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
Karen Hube writes about the blurry line between what is deductible and not deductible when you go on a work vacation: The federal government — unlike your spouse and kids — may be willing to cut you a break for the hard work you carve out of your precious vacation days. The time spent clicking [...]
Tags: Deductible Expenses · Taxes 101
Amanda Yoder, a 3L at University of Missouri Law School and an editor of its Law Review, has written a thorough piece on the economic substance doctrine¹ titled One Prong, Two Prong, Many Prongs: A Look Into the Economic Substance Doctrine. Ms. Yoder discusses the two approaches the courts have traditionally used in economic substance doctrine cases and [...]
Tags: Court Cases · Deductible Expenses
CPAs Alice Upshaw and Darlene Pulliam analyze a recent Tax Court ruling that found that “a taxpayer’s loan to a business associate was made in connection with the taxpayer’s trade or business, and therefore, the forgiveness of that loan was a bad-debt loss under IRC § 166(a). The IRS had argued that the loan was personal and [...]
Tags: Court Cases · Deductible Expenses · News
Kay Bell has published a very interesting chart that shows the primary reasons people don’t pay taxes: Primary Reasons for No Income Tax Liabilities on 2008 returns reporting $200,000 or more AGI Some observations: 1. Miscellaneous itemized deductions are by far the biggest contributor to zero tax liability returns. The biggest of these deductions are employee business expenses and [...]
Tags: Deductible Expenses
In my previous post we talked about the absurdity of giving more taxpayer money to government entities like the IRS who have a history of wasting the money taxpayers have already given it. Yesterday, right on cue, I received a report from The Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration titled Millions of Dollars in Questionable Qualified Motor Vehicle [...]
Tags: Deductible Expenses · IRS procedure
