Most Recent Posts
A Creepy Message From The Federal Government
I'm trying to decide whether this is ominous or not. I did a post on a case nearly two weeks ago in which I noted that the Tax Court in seeking a definition referred...
Why I Skipped The 1864 Sesquicenntential
In the summer of 2012, I had this odd notion that I just had to get to the 150th Anniversary of the Battle of Antietam. While I was there I discovered that...
I Really Missed President Obama At Gettysburg Address Sesquicentennial
Roughly a year later I have been republishing my forbes Sesquicentennial real time posts. This one went up at the end of October in anticipation of the Gettysburg...
Can Horse Owners Win In Tax Court By Partnering With Trainers?
Central to our conclusion is Mr. Knight’s involvement, not only as the trainer, but also as the coowner of petitioners’ horses. In a very real sense, he and petitioners embarked on a joint venture to own, train, race, and sell thoroughbred horses. The evidence clearly established that Mr. Knight embarked on this venture with the intent to make a profit. We conclude that petitioners’ motivation was the same as his.
Should President Obama Offer Amnesty For Legal Residents Behind On Taxes?
Given the number of delinquent accounts out there you would think I would know a few people who have them. Well I don’t, but there is this friend of a friend of mine who knew somebody I could speak to. You know how it goes. I asked this fellow or gal, whom I will call Tracy, whether a program like this might be meaningful. Tracy had a large outstanding balance that he or she never paid. There has been no word from the IRS for some time, but it hasn’t been ten years. Tracy, as usual, has no money now, but is certain that if an offer came in for a sum certain payable in three months arrangements might be made.
It seems like it might be a good deal all the way around. One more citizen out of the shadows, a bird in the hand for the government and IRS resources freed up to fight identity theft or enforce Obamacare – whatever – as long as its not harassing the Tea Party. That is counterproductive.
Seventh Circuit Kicks Parsonage Can Down The Road – Some Commentary
But the Establishment Clause isn’t the end-all, be-all of constitutionality: the Constitution is just as clear about the standing requirement. And in this case, the FFRF didn’t do anything at all to meet that bar; ultimately, they just argued that, because they would have been denied, standing was irrelevant. And the stupidity and laziness of that argument is underscored by the Seventh Circuit’s footnote 3: all they had to do, for standing purposes, was file their returns claiming the section 107 exclusion. Or file an amended return claiming it. Sure, they lose and they have to pay the unpaid taxes with interest. But they also overcome the bar to having their suit adjudicated.
I know that things like “standing” don’t really resonate with the general public (and I’ve read a couple blogs that treat this like it’s a substantive victory for the pastoral housing exclusion). But to a large degree, the validity of our judicial system rests on its procedural fairness—maybe the courts get things wrong sometimes, but at least they follow a fair, knowable procedure, giving litigants a legitimate shot at justice. By attempting to circumvent that (constitutionally-prescribed) procedure, the FFRF and the district court risked not only the precise decision that the Circuit delivered, but also undermining the very Constitution they try to enforce.
Kent Hovind And Creation Science Evangelism – How Not To Run A Ministry
According to Gallup 42% of Americans believe that God created humans pretty much as they are now less than ten thousand years ago. That is a little disturbing, but when I asked a friend of mine with biological training if there were things that we use that wouldn’t work if you didn’t believe in evolution, he didn’t come up with anything. Leaders in the “creation science” movement have been encouraging Kent Hovind to give up fighting the IRS and focus more on creation science. The prosecution motivates Kent to keep up the tax fight and possibly drag some part of the 42% into sovereign citizen tax defiance. Even though I believe in evolution and that the world is billions of years old, I would rather have Kent Hovind trying to convince people that the world is 6,000 years old than encouraging crackpot tax theories. I think the latter are more harmful. That’s why I think the current prosecution might not be a good idea.
What’s In A Name? Should Naming Rights Reduce Charitable Deductions?
The story raises the question of whether you should be able to take a full charitable deduction for a donation if, as a legally binding condition of the donation, you get to have a landmark building named after you. It is worth noting that the Fisher family actually ended up making a profit, although rather a modest one on the whole deal. I computed the pre-tax return to the family as being roughly 0.85%, which is really anemic, unless you compare it to what is being paid on contemporary deposit balances. If you assume that Mr. Fisher took a charitable deduction with a 70% benefit in 1973 and the family paid capital gain tax on the Lincoln Center payoff, the after tax return comes to 3.88%, which is not great, but still better than getting poked in the eye with a sharp stick.
Interview With Former Judge Central To Kansas Property Tax Consultant Controversy
These kinds of arrangements inevitably lead to “horse trading”—i.e., compromising the interests of some taxpayers to gain advantages for other taxpayers (or even the tax consultant himself). They also lead to the practice of flooding county assessor offices with masses of appeals and using sheer volume as leverage to extract nuisance settlements. An entrepreneur can make a tidy profit each year aggregating and leveraging the appeal rights of thousands of taxpayers and settling claims within the margins.
Conduct such as this has been widely reported by county officials. For example, during a formal legislative hearing in September 2013, one county official testified that it was indeed a “truism” that such conduct occurs regularly, in addition to frivolous filings, unauthorized representation, discovery misconduct, and even physical intimidation and verbal abuse.
Do Property Tax Consultants Need To Be Reined In?
This legislation was sold on the notion that COTA had become broken: inefficient, untimely and unfair to taxpayers. I served nearly a decade at COTA and I can report, without reservation, that COTA’s efficiency, timeliness and fairness was probably as good or better than it had been for years. COTA had recently implemented a new paperless case and document management system (with private grant money no less!), and it had cut its staff nearly in half. COTA also was about as caught up on its case load as it had been at any time during my tenure. Ironically and disingenuously, the only cases that were delayed were cases in which an attorney affiliated with a tax consultant had filed a motion with COTA for an extension to submit post-trial briefs. With respect to the claim of unfairness to taxpayers, COTA ran the numbers and found that it had decided cases in taxpayers’ favor approximately 49% of the time, a percentage generally consistent with previous years. All of this was presented to, but ignored by, the legislature. By then, the narrative was firmly rooted, and facts weren’t about to change anything