Wednesday, September 30, 2015

Taxation of Prizes, Question Two

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Several questions were posed at a sweepstakes site . Here is another one that caught my attention: I won concert VIP tickets, there is no va...
Monday, September 28, 2015

Taxation of Prizes, Question One

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Several questions were posed at a sweepstakes site . This is one that caught my attention: Hi I have won a travel sweeps worth (ARV) $26,000...
Friday, September 25, 2015

In What Year Should a Prize Be Reported as Gross Income?

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The question is simple. When a person wins a prize, in what year should the person report the income on the federal income tax return? The q...
Wednesday, September 23, 2015

When Escaping Tax Isn’t Enough: Grab Some Tax Giveaways

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It’s bad enough, isn’t it, that the gas extraction industry has managed to escape taxation in Pennsylvania that every other state in which i...
Monday, September 21, 2015

More Tax Fraud, This Time in Judge Judy’s Court

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Slightly more than a month ago, in More Tax Fraud in the People’s Court , I described a case in which the parties disclosed that they had un...
Friday, September 18, 2015

Tax Simplicity and Complexity in One Case

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A recent case, Okonkwo v. Comr. , T.C. Memo 2015-181, illustrates how the tax law sometimes is simple to apply and sometimes rather complica...
Wednesday, September 16, 2015

When Crime Does Not Pay and Tax Makes It Worse

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A recent Tax Court decision, Rodrigues v. Comr. , T. C. Memo 2015-178, should serve as a warning of how badly things can go when someone is ...
Monday, September 14, 2015

A New Tax Specialty: Porn

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Yes, you read that correctly. According to this report , the Alabama House Ways and Means Committee, trying to deal with a budget shortfall,...
Friday, September 11, 2015

Tax Client and Tax Return Preparer Meet Up in People’s Court

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Readers of this blog know that I find interesting tax topics when I watch television court shows. Today I add another to the parade that beg...
Wednesday, September 09, 2015

It’s a Failure of Some Sort, But It’s Not a Tax Failure

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Last week, as I browsed my Facebook news feed, I noticed that someone had shared a post called “History Lesson on Your Social Security Card....
Monday, September 07, 2015

“Who Knows Taxes Better Than Me?”

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No, I am not the one asking the question. And if I did ask the question, it would not be delivered in a manner suggesting that the answer is...
Friday, September 04, 2015

A Truth of Taxation

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Controversy is swirling about the posting of a sign by a Shippensburg, Pennsylvania, property owner that stated a $10 parking fee charged fo...
Wednesday, September 02, 2015

When Tax Maneuvering Goes Bad

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The politicians outdid themselves this time. According to this story , a gerrymandering stunt has backfired, leaving the outcome of a vote o...
Monday, August 31, 2015

The Tax and Benefits Conundrum

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The anti-tax crowd, along with those who are willing to tolerate minimal taxation but want to cut significantly government spending, must no...
Friday, August 28, 2015

Traffic Ticket Fines Based on Income?

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Over at debate.org , TheUnapologeticTruth asked, “Should traffic tickets be scaled to personal income like taxes?” No matter one’s conclusio...
Wednesday, August 26, 2015

A Rudeness Tax?

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A reader alerted me to an unusual book, Tax the Rude, Not Me! . The examples provided in the preview tend to confirm the depiction of the b...
Monday, August 24, 2015

Tax Return Preparer Gone Bad

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It is not unusual to see stories about tax return preparers who are convicted of tax fraud, or of ripping off their clients. It happens too ...
Friday, August 21, 2015

Be Careful With Divorce Tax Planning, Part II

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About a month ago, in Be Careful With Divorce Tax Planning , I noted the lessons learned from two Tax Court cases in which the taxpayers end...
Wednesday, August 19, 2015

More Tax Fraud in the People’s Court

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Roughly a month ago, in Tax Fraud in the People’s Court , I described a case on one of the television court shows in which both parties enga...
Monday, August 17, 2015

Rebutting Arguments Against Mileage-Based Road Fees

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No sooner had I noted, in Mileage-Based Road Fee Inching Ahead , that the Editorial Board of the New York Times had published remarks favori...
Friday, August 14, 2015

Does It Make Tax Cents?

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The question of whether it is permissible to pay one’s taxes with pennies is one that does not seem to go away. In many instances, the issue...
Wednesday, August 12, 2015

Congress Fixes a Tax Problem

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Four years ago, in United States v. Home Concrete & Supply, LLC, et al , the Supreme Court held that a taxpayer’s overstatement of adjus...
Monday, August 10, 2015

This Tax Change Will Help But It Won’t End the Problem

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Taxpayers who are partners in partnerships, and tax practitioners preparing returns for partners, have far too often encountered the delays ...
Friday, August 07, 2015

Perhaps This is Why June 30 C Corporations Aren't Within the New Due Date Rule

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This morning, in So Who Is It That Gets Hit With This Special Tax Rule? , I asked why C corporations with a June 30 taxable year were not wi...

So Who Is It That Gets Hit With This Special Tax Rule?

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Section 2006(a)(2)(A) of the Surface Transportation and Veterans Health Care Choice Improvement Act Of 2015 , H.R., 3236, amends section 607...
Wednesday, August 05, 2015

Mileage-Based Road Fee Inching Ahead

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For at least eleven years, beginning with Tax Meets Technology on the Road , and continuing through Mileage-Based Road Fees, Again , Mileage...
Monday, August 03, 2015

Do Sales Tax Holidays Make Sense?

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As mentioned in several reports, including this one , the state of Massachusetts has set up another sales tax holiday. Under the terms of th...
Friday, July 31, 2015

Another Problem with Targeted Tax Credits

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Readers of MauledAgain know that I object to using the tax law to accomplish what can and should be accomplished, if at all, through other m...
Wednesday, July 29, 2015

Changing the Look of Tax Forms

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A reader pointed me in the direction of a three-year-old paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the Unit...
Monday, July 27, 2015

Tax Fraud in The People’s Court

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Every now and then an episode from a television court show touches on taxation. Sometimes it is tangential and sometimes it is direct. At va...