Here is what happened:
I rolled over retirement funds from an old 401k account to another brokerage firm in order to consolidate my accounts.
These dollars automatically went into a money market fund.
I tried to log onto the website of the new account to exchange the dollars into an actual investment (target fund) but the brokerage website was down so I called them thinking I would handle this the old fashioned way.
When attempting to handle this on the phone, the agent exchanged the wrong dollars (old investments in a non-retirement account) into the target fund rather than the retirement fund dollars that I had just transferred.
I saw the mistake less than 24 hours later once the firms website was back online.
The non-retirement investments had significant gains over the years and I may be looking at the largest tax bill that I've ever had unless I can figure out a way to reverse this.
What can I do? Should I insist that broker classify this as an error to avoid capital gains? Should I call the IRS and explain the situation?
I rolled over retirement funds from an old 401k account to another brokerage firm in order to consolidate my accounts.
These dollars automatically went into a money market fund.
I tried to log onto the website of the new account to exchange the dollars into an actual investment (target fund) but the brokerage website was down so I called them thinking I would handle this the old fashioned way.
When attempting to handle this on the phone, the agent exchanged the wrong dollars (old investments in a non-retirement account) into the target fund rather than the retirement fund dollars that I had just transferred.
I saw the mistake less than 24 hours later once the firms website was back online.
The non-retirement investments had significant gains over the years and I may be looking at the largest tax bill that I've ever had unless I can figure out a way to reverse this.
What can I do? Should I insist that broker classify this as an error to avoid capital gains? Should I call the IRS and explain the situation?