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Most Recent Posts

Facade Easement Deduction Allowed

Facade Easement Deduction Allowed

So Ms. Simmons probably did not get much of a free lunch out of this whole thing.  At the maximum rate she would have saved about $34,000.  If they were using the same rate schedule then as now she had to pay L’Enfant about $10,000 (maybe call it $7,000 after tax).  Interestingly L’Enfant charges based on the fair market value of the property, not the easement.  In order, I imagine,  to discourage last minute Louies, as my mother used to say, the fee varies from 42 to 60 basis points depending on when in the year you make the donation.  That leaves about $27,000 in tax savings before you start in with the appraiser and the lawyers.

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Social Security Number May Be Mark Of The Beast But That Will Not Save Your Job

This is not the first time this issue has been litigated.  It went up to the Eighth Circuit in Seaworth v Pearson in 2000 and to the Ninth Circuit in Sutton v Providence St. Joseph Medical Center.  In both those cases, it was held that being forced to “violate the law” would be an undue hardship on the employer.  It seems though, that what the law requires is for the employer to ask for the number and the regulations provide a procedure for employers who don’t receive it.

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Mo Vaughn Strikes Out In District Court Penalties Upheld

Plaintiff does not even contend that he inquired of his agents as to whether his tax returns were filed and his tax liability was paid and that he relied on their false statements that his returns were filed and taxes paid. Instead, Plaintiff simply states he “had every reason to believe … taxes and tax returns were being dealt with appropriately” because “Marshall put on a strict monthly spending budget, and assured that she was working with Krebs to prepare and file all tax returns and pay all taxes owed”

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Should You Follow The Clintons And Do Your QPRT Sooner Rather Than Later?

Should You Follow The Clintons And Do Your QPRT Sooner Rather Than Later?

The uproar over the Clintons doing a QPRT is a little silly.  It is really a pretty plain vanilla technique. Their situation probably gives them the opportunity to do much more exciting things that probably do not leave as much of a public trail.  Bill has been involved with private equity firms, which probably provide him with much greater opportunities to leverage his unified credit. I wonder if they did the QPRT to seem more like just plain folks.

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City Taxes Trip Up Investment Advisor Restructuring

So the owner employees instead of getting a flow through from an S corporation were now getting a flow through from a partnership.  Six of one, half a dozen of the other? Maybe for federal and state income tax, but not for the New York City Unincorporated Business Tax, which at 4% is nothing to sneeze at.

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Pickett’s Charge 150 – Aftermath

As we walked to our car I asked CV what her overall impression was.  She said that she was strongly reaffirmed in her belief that war is stupid, irresponsible, obscene and a waste of human life.  She thinks there is a better way to resolve conflict than sending your children to be slaughtered. (She had been really impressed by the comment by one of the interpreters that over 100,000 Civil War soldiers were under fifteen, some as young as nine.) She thinks that if we were to spend as much money on learning skillful conflict resolution as we do on war and preparations for war, we would be a world at peace.  She thinks we associate war with honor, duty and integrity, but it is really about slaughtering your children.

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Appeals Court Approves Michael Dell’s Proposition 13 Dodge

 Wayne Lusvardi in Fox and Hounds called the story an urban myth because if fails to distinguish between the sale of real estate and the sale of a business.  It happens that there was a deemed sale of the real estate for income tax purposes along with the rest of the business assets, but that’s not property taxes.  He also pointed out that in the long run, thanks to the massive renovation, there will be an increase in the property tax base.  Of course, in the short run, there is that more than $300,000 refund.

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Military Housing Allowance Much More Limited Than Clergy’s

Military Housing Allowance Much More Limited Than Clergy’s

Probably the main reason that I just had to write about this case is the reference to JROTC.  My own experience with the program clearly demonstrated that I was ill-suited for any sort of a military career, but I do have very fond memories of the instructors who were among the more colorful members of the faculty.  It was a very trying time for them and the country.  Having a Jesuit high school be military was not at all disconcerting throughout most of history.  Ignatius Loyola had been a soldier after all, but in the late sixties a few blocks north of Greenwich Village, it was rather odd.

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Kuretski – Was Legal Dream Team Really Trying To Help The Taxpayers?

Kuretski – Was Legal Dream Team Really Trying To Help The Taxpayers?

What strikes me more than anything about this drama is that it is hard to see how it could be helping the taxpayers.  Judge Srinvasan noted that there has never been an instance of a President removing a Tax Court Judge.  Judge Robert Wherry Jr., the Tax Court judge who decided the Keretski case was once accused of falling asleep during a trial, but the notion that the threat of President Obama reaching out and firing him over how he decided a collection due process case seems really silly.  Were the attorneys really maintaining that was a real potential influence?  

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