I went through a short sale in 1996 and as it turned out, the taxes that I ended up owing were identical to how much I was behind on my mortgage. One of the things that I had been told over and over back then was that I didn’t want to declare bankruptcy, but in retrospect, it turns out that declaring bankruptcy would have been exactly what I wanted to do.
I remember thinking during the mortgage crisis when folks were often underwater by $100K or more that the taxes would end up killing them on short sales. I wasn’t paying enough attention to know about the 2007 debt relief act since I was a renter at that point.