Mantria Investors were able to raise enough funds to complete most of the electrical work at Mantria Place. Mantria Place should be fully operational for the potential systems buyers who plan to visit during the next couple of weeks. We will be anxious to hear of any sales activity. I will post any news on the blog as it becomes available.
Please note that Mantria's insurance policy at Mantria Place will expire by the end of the year. Since all funds are currently frozen and the insurance policy is too expensive for investors to cover, Mantria Place may be closed at the end of the year. Either Mantria will have to negotiate with the SEC or the case will have to be resolved to continue operations in 2010.
Our fund (gift) raising and letter writing campaigns have demonstrated that Mantria Investors are capable of organizing. The SEC and the judge are now aware that many investors believe in this technology and that we believe our investments are worth fighting to preserve.
However, the next move belongs to the SEC and Mantria. Both Mantria and the SEC are claiming they are true advocates of the investors' best interests!!! It is now their time to demonstrate this! As of today, there are so many possible outcomes of this situation it is almost pointless to speculate what may evolve. However, we do know that the SEC and Mantria should be capable of reorganizing (as necessary) the core of this operation: The Technology, the Investments and the Real Estate.
In the meantime, we should prepare ourselves to "hang on tight" during the "ups an downs" that this trial may bring us. We have done a good job with the blog so far. This blog alone has demonstrated we have plenty of support for each other and none of us are alone in this matter!
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Mantria Investor,
ReplyDeleteThank you so much for creating this blog and for doing what you do to keep us in the loop. I'll take any gleam of hope I can right now!
Lane,
ReplyDeleteYou are welcome. It has been worth while to unite people in a common cause. This blog has improved communication among us. However, I did not anticipate that it would begin so many friendships.
Let's all try to hang on to as much hope as we can. And, let's try to create as much "normalcy" in our lives during this trial.
I will be right here with you until this matter is concluded.
Sincerely,
Ben Greinke (Mantria Investor)
I just learned of a new tax relief law for victims of ponzi schemes today from one of the investors in the Growth Club service group. I don't understand exactly how to take advanatage of it but this may be something we investors need to get our arms around. It allows us to deduct all our losses as theft losses as opposed to capital losses if we declare the losses in the year the theft was discovered. An SEC indictment constitutes discovery and a conviction is not required (which is our situation). Losses can then be carried forward up to 20 years. If we deduct all our losses, then anything we do recover down the road (including principle)would be taxible, which I guess makes sense.
ReplyDeleteCheck out this site:
http://www.hg.org/article.asp?id=6153
In part, it states:
In response, the IRS issued Rev. Rul. 2009-9, Rev. Proc. 2009-20 which allows Investors, defrauded by “Ponzi schemes” (including Madoff’s “Ponzi scheme”) to claim an IRC §165(e) theft loss deduction (i.e., ordinary loss deductions not a capital loss deduction for their “qualified investment” (Rev. Proc. 2009-20, Sec 2.06).
It also states:
Taxpayers who invested in the Madoff scheme indirectly (e.g., through a “feeder fund”) will not directly report the tax loss. Instead the feeder fund will report the loss and the Taxpayer will report their allocable share of the loss on their individual tax return.
I'm no accountant, but I'm guessing this means each of the LLCs that we participated in to invest in Mantria with needs to file this a certain way and send us K-1s on our share of these losses. If so, we need to figure out how to hire an account to help us sort all this out. Estill & Long would make the most sense. I'm guessing we will not be getting any help from Wayde or Donna on this.
I'm hoping someone on this blog with more accounting sense than I can look at this and provide some direction on if/how to move forward on this.
Lane,
ReplyDeleteThis is great info! It is probably a good idea for Mantria Investors to prepare for the worst. There are, of course, multiple scenarious where our investments could be recovered. Tax deductions would, however, be a small consolation.
Anyways, my tax person was not aware of this rule. She was only aware of the standard deduction for capital losses ($3000/year). She is going to research this further. I will update you.
Thank you for bringing this to our attention!
I never saw the Q & A Troy said would be comming either last Friday or last Monday.
ReplyDeleteI'm hoping Troy will be updating us as to how the system tours went this week.
Regarding the IRS "ponzi loss ruling". You can deduct your theft loss up to 100% of your ordinary income for 2009 and any left over can be applied toward past ordinary income if you file a revised tax return for those years. However, you cannot deduct any IRA dollars invested since those were never taxed. I suppose you might deduct a small percentage if you can isolate what amounts were your original after tax amounts. Since all 401K is pretax, you cannot deduct any of that.
ReplyDeleteI forgot to mention that the part of the IRS 165 ruling is under the area termed "misresentation". This might help your accountant since this is a new ruling this year brought about specifically by the Madoff case.
ReplyDeleteLane,
ReplyDeleteI forwarded you a copy of the 12/5/2009 FAQs.
Let me know if you did not receive them.
Ben
Ben,
ReplyDeleteI got the Q & A. Thanks for that.
I'm guessing SOW needs to prepare K-1s allocating each of our losses in each LLC for us to deduct them from our taxes? If SOW is out of business, does anyone know how we are to move forward on out 2009 tax prep? Can we just claim the losses without any tax info. from SOW?
Lane,
ReplyDeleteYou are welcome for the FAQs. I am going to meet with my tax person Monday. She said to bring all info associated with the case for my tax prep records. Maybe she knows some options??? If SOW is not responding to your requests, maybe Mantria can assist us???
Ben