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Most Recent Posts

Paul Reddam’s KPMG Tax Shelter Stunk In More Ways Than One

Paul Reddam’s KPMG Tax Shelter Stunk In More Ways Than One

Tanina Rostain and Milton Regan in Confidence Games – Lawyers, Accountants, and the Tax Shelter Industry explained the ugly chapter in tax history that this deal is a small part of.  The key to these transactions succeeding was the IRS never finding them.  And the IRS probably would not have found most of them if KPMG and other firms had not been forced to turn over lists.  Congress has been steadily eroding IRS capacity.

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Personal Goodwill Avoids Corporate Tax Exposure

Personal Goodwill Avoids Corporate Tax Exposure

The impending suspension would cause customers to reevaluate whether to trust Bross Trucking and continue to do business with it. Indeed, Mr. Bross expressed his concern to his attorney that Bross Trucking might not be able to perform necessary functions as a result of the suspension. Mr. Bross’s solution was to find or create another business to take over the trucking needs for the Bross family businesses. This is the antithesis of goodwill: Bross Trucking could not expect continued patronage because its customers did not trust it and did not want to continue doing business with it.

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Will National Grid Try Dumping Its Electrons Into Boston Harbor?

I have been reading about all this off-shore money and the proposals to squelch the way companies have been managing their tax liabilities, but a case like this makes me think that a lot of those arrangements might fall apart if the IRS had more resources to chase them.  There is a brain drain from the IRS to the Big Four.  Something tells me that if we were serious about the deficit the Government would reverse that brain drain and hire some of the best and the brightest from public accounting and industry tax departments.  They would know where the bodies are likely buried.

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Your Son The Lawyer Should Not Be Your Exchange Facilitator

Your Son The Lawyer Should Not Be Your Exchange Facilitator

Taxes are complicated and I do my best to simplify things when I can.  The important concept about the “qualified intermediary” was that it not be someone who was your agent, since your agent touching the money was as bad as you touching the money.  “Qualified intermediary” was to some extent defined negatively.  I distilled it to a fairly simple rule.  Anybody that a reasonable business person would trust to hold his money and follow his instructions to acquire the replacement property was disqualified. The QI could not be his lawyer, his accountant, his brother or his partner.

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Confidence Games – How The Most Prestigious Accounting Firms Raided The Treasury

The greatest hazard that most CPAs face is envy. The hard reality of professional practice is that you either have to do some actual work yourself or pay somebody, probably pretty well, to do some work.  Tax practices try to get around this by having a “leverage model” that “pushes work down”  to the lowest paid person possible. Then there is that vast pool of highly educated South Asians that the internet makes available for compliance work.  Neither of those courses is the road to great profitability.

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Real Estate In Your IRA – How Not To Do It

Real Estate In Your IRA – How Not To Do It

Mr. Dabney honestly believed that the purchase was appropriate, even going to the trouble of obtaining a scrivener’s affidavit when he discovered that the property had been titled in the wrong name. He ensured that the funds were wired directly from the Charles Schwab IRA to Chicago Title when he first purchased the Brian’s Head property and directly back into the IRA after he had sold the property. Furthermore, the property was undeveloped, and Mr. Dabney ensured that it was being held solely for investment purposes.
Although he was mistaken in his understanding of the law, it was reasonable under the circumstances for Mr. Dabney to believe that he had not received an land.

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CPA Faces Prison For Letting Client Deduct Personal Expenses

CPA Faces Prison For Letting Client Deduct Personal Expenses

According to documents filed with the court, Couchot admitted that for tax years 2006 through 2010, he assisted in the preparation of false individual income tax returns for a group of individuals associated with the Cadillac Ranch restaurants, which caused a tax loss of over $191,000 to the IRS. On May 15, 2014, Jon Field from Dublin, Ohio, along with Eric Schilder, of Marion, Ohio, and Paul Butler, also from Dublin, pleaded guilty to tax charges related to Cadillac Ranch.

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California Court Rules That Research Fee On Electric Rates Not A Tax

California Court Rules That Research Fee On Electric Rates Not A Tax

According to Proposition 13 passed in 1978 any tax increase has to be approved by a two-thirds vote of the Legislature.  Proposition 26, passed in 2010, adjusted the meaning of “tax” to include certain fees and charges.  The burden of showing that a charge is not a tax is on the state or the locality.  SCE argued that EPIC is a tax.  The Court noted that the distinction between a tax and a fee can be a bit blurry, but found that EPIC falls on the fee side of the blur.

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Freedom From Religion Foundation On Clergy Housing Income Tax Break

Although it is a bit tangential, it is worth noting that Biblical scholars who do not hold with the “inerrancy”  of the canonical books, do not believe that Jesus actually said most of the things he is reputed to have said. The “Jesus Project”  took an organized approach to this controversy and had scholars vote on 1500 versions of 500 items attributed to Jesus in any extant work from the first three centuries of the Common Era. The “Render Unto Caesar” quote ranked eighth as something that it is likely Jesus actually said.  Besides the three synoptic Gospels, it also shows up in the Gospel of Thomas (“Turn the other cheek” comes in first, for whatever that is worth).

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