Monday, May 30, 2016

Remembering All Who Served

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Today is Memorial Day. It began as Decoration Day, intended to recognize those who died in war in service to their country, by placing flowe...
Friday, May 27, 2016

Choose The Entity Carefully Because Tax Consequences Matter

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A recent case, Aleamoni v. Comr. , demonstrates the need for business owners to select carefully the entity through which the business will ...
Wednesday, May 25, 2016

Taxation of Androids and Robots, and Similar Pressing Issues

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A little more than three months ago, as I explained in “Can a Clone Qualify as a Qualifying Child or Qualifying Relative?” , a reader asked ...
Monday, May 23, 2016

Ascertaining a Taxpayer’s Motives

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Usually, ascertaining a taxpayer’s motives is something on which practitioners and judges focus when the issue involves taxpayer intent with...
Friday, May 20, 2016

The Soda Tax Flaw in Automotive Terms

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The controversy over the latest soda tax proposals in Philadelphia continues without respite. If I were to publish a reaction to every comme...
Wednesday, May 18, 2016

How to Share Costs, Or, Computing Tax Burden and Justifying User Fees

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Sunday’s Parade Magazine included an interesting Ask Marilyn question. Randall Hancock wrote: I once owned a house that was the second of 1...
Monday, May 16, 2016

If The Boss Makes You Buy It, Can You Deduct What You Pay?

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It is not uncommon for an employee to be told by an employer that the employee must purchase and use particular items in the course of perfo...
Friday, May 13, 2016

Disregarded Entities Affect All Sorts of Tax Issues

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Entities that are disregarded for federal income tax purposes almost always are discussed in the context of determining who is taxed on an e...
Wednesday, May 11, 2016

Lottery Tax Generalizations

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A recent attempt to describe the impact of taxation on lottery winnings offers some inaccurate propositions. After explaining, correctly, t...
Monday, May 09, 2016

Making Headway on Financial Literacy Education?

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A reader shared some links in response to my recent post, Is Basic Math Enough? . I had quoted a previous post, from 2005, in which I had sh...
Friday, May 06, 2016

Is the Cost of a Replacement Oven Deductible?

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A question was posed by a tax practitioner that caught my eye, in part because it seemed to be an unusual situation, and in part because it ...
Wednesday, May 04, 2016

On the Mileage-Based Road Fee Highway: Young at (Tax) Heart?

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Though I’ve never tried to calculate which topic has been the subject of the most MauledAgain commentaries, certainly my strong support for ...
Monday, May 02, 2016

Is Basic Math Enough?

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One of my second cousins once removed shared on Facebook a meme apparently originating in a tweet by Sage Boggs and then posted by George Ta...
Friday, April 29, 2016

Can Mischaracterizing an Undesired Tax Backfire?

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A little more than a month ago, in Soda Tax Debate Bubbles Up , I noted that I had heard a radio spot on a local radio station seeking suppo...
Wednesday, April 27, 2016

A Backwards Tax Argument

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It isn’t unusual for a taxpayer to report less income on a federal income tax return than is shown on an information return such as a Form W...
Monday, April 25, 2016

A Tax End-Run That Didn’t Work

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In a recent private letter ruling, PLR 201616002 , the IRS concluded that a corporation’s matching contributions on account of employee poli...
Friday, April 22, 2016

If This Happens, It Would Be a Tax Miracle

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Once upon a time, Donald Rumsfeld, who finished his career in government as Secretary of Defense, served in Congress. He served as administr...
Wednesday, April 20, 2016

Taxed When Receiving Nothing?

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Sometimes basic tax principles are easy to state but difficult to understand. Recently, in Lamas-Richie v. Comr. , T.C. Memo. 2016-63, the T...
Monday, April 18, 2016

Timing Matters in the Tax World

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One of the basic principles I try to help students understand is that in the tax world, as elsewhere, timing matters. That is a concept over...
Friday, April 15, 2016

Tax Day Numbers

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Actually, today isn’t tax day even though it is April 15. Because of a holiday, tax day is either April 18 or April 19. All these April holi...
Wednesday, April 13, 2016

A Fat Tax?

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A reader referred me to an article asking, “Can 'Fat Tax' Curb Americans' Appetite for Unhealthy Foods? My answer is no. A “fat...
Monday, April 11, 2016

Do Tax Cuts for the Wealthy Create Jobs?

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Readers of this blog know that I do not subscribe to the claim that tax cuts for the wealthy create jobs. As I’ve explained many times, for ...
Friday, April 08, 2016

Guilty of Tax Evasion But Owing No Tax

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When those who are not tax practitioners, and even some tax practitioners, complain that the tax law is complicated and often makes little o...