John Berlau and Trey Kovacs of The Wall Street Journal point out that Mitt Romney’s capital gains income was paid with after-tax corporate dollars and, therefore, taxed twice. I don’t expect people on the left to understand this. And even if they do, I don’t expect them to stop their anti-rich, class-warrior, Buffett secretary nonsense. But hope springs eternal. [...]
Tags: Politics of Taxes · Taxes 101
Scott Hodge of The Tax Policy Blog deftly answers President Obama’s call for someone to tell him why it’s fair that the capital gains tax rate is lower than the ordinary income tax rate (emphasis added): During his Rose Garden speech yesterday, President Obama once again fueled the general misperception that people who pay the [...]
Tags: Politics of Taxes · Taxes 101
In a recent post I criticized Howard Gleckman of Tax Vox for claiming that lower-income taxpayers who don’t itemize their deductions receive no benefit from their charitable contributions even though these taxpayers “gave about 3.5% of their income in 2009″ to charity. The reason for this, Gleckman asserted, is that [T]hese taxpayers can only take the deduction [...]
Tags: Deductible Expenses · Tax Policy · Taxes 101
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
A lot of people are making a ruckus because the IRS says that the value of what Christian Lopez, the fan who caught Derek Jeter’s 3,oooth hit, which was a home run, is taxable, but it’s much ado about nothing. Here’s David Logan of Tax Policy Blog: On July 9th, Derek Jeter became the 28th [...]
Tags: Gross Income · 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
