There is an epidemic of blame shifting in the housing crisis. People who knew or should have known that they would not be able to honor the terms of the mortgage notes they signed when they expected housing values to rise are, now that housing prices have declined, attempting to shift the blame to their lenders for giving [...]
Tags: Court Cases · Deductible Expenses · Taxes 101
Are you sure we don’t need to regulate unenrolled tax preparers? Here’s the story of an accountant named Mondello who tried, with a straight face, to take a deduction on his income tax return for the value of his services (Mondello v. Commissioner, T.C. Summ. Op. 2011-97 (July 25, 2011)): Petitioner operated his Web site business [...]
Tags: Court Cases · Deductible Expenses · Taxes 101
The First Amendment gives people the right to speak freely. It doesn’t distinguish between moronic speech and intelligent speech. Right now, just down the street from me at the Orange County Courthouse, the most imbecilic and ignorant comments I have ever heard¹ are spewing from the angry mouths of angry people exercising their first amendment rights in protest [...]
Tags: Court Cases · News · Opinion
The Blog of the Legal Times reports of a man who sued the IRS because it would not audit his company’s tax returns: Guess?, Inc. co-founder Georges Marciano has lost his bid in Washington federal court for an order forcing the IRS to investigate his tax returns and liabilities. Marciano had argued that the audit could [...]
Tags: Court Cases · IRS Audits · IRS procedure
I am listening to lawyers – lawyers, mind you – on T.V. expressing outrage at the acquittal of Casey Anthony for the murder/manslaughter/aggravated abuse of her 2 year old daughter Caylee. Nancy Grace is, of course, the worst offender. She has invested the last three years slandering Ms. Anthony – she “cleverly” calls her tot mom – [...]
Tags: Court Cases · News · Opinion
“The jury has the power to bring a verdict in the teeth of both law and fact.” - Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. - Jury verdicts are subjective and, therefore, cannot be wrong.¹ We all agree in advance that whatever the collective subjective opinion of the jury is we will accept it. You can’t retract that acceptance [...]
Tags: Announcements · Court Cases · News
The The BLT, the Blog of Legal Times, reports that a divided federal appeals court in Washington said a group of taxpayers will be allowed to challenge the procedure the IRS set up to refund billions of dollars collected through an unlawful tax on telephone calls: The full U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit [...]
Tags: Court Cases · IRS procedure
