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Citizens Should Stop Trashing The IRS
If we choose to take out our frustration with tax complexity on the people tasked with enforcement, we will be in for another decade like the nineties, during which. for those who could afford it, taxes really were voluntary.
Whole Life Insurance Tax Disasters
People say life insurance is complicated and it’s lack of transparency hampers its popularity. Whole Life, like the polices in your articles , are the mother-ship of complexity , secrecy, and confusion. Many agents use “simplification” and “demystification” of financial services as their taglines, which is a good thing. But oversimplifying is an abuse of customer trust. Putting whole life in the basket of at-work benefits is an opportunity for inappropriate oversimplification. The responsibility to protect employees from those types of programs lies with the employer.
Dental Management Company Did Not Do Any Managing
A lot of people believe that you can freely shift income between related entities as long as it ties out and you have not violated the “big balance sheet in the sky”. In reality, that kind of activity runs the risk of having you be whipsawed, because income is income, but deductions must be ordinary and necessary.
IRS Does Not Spend Enough On Conferences
There is an ideology that holds that we would be better off with a much smaller federal government which would not need nearly as much tax revenue. I have a lot of respect for that ideology and I think it deserves a fair hearing. I think, though, that it is underhanded to devote energy to defeating taxation by gutting enforcement and demoralizing the enforcers. And that is what I see going on.
Conservation Easement No Deduction For Hypothetical Vineyard
Mr. Mountanos had three experts testify about the valuation. The IRS did not even bother to have their own expert. They just cross-examined the taxpayer experts. The IRS has a presumption working in its favor that the highest and best use is the current use. If the highest and best use is the current use, a conservation easement is worthless. Mr. Mountanos had experts who indicated that 287 or the ranch’s 882 acres could be converted into a vineyard. The balance could be subdivided into 22 residential parcels – hypothetically speaking.
Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you enjoy the play? The ranch is totally surrounded by federal land. There is an access easement, but it is restricted to single-family use and there is no indication that the Bureau of Land Management would alter the easement. Then there was the matter of water rights. Apparently it takes water to grow grapes. Who knew? Then there was the small matter of whether there would be any demand for a vineyard if the logistical obstacles were overcome.
Jerome James Taxed As California Resident While Playing For SuperSonics
A couple of kids and a house makes for a domicile, so California had him. The question then becomes how long California gets to keep him. There is a serious problem for Mr. James at this point. Once California has him as a domiciliary, the burden of proof shifts to him to prove that he has established domicile someplace else.
A Bit Of Ancient History Dead Sea Scrolls In Tax Court
I think I find this story irresistible because of the way it mixes the mundane and the fantastic. The Dead Sea Scrolls shared an address with what was locally known as the “toilet museum”. The image of somebody packing the Dead Sea Scrolls in a car and driving from Worcester to Manhattan to pick up a check just seems way too ordinary. Seems like there should be a couple of Mossad agents or somebody from Opus Dei involved.
John Bierwirth’s Grumman Takeover Defense Led To Pension Litigation
You have to wonder whether, in the heat of fending off a takeover attempt, it even crossed the mind of Mr. Bierwirth and the other trustees that using the pension assets for that purpose was even ethically dubious, much less something that opened them to personal liability. I remember that around that time, our firm was still doing Form 5500 for client pension funds.
NFL As Tax Exempt Less Than Meets The Eye?
Essentially 501(c)(6) organizations are not charities, because their members are trying to make money. The members, though, are trying to make money for themselves. They don’t really have an interest in having the 501(c)(6) make money. That is why it is not-for profit even though it is not a charity.
In Defense Of Special Tax Breaks
Affordable housing is another one of those things that we can’t totally rely on the free market to provide, particularly since the 1% are less attached to the free market when it comes to zoning in the neighborhoods where they live.