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Divorce Has Tax Traps – Get Some Advice
Petitioner’s argument that the transfer of $80,000 (the fair market value of the Sweet Briar property) was deductible as an alimony payment fails because it was not a payment in cash. Instead the transfer was a transfer of property and therefore does not constitute an alimony payment. Although petitioner and Mr. Williams agreed that petitioner’s transfer of the Sweet Briar property would replace $80,000 of petitioner’s alimony obligation, the intent of the parties does not determine the deductibility of a payment as alimony under section 71. See Okerson v. Commissioner, 123 T.C. 258, 264-265 (2004). Instead the test for [*7] whether a payment is deductible as alimony is a straightforward, objective test that rests entirely on the fulfillment of explicit requirements set forth in section 71, including that the payment be made in cash or a cash equivalent.
IRS Defends Its Policy Of Not Penalizing Small Errors
The big argument between TIGTA and IRS is on the negligence penalty. TIGTA being a bunch of hard-assed internal auditors figures that if somebody omits income they were negligent – end of story. (Remember the negligence penalty is for the misstatements that misstate the tax by less than 10%). The programmatic approach of AUP is to let people off with a warning the first time. Thus the for the lower understatements a negligence penalty is only proposed for “repeaters” i.e. somebody who has previously been dinged in the last four years. TIGTA does not think there is any support for this easy going approach.
President Obama Challenges IRS Scandal Narrative
There is one thing that I noticed that is subtle, but I think a big deal. Stewart did not ask the President about the IRS (His main focus was the Veterans Administration). The President picked the IRS to use as an example. In less than two minutes he denied the primary scandal narrative, called for more resources for the IRS and called for corporate tax reform.
Supporters of the scandal narrative can, of course, point out many particulars that are not addressed in the President’s statement – hard drives, the TIGTA report that indicated inappropriate criteria were used. On the other hand they have yet to come up with that really great smoking gun piece of evidence that links the President to all the tsoris that Lois Lerner and the Cincinnati gang that couldn’t sort straight dished out to Tea Party applicants for exempt status. Too bad that the President watched the Watergate hearings when he was a kid and knows better than to have damning tapes like the one I imagined back in January.
Corporate Advances Kill Individual Charitable Deduction
At the end of certain months in 2004 and 2005, however, Zavadil’s personal bank account had insufficient funds to reimburse American Solutions for the amount recorded on the ledger. For those months, Zavadil and American Solutions employed a system of advances that allowed the ledger to reflect a zero balance at the end of the month. At the end of each month, Zavadil wrote a personal check to the company, and the company brought the ledger balance to zero. At the beginning of the next month, however, American Solutions advanced funds to Zavadil’s personal bank account to cover some or all of the amount of the check, recorded the advance as an expense on the ledger, and then cashed the personal check received at the end of the previous month
IRS Denies Exempt Status To Group Helping Undocumented Aliens Leave USA
I have been unable to penetrate the redaction on this ruling, so I have no candidates for the particular organization that was denied exempt status by this ruling. Reading between the lines of the ruling, it does seem to be coming from a place of right-wing populism, that I am not really that sympathetic with. Nonetheless, I think the IRS case for denying exempt status is on the weak side.
Tax Court Drops The Hammer On Employee Welfare Plan
Whatever the merits of the Sterling Plan might have been relative to other 419 plans, the Tax Court came down hard on it. In Our Country Home Enterprise Inc several taxpayers involved in the Sterling Plan ended up with business entities being denied deductions, individual beneficiaries being required to recognize income and an enhanced 30% accuracy penalty for failing to adequately disclose a listed transaction. Total tax and penalty was over $3 million. The decisions on the small number of taxpayers will be applied to over 40 others. The decision covered plans that were run by C corporations and S corporations with and without life insurance involved.
Charity Begins At Home But Should Not End There
I’d like to draw a lesson from this story, but I’m not sure what it is. You can’t set up a not-for-profit to just benefit your own family is one rather obvious one. The really intriguing part to me is the “damages due to poor drafting”. I have to wonder whether somebody forgot about the generation skipping tax or maybe didn’t realize that the nephew and nieces were actually grand nephews and grand nieces. Maybe when the Schaller decision comes out all will be made clear.
Account Of Kent Hovind’s Trial – Timeline
This is a supplement to Jonathan Schwartz Finishes His Account Of Kent Hovind's Trial. Chronology of orders to the defendants Below is a timeline of the events...
Jonathan Schwartz Finishes His Account Of Kent Hovind’s Trial
This is the final installment of Jonathan Schwartz'a coverage of the March trial of Kent Hovind and Paul Hansen on fraud, conspiracy and contempt charges. This post is...
Court Agrees Lois Lerner’s Group Did Not Trigger Individual Audits
The problem with that type of anecdotal evidence is that every year some number of people are going to be audited for the first time. You would expect that some number of those audited in say 2011 were active in the Tea Party or similar groups.
You are never going to convince most of those people that it was just luck of the draw. It would be very hard to make a statistical inference about whether Tea Party affiliation or something like that affected individual audit probability, since it is hard to define the group that the sample is being drawn from and it is possible, even likely, that the people who became involved in the conservative causes were people who already had a higher than average probability of being audited.