Tom Cahill Forgives The FBI
My friend Tom Cahill has given me permission to republish his letters home from his voluntary exile in France. This is the first in the series. It will be daily until...
Phantom Mares And Real Trucks Don’t Make For A Winning Horse Loss Tax Case
Still, if the notion of the horse business being part of the dealership business had been better executed, it might have worked. An approach that occurred to me would have been to have the operation, but not the real estate, inside a single member LLC that was owned by one of the dealerships. With that approach rather than a big nasty negative number on a Schedule F, the transactions would have just made the positive number from one of the S corporations somewhat lower. Frankly, this borders on audit lottery advice, but it is really the filing position that is consistent with the unified business argument.
My exposure to dealership accounting is somewhat limited. At Joseph B Cohan and associates in the 1980s, my buddy Mikey handled the dealerships and I had the low income housing tax shelters, but I picked up a bit here and there. That makes me think that there might be practical issues that would foreclose running the horse business through the dealership books, since “the factory” can have specific requirements about how the dealership keeps it books. Still, it might have been worth looking at
Follow Me
Over and over again courts have said that there is nothing sinister in so arranging one’s affairs as to keep taxes as low as possible. Everybody does so, rich or poor; and all do right, for nobody owes any public duty to pay more than the law demands: taxes are enforced exactions, not voluntary contributions. To demand more in the name of morals is mere cant.