I converted my $200,000 IRA to a Roth last year. I had an accountant do my tax return and was shocked by how much tax I had to pay on it. He tested a few numbers and we determined I should recharacterize $170,000. He said it had to be done before I filed, so I did it promptly. But I have some real problems now.
1) He made several serious mistakes in my return that I didn't know about until he got it to me for my signature. My taxes are much lower than he said. Accordingly, I could have kept another $25,000 of the Roth for trivial taxes. I asked the investment company to redo it, but they say they can't because of liability issues; but won't explain that. Can they redo it, or not? (I still haven't filed my return)2) I got a check in the mail today for $30,000; the part of the Roth that wasn't recharacterized. I read over the recharacterization form and it doesn't mention what becomes of the unrecharactized portion. I assumed it remained in the Roth. Obviously that is not how they understood it. What do I do now? A related issue is that the $30,000 went up 15% since I converted, but the $4,500 seems to have just vanished.