of employment. My parents decided to downgrade and were kicking me out. I had three options: rent, buy a condo, or buy a 2-family. Most condos at the time were priced around 250,000. Then I found this fixer-upper for 250,000. It was not horrible and was not a complete gut job. It was just an older house built in 1890 that needed some TLC. IIRC I put about 3 down and moved right in. I rented one unit to my friend and his wife at a discount. This covered about 95 of the mortgage. Due to this I was able to make updates and upgrades periodically. I renovated my side kitchen and bathroom, and made all the updates I listed earlier. I used OPM other peoples money on most occasions: MassSave loan and Home Equity line. I certainly put a lot into the house over the years, so its not like I made a true 250,000 profit. Although, when it was all said and done, that was the check amount. We paid off our cars, school debt, and all other revolving lines of credit. We then put 20 down on our forever home and consistently try to keep our monthly costs down - even if it means investing in upgrades that wont have immediate payoffs. We would like to get into the spot where we can invest again in propertyproperties -- but this time using a very hands-off approach. I hated being a landlord.  <response>: This is unrelated to your post, but congrats on working your ass off and paying off all your debt! Im sure it didnt come easy and there were probably tons of nights you were stressed, but your hard work really pulled through. Congrats! 