You're Stuck With Me, Bitches

Just to clear one thing up, I still have no plans to complete shut the ol' blog down here. Granted, a goodly chunk of what I yammer on about is online gambling related, and I'll likely be doing little to none of that in the future, but I'm still planning on babbling here on a fairly regular basis.

Lost is off to a decent start, but the addition of the fair Juliet would likely have me saying that in and of itself, even if the first two episodes consisted of the Others and Losties having a knock-down drag-out crocheting battle to determine who can make the finest woolen caps. We've actually kicked a good bit of our tv habit lately, mainly watching Lost and catching up on old episodes of Scrubs and Monk. Exciting, crazy times in the Scurvy household, indeed.

Finally got around to buying Age of Empires III and am liking it, although my podunk graphics card is struggling to deal at times. I normally trend towards the turn based games, as the RTS games just enhance how old, dumb, and slow I've become, but I played the hell out of all the other AoE games so I thought I'd give this one a shot.

Interesting info floating around on 2+2 in regards to ETFs and happy-fun things like audits and the IRS. Lots of misinformation, too, so take it all with a grain of salt, but if you've been cashing out of Neteller of late, read up on "structuring" or "structured transactions". Again, I apologize for being the bringer of the gloom and/or the doom, but the fact that Neteller caps ETF withdrawals to your linked account at $5K might actually increase the chances of you getting audited.

The problem is that making multiple $5K withdrawals to your linked account gives the appearance that you're intentionally trying to avoid triggering bank requirements to report transactions of $10K or more to the IRS by withdrawing smaller sums. The supposed $10K threshold is misinformation in and of itself, as banks can report anything that they deem unusual or suspicious, even amounts under $10K, but the point remains the same. Lots of $5K withdrawals within a short timespan looks hinky, as the "normal" thing to do would be to withdraw $20K, instead of making four separate $5K withdrawals over the course of a week or two. So Neteller is basically unwittingly increasingly the chances that you might get audited by capping ETF withdrawals at $5K. Thanks a pantload, Neteller.

As long as you're paying taxes and accounting for everything, you're not breaking any laws and have nothing to worry about, as they're nothing illegal in and of itself by making multiple withdrawals as outlined above. Just yet another thing to worry about and yet another poke in the eye from the Frist stick.