Susie King Taylor 360x1000
Spottswood William Robinson 360x1000
1empireofpain
2transadentilist
1trap
Tad Friend 360x1000
Stormy Daniels 360x1000
LillianFaderman
6confidencegames
1jesusandjohnwayne
2theleastofus
5albion
Mark V Holmes 360x1000
3theleastofus
499
Brendan Beehan 360x1000
Anthony McCann2 360x1000
11albion
Ruth Bader Ginsburg 360x1000
Margaret Fuller2 360x1000
Margaret Fuller5 360x1000
Adam Gopnik 360x1000
13albion
3confidencegames
Richard Posner 360x1000
Thomas Piketty3 360x1000
3defense
Anthony McCann1 360x1000
1gucci
10abion
199
George M Cohan and Lerarned Hand 360x1000
Edmund Burke 360x1000
Margaret Fuller3 360x1000
14albion
Maurice B Foley 360x1000
Samuel Johnson 360x1000
storyparadox2
1lauber
1lafayette
James Gould Cozzens 360x1000
Mary Ann Evans 360x1000
8albion'
Office of Chief Counsel 360x1000
2albion
4albion
lifeinmiddlemarch1
Margaret Fuller1 360x1000
Thomas Piketty2 360x1000
7confidencegames
2gucci
Learned Hand 360x1000
3albion
Margaret Fuller 360x1000
2defense
Gilgamesh 360x1000
1paradide
2jesusandjohnwayne
2paradise
lifeinmiddlemarch2
Betty Friedan 360x1000
2lookingforthegoodwar
Storyparadox1
Thomas Piketty1 360x1000
1defense
AlexRosenberg
Margaret Fuller 2 360x1000
1theleasofus
399
12albion
1transcendentalist
1falsewitness
1lookingforthegoodwar
2lafayette
5confidencegames
2trap
Maria Popova 360x1000
Lafayette and Jefferson 360x1000
9albion
Margaret Fuller4 360x1000
11632
4confidencegames
7albion
2falsewitness
1albion
1madoff
storyparadox3
George F Wil...360x1000
2confidencegames
Susie King Taylor2 360x1000
6albion
299
1confidencegames
3paradise

Most Recent Posts

Here Is Hoping That The First Thousand Posts Are The Hardest

Here Is Hoping That The First Thousand Posts Are The Hardest

The extra emphasis on Kent Hovind in this round-up post is perhaps a reflection of the way that the immediacy of blogging keeps one in the now.  I am actually on the slow side compare to many bloggers and will sometimes pass issues that are intensely covered, because I don’t have anything to add.  There are various attributions for the remark that “journalism is the first rough draft of history”.  I think that we can now say that blogging has become the first draft of journalism.  The tension between the two crafts has become apparent to me as I have worked with a veteran journalist in covering the Kent Hovind story.

The immediacy of blogging is often valuable in the tax area.  I received a few kudos from practitioners for being on top of the repair regs and there are quite a few cases, that have been of interest to small groups of people that would have gotten no coverage at all, if I had not noted them.  The most recent instance of that is an Oregon Tax Court decision allowing real estate taxation of parish rectory that I see being picked up by the Catholic press.

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A New York Day Is Like A New York Minute At Least For Taxes

Applying the New York rule and this day counting technique, I can conceive of someone being a full year resident of New York, New Jersey and Massachusetts. My hypothetical guy whom I call Harry Hedgefund has a monstrous house in Alpine NJ and apartments in Manhattan and Boston.  It is not unusual for him to have meetings in New York in the morning and Boston in the evening.  So he is domiciled in New Jersey and a statutory resident of both New York and Massachusetts. I’d hate to be the tax preparer who had to explain it to him.

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Structuring Seems Like A Crime You Can Commit By Accident

Interestingly, the threshold for currency reporting ($10,000) has not changed since the seventies.  I asked Ms. Zimiles about that and she said that raising the number has been discussed many times, but there is never any consensus as to what the new number should be, so it remains $10,000.  It’s funny because I remember in the seventies not having a credit card at all and feeling that if I had eight dollars in my wallet, I was ready for anything.  On the other hand, people tended to routinely deal in cash a lot more back then.  I was a hotel night auditor and I handled a lot of twenties and hardly any hundreds and nowadays I still don’t have any call for hundreds, but I am using my credit card in pizza shops.

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Failure To File Texas Franchise Tax Form Voids Lawsuit

EEPB got lucky, as it turns out.  The trial court had granted EEPB’s motion for summary judgment that the malpractice claim was extinguished three years after CAC’s charter was forfeited  and that reinstatement did not breathe life back into the claim.

The dates are important. CAC became a “terminated filing entity” on February 8, 2008 for not filing franchise tax forms.  A terminated filing entity stays in existence for three years for the limited purpose of “prosecuting or defending in the terminated entity’s name an action or proceeding brought by or against the terminated entity”. So CAC had to bring its suit against EEPB by February 8, 2011.  The suit was filed on February 15, 2013,  The forfeiture of CAC’s charter had been set aside on March 29, 2011, presumably by catching up on the franchise tax.  But that catch up did not revive the claim that was extinguished on February 8, 2011.

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Oregon Tax Court Approves Taxation Of Church Rectory

Oregon Tax Court Approves Taxation Of Church Rectory

It would seem that many church rectories or parsonages, to use the homey American term, would flunk the test laid out by the Oregon Tax Court.  It will be interesting to see whether this becomes a trend. Parsonages have fallen out of favor with many Protestant denominations where the big tax subsidy is the federal income tax break that exempts cash paid for housing allowances from income tax.  The dubious constitutionality of that provision has avoided scrutiny thanks to rulings on nobody having standing to object to it.

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Conservation Easements – Tax Court Lets Owner Sell Them Or Give Them But Not Both

Conservation Easements – Tax Court Lets Owner Sell Them Or Give Them But Not Both

To determine the amount of your charitable deduction you need to get an expert appraiser.  Generally, there is not an active market for conservation easements, so the value is determined by valuing the property at its “highest and best use” (i.e. what brings the most money) and subtracting the value of the property in the current use to which it is now to be restricted.  It’s the “highest and best use” that is the fantasy number.  It is something that nobody is ever going to do so why not make it as grand as conceivable.  Since practical obstacles don’t have to actually be overcome, they can be safely ignored.

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