Apparently when you don’t file your taxes, the IRS simply takes the amount of money you earned, doesn’t figure in capital losses and bills you on that amount. At least that’s what happened to a young Spanish man named Marcos Sparza Bofill. Bofill was living in New York, barely making ends meet by trading stocks during the day. He was considered a day trader, where he would buy and sell the same stock several times within minutes, trying to take advantage of the fluctuations stocks have every few seconds. Day traders can trade millions of dollars in stocks in a given day on about $10,000 in capital.

Basically what happened is Marcos Esparza Bofill didn’t keep very good track of his trading activities, at least not with the IRS. When the IRS saw over $550 million in stock gains, they apparently had no way of looking at the losses which were likely close to that amount, if not more. Bofill returned to Spain where he was notified by a friend that he got an IRS tax bill for $172 million.

Needless to say, the man who had moved back in with his parents, may be in a bit of a situation.

Follow @jadwalbolainfo