Most Recent Posts
USCT Reenactor Responds To The Neoconfederate From Bavaria
Back in June I had a guest post from Georg Snatzke about his experience of the Civil War Sesquicentennial. Georg is from Bavaria, He dedicated his vacatons from 2011...
IRS Says Charitable Trust Not Charitable Enough
The Schaefer case is about a charitable estate tax deduction for two NIMCRUTs. You start out with the value of the assets in the trusts and then you do some fancy math – life contingencies combined with present value – to divide that between the income interest and the remainder interest. The latter is deductible either for estate tax purposes as in this case or as an income tax deduction. If the remainder interest computes to less than 10% of the overall value, no charitable deduction is allowed.
The higher the payout ratio, the lower the value of the remainder. One of the trusts had a payout rate of 10% and the other was 11%. Both the IRS and the executor agreed that with that payout the charity would be getting less than 10% of the value. The executor argued that in doing the valuation the net income limit should be taken in account. Apparently there was some sense that the trust would not hit that target rate. The Tax Court wanted them to also consider using 5%, which is the minimum allowed payout rate.
Does Paper Filing Avoid Identity Theft?
Lu Gauthier of Boston Tax Institute has given me permission to reproduce his email blasts. Two practitioners have responded to our request below: one files only PAPER...
Lu Gauthier Issues Warning About Information Returns
Lu Gauthier has given me permission to publish his email blasts. This one is particularly important. Many business owners are not aware of how many vendors they need...
Citizens United Fighting To Keep Dark Money As Dark As Possible Loses To NY AG
In addition to the IRS exempt organizations that solicit money are also regulated by the states where they raise money. There are various filings required, sometimes much more rigorous than what the IRS requires. As part of the package though, they will usually want a copy of the Form 990 that the organization files with the IRS. That’s the way it is in Massachusetts anyway and apparently in New York too. CU had been sending the New York AG its 990 since 1995. They had not been including Schedule B and nobody seemed to mind. The Charities Bureau conducted a survey of its operations in 2012 and noticed that certain organizations were not including Schedule B with annual reports. The AG implemented an across-the-board initiative to identify and notify the organizations that had not been filing Schedule B with their state reports. In April 2013 the CU organizations were notified that their filings were incomplete.
Julian Block On How To Take A Tax Deduction For Protecting Your Good Name
Julian Block has agreed to help me in my effort to become the Tom Sawyer of blogging. Ordinarily, deductible business expenses include payments to settle disputes,...
Review Of Julian Block’s Home Seller’s Tax Guide
Of course planning for the exclusion is not the only issue. There is the matter of actually determining your gain. Julian provides a lot of advice on that including some that would be good to follow well before you are thinking of selling. This was where I picked up another tip, that had never occurred to me. Owners of condominiums and cooperative apartments should be sure to include capital assessments that that they have paid over the years to their basis when they compute gain on sale. Then there is the stuff on divorce, estates and, don’t get me started, community property.
I think that most readers will find that Julian makes some fairly complicated matters accessible to readers. I would say that this book borders on a must read for realtors and attorneys who handle a lot of home sales and homeowners who prepare their own returns. A hard copy can be ordered from Julian’s site and it is also available on Kindle. Used copies are being sold on Amazon for a small fortune, but I don’t quite get what is going on there. Better you should buy six copies direct from Julian and give them to your friends.
Alan Collinge Still Fighting For Student Debt Reform
It has been some time since I have published anything from student loan activist Alan Collinge. Here is the latest update on his activities. Hello Folks: I am happy to...
Evidence That Judge Did Not Call Kent Hovind’s Crimes Worse Than Rape
When the federal government prosecuted Young Earth Creationist Kent Hovind for actions he took while in prison to affect the title to property seized by the government as the result of his first conviction a vigorous social media campaign emerged in his defense. It’s flagship website is #FreeKent and the primary youtube channel is Rudy Davis’s LoneStar1776. Kent Hovind’s defenders constructed a narrative of a godly man who had not broken any laws being persecuted by altogether wicked people -judge, prosecutors and IRS agents- because he was so successful in exposing the lie of evolution, one of the key components of the Satanic plan to impose a New World Order.
One of the key elements in the narrative was the “worse than rape” statement which was taken as one of the proofs that Judge Margaret Casey Rodgers is altogether wicked.
Judicial Watch Reveals That They Read Tax Blogs At IRS
The weight of the “blockbuster documents” seems to support the notion that this was a case of tax geeks stepping on a land mine. The issue of whether the gift tax applies to 501(c)(4) contributions remains unresolved so one revenue agent in the exempt group making a referral to estates and gifts is hardly shocking. Whoever got the referral in estates and gifts, when they looked into the matter would find that there was strong support for raising the issue.
There was one email where someone was wondering how it had all happened and whether there needed to be controls over those type of referals to make sure everybody relevant knew what was going on. I suspect that Frank Wolpe who has written on the baleful effects of the IRS reorganization in the ninetites would attribute the problem to the silo style of management.