Tax Guru – Ker$tetter Letter

Helping real people win the tax game.

Archive for July 24th, 2005

Corporate Owned Assets

Posted by taxguru on July 24, 2005

Q:

Hello Kerry,

We just bought a some what expensive boat out of our corporation.  We will use the boat both for personal and client entertainment.  Would it be an OK idea to depreciate this asset on our corporate return?

Thanks for your input.

A:

It would be the same as with a car or any other vehicle.

There are a couple of main ways in which it can be handled.

You can just depreciate the business usage percent of the boat’s cost.

or

You can depreciate it as 100% business usage and then you either:
  reimburse the corp for the personal usage

or

include the value of the personal usage in your W-2 wages. 

Kerry

 

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Renting To Spouse

Posted by taxguru on July 24, 2005

Q:

Question:
Selling  a home that is used for rental and exchanging to another home for rental, using the 1031.
In this case, husband owns the property and resides in another residence in another town. Wife lives and works in the town where new rental is
acquired.

Is it possible to rent out the newly acquired property to the wife who has no financial interest in it and files separate federal and state income tax returns? Would this meet the requirement of being a rental?

 

A:

That could work.  You will need to be sure to charge a fair market rent, which you will report on Schedule E of your 1040.   Your wife will also need to book her payments as rent and not as something else, such as mortgage interest.

You also need to know that the home will not qualify for the tax free residence sale while it is considered a rental, by either you or your wife.

Your personal tax advisor should be able to give you more guidance.

Good luck.

Kerry Kerstetter

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Automating Quicken

Posted by taxguru on July 24, 2005

Q:

Dear Kerry,

I am now using Quicken for the first time. Is there a way that Quicken can be used to automatically track tax deductible expenses as they are made from my bank account? i.e. can you assign a payee to a ‘category’ (like capital improvements) and then program Quicken to automatically assign all the entries for the designated  ‘payee’ in your check register to the previously designated  ‘category’?  If this is a possibility, and you have any helpful information that can be used to program the system I will be glad to reimburse you for any time you spend discussing the matter with me.

Sincerely,

 A:

I don’t think you can have the program automatically categorize entries that have already been input into the file.  However, with new entries, these will be automatically assigned the proper categories if you have the box checked under “Register Options” that says “Complete Fields Using Previous Entries.”  After you manually make one entry to a payee and assign the appropriate category, all future entries to that same payee will go to the same category.

I hope this helps.

Good luck.

Kerry Kerstetter

 

Follow-Up

 Kerry –

 Thank you so much. This is extremely helpful.

 I have had almost no success getting useful answers about obvious questions from any of the Quicken support staff.

Take care. 

 

 

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No such thing as a Temporary Tax

Posted by taxguru on July 24, 2005

Mallard Fillmore reminds us how impossible it is to remove a tax, even more than 100 years after its alleged purpose has disappeared, as well as how much DemonRats hate removing or reducing any taxes.

More on this from Americans For Tax Reform

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