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Most Recent Posts

Taxpayers Blindsided By Obamacare Lose In Tax Court

Taxpayers Blindsided By Obamacare Lose In Tax Court

There is an interesting practice question here.  Dependency is a matter of fact, not an election, but when it comes to older kids not living at home, it can be treated as, in effect, an election.  Preparers need to be alert to the health care credit implications of claiming a dependent and weigh that against other benefits.

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Advocacy Group Founded By Roy Moore Accused Of Campaign Intervention

Advocacy Group Founded By Roy Moore Accused Of Campaign Intervention

Coming up on the 2008 election the IRS issued Revenue Ruling 2007-41 which sought to illustrate what constituted participating and intervening in campaigns by describing 21 hypothetical situations.  The activity that CLC is complaining about probably falls somewhere between two situations, one of which represents intervention (Situation 4) and one of which does not (Situation 12).

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IRS Revokes Exempt Status Of Charity Focused On Timeshare Donations

IRS Revokes Exempt Status Of Charity Focused On Timeshare Donations

Or you could just take advantage of one of those invitations you get for a cheap weekend somewhere in exchange for spending a couple of hours listening to a sales presentation.  That will allow you to become acquainted with someone who lives and breathes the ABC philosophy.  The critical thing you need to do to avoid being taken in is to look into what you can buy timeshares for on the secondary market.

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Edith Windsor And The Struggle Against DOMA As Seen By A Tax Geek

Edith Windsor And The Struggle Against DOMA As Seen By A Tax Geek

It is a good thing that people were honoring Edith Windsor this week.  Her story was rather compelling.  I’m going to resist the temptation to try to track down Nancy Gill to find out if she is jealous that it is not her name that is on the Supreme Court decision.  I’ll continue to think that conservatives probably should have rolled over on DOMA to show consistency on the issue of states rights.  Of course they don’t seem to be doing that on marijuana either.  On another sad note, my friend Alan Jacobs also recently passed away.  As I noted above he was giving me insight as I followed along.

Looking at it as an amateur historian, I have to say that the triumph of the gay rights movement with Windsor and Obergefell coming back to back in the lifetime of people such as Edith Windsor and my friend Alan Jacobs who had to be, as they used to say, “in the closet” in their youth is rather remarkable when compared to the struggle for racial and gender equality, which have much longer histories.

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Gulf War Syndrome In Tax Court

Practical tip here.  If you have income that is arguably taxable that you think is exempt, it is better if you file and claim the income as exempt.  Two advantages.  First, it cuts the penalty exposure.  Second, and don’t tell anybody I was the one who told you, you are more likely to get away with it. If you pay homage to the IRS document matching computer gods, an actual human has to look at your return to assess you. If you just don’t file there is no need for human intervention in order to assess you. (That’s my impression anyway)

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Obamacare Travesty In Tax Court

Obamacare Travesty In Tax Court

The executive summary of that nightmare is that the McGuires indicated that they were not responsible for a shared responsibility payment because they had paid for health insurance.  They didn’t report anything about the premium credit, because they did not get Form 1095-A.

The IRS, of course, did know about the credit and now having their income determined that they did not qualify for the $7,092 credit and increased their tax liability by that amount.  As is routine the IRS threw in an accuracy penalty.

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American Living In Canada Loses First Round In Fight Against Harsh IRS Penalty

Form 5471 is titled Information Return of U.S. Persons With Respect To Certain Foreign Corporations.  It makes it sound like Mr. Dewees was into really big stuff, but that was not the case.  Mark Feigenbaum, the attorney, gave me a short course in Canadian tax planning.  The corporate rate is much lower than the individual and there is relief from double taxation.  So you can get a significant deferral by trapping income in a corporation.  Because of that lots of very small businesses that would be flow-through entities or disregarded in the US are organized as corporations in Canada.  Besides his employment income, Mr. Dewees had some side consulting income.  He used a corporation for the consulting income because that is what a lot of people do in Canada.

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Grandparents Lose Tax Benefits To Daughter’s Common-Law Marriage

A lot of the complexity of the income tax is inherent in trying to tax income, but that sort of complexity does not really impact regular people all that much.  You are probably not running a bank or a life insurance company, maintaining inventories or mining. Some of the complexity introduced by using the income tax as the Swiss utility knife of social policy also does not create complexity that regular people have to deal with.  You are probably not developing affordable housing, preserving historic buildings or building golf courses, because you feel so strongly about conservation as seems to be the case with President Trump.

The complexity introduced by using the income tax code to subsidize the working poor, or perhaps their low-wage employers, does impact ordinary people who end up having to pay to have income tax returns prepared that really could otherwise be on a postcard.  And it sucks up a good bit of scarce compliance resources and involves the IRS in sorting out matters that would be better handled by social workers rather than accountants.

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Billion Dollars In Losses From EY Tax Shelter Knocked Out By Tax Court

Billion Dollars In Losses From EY Tax Shelter Knocked Out By Tax Court

There is an old accounting joke about a fellow who came to work every day, opened his desk drawer, looked at a slip of paper, closed the drawer, and went to work.  Everybody was curious about the mysterious piece of paper, but they respected his privacy.  Finally, though, somebody broke down and took a peek. On the paper was written “Debit by the window.  Credit by the Door”.

Debits have to equal credits. Assets have to equal the claims against assets (i.e. liabilities and equity).  It has to balance. Accountants get so fanatical about this, that they sometimes confuse things being balanced with things being right.  You can be in balance and things can still be wrong, but it can never just be one thing.  The discipline of double-entry means that a mistake in one area will also crop up someplace else as long as you are in balance. Scoundrels hate the discipline of double entry.

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Take Care If Filing Jointly With Financially Irresponsible Spouse

Take Care If Filing Jointly With Financially Irresponsible Spouse

We don’t know whether Terry’s accountant knew whether or not he was paying the balance due on the return.  If he or she did, then there was a failure to recognize that Robin was also a client, whose interest was not in alignment with Terry’s.  This is a pretty common failure of tax preparers who focus on minimizing the tax without considering collection issues. Even though it is usually not the right answer, filing separately should always be an option.

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