I read the blog again just to see if I was missing something. What the H** does this have to do with taxes? Your stream of consciousness proves one thing about you east coast progressives – you are all on drugs. and I am unsure which is worse, your disjointed logic in the blog or Forbes allowing it to be published. I might just take up drugs so I can be published.

I don’t know if I was chastened by that or not, but I have missed several century marks since on matters that seemed more urgent than roundups making this my 900th post on forbes.com.  It is also near the end of the year and very close to the fifth anniversary of my very first blog post on the now definitively closed Passive Activities and Other Oxymorons. And of course there is my oncoming millennium to consider, a mark which Kelly Erbs (Tax Girl) whom I stalked to forbes.com met over a year ago.

The genesis of my blogging comes from a habit I developed of scanning original source tax material – Tax Court Decision, IRS rulings of various sorts, appellate decisions – for items of interest to my firm’s client base.  I would do summaries to pass onto other people in the firm and key clients.  I often found myself getting diverted by material that I just found interesting even though it had no probable application to my practice.  So most of my blog is tax stuff that I find interesting.  To make it sound like there is a little bit of logic to it, I have defined my criteria as practical utility, humor and matter for reflection.  The latter reflects the fact that taxes issues will often touch on larger issues, such as the establishment of religion.  Note that I write about things that I find interesting.

Although I will occasionally get caught up in the passions of the tax blogosphere like Anietra Hamper’s undergarment decisions I pretty much march to the music that I hear however measured and far away. So for this roundup, what I’ve decided to do is share with you what my readers have found most interesting this year and the things I think that deserve more attention than they received.  Some of the posts I will be mentioning did not go up this year, but for whatever reason have remained of interest.

What People Found Interesting This Year

My two top stories don’t fit well into my selection criteria.  The very top story is about an elderly disabled veteran who is suing Bank of America for sending him a Form 1099-C, which implies that BOA is writing off money he owed them, while he maintains he never owed them anything.  The story has gotten almost no other coverage although it has been picked by insideARM.com, a site that focuses on accounts receivable management.  Another bank – JP Morgan Chase- stars in my second highest read post.  It is about a race to the bank between an IRS collection officer and a delinquent taxpayer.  The levy hit before the taxpayer’s withdrawal, but the bank that had not acted swiftly enough is left holding the bag for 40 grand that it allowed to escape two hours after receiving the levy.

Next comes a post from May 2013 that has gotten more traffic in 2014 than it did in 2013.  It concerns a bankruptcy court decision that prevented a bank from pursuing collection on a debt that it had issued a 1099-C for. Try as I might I cannot resist sometimes dipping my toe into the interminable IRS scandal.

A post which generated some strong feelings was the one in which I asked “What If Lois Lerner Was Right About The Tea Party?”  Be sure to check out the comments section.  Also scoring high (seventh) is Did You Hear The One About Lois Lerner Walking Into A Bar? In that one I discuss the curious fact that the few organizations that were actually turned down for 501(c)(4) status never seem to come forward.  My inner historian is urging me to do a comparison between the IRS scandal or, as I sometime call it, Teapartygate and Watergate.  Any thoughts you might have on how Watergate compares would be greatly appreciated.

Here we are at the sixth position in 2014, before we get to something practical.  It is a post I wrote in August 2013 about using S Corporation to avoid self-employment tax.  The moral of the story is that the technique still works.  Just try to be reasonable about it and take some salary.

Next comes the tax story that I seem to have a lock on.  “Time To Let Kent Hovind Go Home” concerns Doctor Dino, one of the leading lights in the oxymoronic field of “creation science”. Doctor Hovind claims to have scientific proof that the world is only about six thousand years old.  His supporters claim that since his insight threatens the New World Order, that’s why he has been in prison for nearly a decade.

I am more of the view that if he had been as proactively tax compliant as his son Eric who is otherwise following in his footsteps, IRS CID would never have come within miles of him.  I do, however, think the government’s most recent indictment of him for mail fraud is unwise.  Hence, you can find me characterized as both a Hovind supporter and a Hovind detractor in many parts of the internet.  Montaigne had the same problem with the Ghibellines thinking he was a Guelph and the Guelphs thinking he was Ghibelline.  I am happy to say that Sam and Dan of God’s Property Radio are encouraging their followers to pray for me to become enlightened.

