Originally published on Forbes.com.
Looking back on 2018, during which I wrote quite a bit on the implications of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, I was surprised to see that in terms of reader interest (measured in pageviews), my top two stories were not TCJA related. The tax stories I cover generally reflect practical advice, humor or matter for reflection (the way in which tax interacts with other areas of life). I find what will engage reader interest pretty unpredictable. At any rate here are the top stories of 2018 according to my readers.
1. Kicking Them When They Are Down – I understand from a tax policy viewpoint why debt discharge income needs to be taxable, but it still disturbs me. The most important lesson to learn from cases surrounding it is to not ignore Form 1099-C. That is what the hapless Joe in this story did. Don’t be Joe.
2. A Picture Is Worth? – Well if not a thousand words then maybe thirty thousand page views.
I wrote two posts about the tax implications of payments to and possibly from Stormy Daniels. In this one, I concluded that Michael Cohen might have been able to deduct the $130,000 payment, made to silence the porn star. In the other, I made a case for capital gains treatment for Stormy.
I really took a liking to the persona that Stormy portrays in her twitter feed which persuaded me to spring for “Full Disclosure“, which was pretty good. Best line probably was:
….my life is a lot more interesting than an encounter with Donald Trump. But I get it. Still, of all the people who I had sex with, why couldn’t the world obsess over one of the hot ones.
3. Devilish Details Of The Pass-Thru Deduction – Actually the most interesting story professionally is the implementation of the 20% pass-thru deduction – Section 199A. This piece was also about which fields will not qualify. There were several other fairly popular posts on this subject one in which I compute a magic salary number, a sort of overview and a jeremiad about my fears of growing wealth inequality.
4. Tip Toe Through The Tulips – This was a late tax season post to caution people who had been fooling with Bitcoins and other virtual currencies about their reporting requirements with a particular emphasis on the mystery of how the “hard fork” should be taxed. I may have implied that I was going to look further into it. According to this story by Jefferson Nunn, the “hard fork” issue remained unresolved in September. And according to this by NODE40, it remains unresolved.
5. Too Late Baby – I’m not sure why this late 2017 piece kept getting traffic. It is about the pressure to get assets in service before 2017 ended.
6. Too Good To Be True – This was an original idea that would have allowed people who were not farmers to take advantage of a quirk in TCJA that became known as the “grain glitch”. I had to subsequently report that the “grain glitch” was fixed probably by people who when they hear “cooperative” think that it has to be agriculture. Very disappointing.
7. Wrapping Tax Shenanigans In A Green Flag – This is a 2017 post that continues to get traffic. The tax abuse of conservation easements continues to be a big story and a source of concern. Most recently, DOJ has cracked down on some of the biggest players in the mini-industry of easement syndication.
8. Sticking Up For Our President – So this one is about the Trump Foundation and its troubles with the New York AG. It reflects my sense that if the New York AG is concerned about abuse in the charitable sector, there are other places to fight crime. The Trump Foundation seems to have been run in a pretty sloppy fashion, but probably not worse than most other small private foundations. The moral of the story is better you should use a donor-advised fund.
This post got me involved in a twitter spat with someone who I think highly of, who now has a low opinion of me, thinking that I am on the wrong side of history. It went so far as to her questioning whether I actually was a CPA. She looked me up in California and New York and didn’t find me. Here is where to look if you want to check. Massachusetts 7715.
9. The Old Reliables – Posts on how to cash a Powerball ticket anonymously and The Trials Of Kent Hovind – An American Tragedy continue to perform through the years. Doctor Dino who had been banished to Your Tax Matters Partner, my blog with low editorial standards and a readership in the scores, made a comeback here as he was featured in Samuel Brunson’s “God And The IRS”.
10. The Church With No Name – Actually the church does have a name. It is just that I can’t use it in a headline, but it is acceptable in the body of a post to name the Pussy Church of Modern Witchcraft. And they are not referring to cats. The follow-up piece is “Why Gender-Critical Radical Feminists Might Want A Church And Why IRS Approved”.
This story broke out of the tax ghetto, but it seems that most of the people who got excited about it stayed with the subsequent coverage and never went back to Forbes. There is an interesting tax story there, but the excitement is about the church itself which allows only natal women to be members and only lesbians to vote for and be leaders. It makes it another incident in the long-running dispute between gender critical feminists and transgender activists.
If that is something you have never heard of you go here “Gender War – Dummy Guide – Where To Begin” and I also provide my amateur historian view of why the dispute is so bitter.
The latest development with the church, that I have noted is that there has been what might be called a schism (although that is not how the participants refer to it) and there is a new organization – Our Lady of St. Mary Daly.
I was pleased by some of the commentary on my coverage. In this interview, Jonathan Kay jokes “As usual Forbes on the cutting edge of LGBT coverage”.
John Becket in “The Role of Journalism in Religious Movements – the questions The Wild Hunt didn’t ask” wrote:
The Forbes article is a very good piece of journalism from a rather unlikely source.
Well, if you know me, you would know that I was not entirely pleased with that remark. So we had a little bit of an exchange. I wrote.
Thanks for the compliment – except for that “unexpected source” crack. I am a little prejudiced but I think the forbes platform, which does not subject contributors to any sort of ideological test has tax coverage superior to the New York Times, because the contributors have background in the related disciplines
Mr. Beckett’s response was good enough for me to forgive him his apparent disrespect.
Good journalism can be found in all sorts of platforms, but I did not expect to find this level of detail and nuance on social issues in a business magazine. I just wish our own platform had done half as well
On Forbes
I started reading Forbes in the eighties and always found it superior to any other business/investment magazine. One of the things I would explain to young accounting staff is that clients will expect them to be well informed on business and investment issues and I always recommended a Forbes subscription as an aid in that process. And I will match our tax team against the New York Times any day of the week. It sometimes amazes me that I have found a place on this platform. It amazes some readers too, but that is another story.