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Tax Advice & News Articles

IRS Warns Taxpayers To Protect Against Identity Theft, While GAO Indicates The IRS Itself May Present A Significant Risk

April 2nd, 2013

April 2013 The IRS recently released its annual list of the top 12 tax related schemes, known as its “Dirty Dozen” and described in detail here. [...]

Private Annuity Transaction Upheld As An Estate Planning Tool

February 19th, 2013

February 2013 In the Estate of Virginia Kite vs. IRS, T.C. Memo 2013-43 (February 7, 2013), affluent taxpayers were given support for a potentially substantial [...]

A Roth 401(K) Conversion May Be Advantageous For Those Who Can Afford The Additional Tax Now

February 5th, 2013

February 2013 With the government perspective that obtaining tax dollars now is good and we can worry about later…well later, the American Taxpayer Relief Act [...]

Home Office Deduction Just Got Easier

January 22nd, 2013

January 2013 The home office deduction is one which many taxpayers consider utilizing.  In today’s world, what professional is not also working from home, at [...]

Whistleblower Recovery Is Ordinary Taxable Income

July 31st, 2012

August 2012 The Ninth Circuit decided a taxation case of first impression involving whether a qui tam or whistleblower recovery provides a taxable capital gain [...]

Understanding The New Investment Tax

July 10th, 2012

July 2012 Now that the Supreme Court has ruled that the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA, aka ObamaCare) is constitutional, it is time [...]

Reasonable Compensation Analysis Needed For Closely-Held Corporations

June 6th, 2012

March 2012 Reasonable compensation questions affect millions of closely-held corporations whose owners actively participate in the business.  The issue involves how much payroll taxes are [...]

Unreported Income Taxes (17% of Total) Are Too Large To Ignore

June 6th, 2012

February 2012 The IRS conducts approximately 14,000 random audits each year.  One of their purposes is to determine the level of tax compliance, which the [...]

Qualifying for the Home Office Deduction

December 1st, 2011

November 2011 More employers are allowing telecommuting as a work option. Additionally, these economic times cause some to work out of their homes as a [...]

Tax Proposals In The American Jobs Act

September 20th, 2011

September 2011 On September 12, President Obama provided the legislative text for the “American Jobs Act” that he summarily described during a September 8 speech [...]

Goodwill Impairment Tests Become Easier

September 20th, 2011

September 2011 In September 2011, the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) issued Accounting Standards Update 2011-08, entitled “Testing Goodwill for Impairment”.  This amends guidance in [...]

Treasury Department Report Sets Stage for Law Firm (And Others’) Tax Increase

September 8th, 2011

September 2011 In August, the Treasury Department released a report that redefines what constitutes a small business.  In the coming debate about raising taxes, you [...]

Controversial 1099 Reporting Repealed

April 17th, 2011

By wide margins, both houses of Congress repealed both (i) the expanded Form 1099 information-reporting requirements mandated by last year’s Patient Protection Affordability and Care [...]

IRS Report Provides Candid Assessment Of Major Problems

January 17th, 2011

January 2011 Nina E. Olson is the current head of the U.S. Taxpayer Advocate. This is a government office dedicated to helping taxpayers solve their [...]

Congress’ Procrastination Means A Delayed 2010 Federal Tax Refund

January 17th, 2011

Taxpayers did not benefit from Congress’s procrastination on deciding whether or not to extend the 2001 Bush tax cuts. Despite having ten years to make [...]

Details And Costs Of The Year-End Tax Act

December 17th, 2010

The Tax Relief, Unemployment Insurance Reauthorization and Job Creation Act of 2010 (HR 4853) (the “Act”) is now law. The press has already written much [...]

Small Business Law Creates Tax Breaks and “Tarp 2” Lending

September 17th, 2010

September 2010 President Obama signed the Small Business Jobs Act of 2010 (H.R. 5297) on September 27, 2010. The law contains the following major provisions [...]

New Economic Substance Test Eliminates Certain Judicial-Based Confusion, But Still Allows Significant Judgment

May 17th, 2010

The recent health-care legislation (H.R. 4872) will be partly paid by a tax increase associated with an unclear tax provision aimed at tax shelters, but [...]

Software No Longer Subject To California Sales Tax

November 2nd, 2009

May 2011 In mid-May 2011, the California Supreme Court denied the State Board of Equalization’s petition for review of the Court of Appeal decision in [...]

California Service Firms Must Now Register With BOE, And File Annual Use Tax Returns

October 17th, 2009

October 2009 Use tax occurs whenever California sales tax is not paid. Sellers having no physical presence in California are not required to collect California [...]

Employee vs. Independent Contractor Status Receiving Increased Attention

September 17th, 2009

September 2009 Beginning in November 2009, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) will begin audits under its latest National Research Program (NRP). The IRS started the [...]

Last Compliance Warning To Numerous Non-Profits

August 17th, 2008

August 2010 Hundreds of thousands of small nonprofit organizations are at risk of losing their tax-exempt status because they failed to file required informational returns [...]

Prepare Now For 1099 Reporting Under The Health Care Act

July 17th, 2008

July 2010 In order to pay for the health care benefits of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), the scope of Form 1099 [...]

IRS Needs Significant Additional Controls In Its Role As Disbursing Agent For Refundable Tax Credits

January 17th, 2008

January 2010 In two reports made public in December 2009, the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (“TIGTA”, but usually referred to in the rest [...]

IRS To Finally Require Tax Preparer Registration, Continuing Education, And On-Site Visits

January 17th, 2008

January 2010 For the 2007 tax year, about 60% of the 143 million individual tax returns filed with the IRS were done by paid preparers. [...]

Tax Relief For Employment-Law Plaintiffs

October 17th, 2007

Tucked away in the 600-plus pages of the American Jobs Creation Act of 2004 is something called “Civil Rights Tax Relief”.  This is an important [...]