I have to say that I like Christians a lot, but particularly when they act – you know – Christian.  I also think whackadoodle tax and conspiracy theories are not really good for Christians or anybody, so I am going to keep encouraging them to focus more on feeding the hungry, giving drink to the thirsty and loving their enemies.

One of my earlier posts on Kent is in the ninth position.  It discusses the fact that he is not in prison for income tax evasion, but mainly for “structuring”. Rounding out the top ten in popularity for 2014 is another post that got more traffic this year than last year – “Enrolled Agents Deserve More Respect”.

Practical 2014 Posts That Received Little Attention

I have to admit that you should not try to get all your tax planning wisdom from my blog.  A big flaw in the material that I cover is that it focuses on things that went wrong.  Even when a taxpayer wins in Tax Court, she may have lost, since it was not worth the trouble.  Nonetheless, there is quite a bit of practical wisdom among the gems that I unearth.  Here are some 2014 developments that I think might deserve a bit more of your attention.

What I rate as the biggest tax development affecting 2014 is the finalized regulations on whether items should be capitalized or expensed.  There has been a lot written on them, but most of it has been written by tax geeks for tax geeks.  What you really need is something written by a tax geek who actually prepares returns and has to explain the relevant portion of the regulations to his less bookish fellow accountants and his entrepreneurial clients.  That would be me and that’s what I tried to do in Building Repair Deductions – Thirty Per Cent Of What? I followed that up with Repair Regs – A Hellish Tax Season And Refunds Of Biblical Magnitude which highlights the windfall that building owners may experience and questions the conventional wisdom that we will need to be flooding the IRS with accounting method change forms.

I see a lot of cases about dependency deductions , the hazards of filing joint returns and alimony and   regularly post on them.  Maybe I am beginning to sound like a broken record, but there is some solid advice there for people who are divorcing and the attorneys who represent them.

I also keep an eye on state domicile cases.  All those Floridians whom some other state wants to extract income taxes from.  The most interesting one this year was probably that of Pizza Hut franchisee O. Gene Bicknell from whom Kansas is seeking $40 million.

This cautionary tale was something of a shocker.  A CPA faced prison for letting clients run personal expenses through the business.

I follow hobby loss cases quite a bit.  The most significant one this year was that of Susan Crile, a world class artist, who just never seemed to make any money.  There was at least one really good horse case where the taxpayer won by pretty much partnering with a trainer.

The story I would most remind people of for this month is titled Professional C Corp Denied Deduction For Uncashed Salary Check To Owner

On The Issues Of The Day

My coverage of the special tax treatment of clergy did not attract as much attention as I expected.  Last year Judge Barbara Crabb had declared that Section 107(2), which allows ministers of the gospel to receive tax free housing allowances with no dollar limits, was unconstitutional.  My small band of parsonage junkies, most notably my most constant commenter Roberty Baty, was on pins and needles as the Seventh Circuit considered the case ultimately knocking the challenge out on standing.  In one of my posts I got to play historian, which was kind of fun.

My on again off again series on women in accounting seems to not be generating that much excitement, but it has made me some new friends who I have added to my brain trust.  Most notable this year was SALT (State and Local Tax) expert Sylvia Dion. 

I continue to cover what I like to refer to as “alternative tax thinkers”.  They probably add the highest humor content to the blog.

An example is Could You Make Tax Protester Theories Work For You?.

I wish more people would read my review of Confidence Games, which explains how the most prestigious accounting firms ran a raid on the treasury in the nineties.  The current devastation of the IRS is setting us up for a rerun of that period.  That is why I wrote that Restoring Trust In IRS Is A National Imperative.

Finally, I have found quite a bit of interesting material in local property taxes.  Probably the best one was the one in which a Massachusetts court took notice of global warming.

 When Will The Millennium Finally Arrive?

I’ve been trying to post every business day between 9:00 and 11:00, but stuff happens, so I should hit the thousand mark in the late spring, but it may be early summer.  This may be a challenging tax season what with those repair regs, so the day job may interfere a bit.