Tax Guru – Ker$tetter Letter

Helping real people win the tax game.

Archive for July, 2005

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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Posted by taxguru on July 23, 2005

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Posted by taxguru on July 23, 2005

Gail Delivers the Skinny on ‘SCINS’ – Good look at estate taxes by Gal Buckner, including the tactic of parents selling appreciated property to their kids with self cancelling installment notes, a strategy I have advised for a very long time.

 

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Posted by taxguru on July 23, 2005

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Posted by taxguru on July 22, 2005

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Money more important than decency

Posted by taxguru on July 21, 2005

Panel suggests repealing alternative minimum tax 

What is more telling about the mentality of our rulers is this sub-head:

Still at issue: How to recoup lost revenue

As I’ve long explained, the words fairness and taxes cannot be in the same sentence with any credibility.  When it comes to money for our rulers to confiscate from the people, fairness is an entirely inappropriate concept.  Just because the AMT has evolved into an insane, unfair, immoral, unethical, convoluted mess is not reason enough to eliminate it, as long as it is still producing dollars for our rulers to spend.  If our rulers had any concept of decency, travesties like the AMT would be removed without regard for the money involved.

 

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Posted by taxguru on July 19, 2005

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Posted by taxguru on July 19, 2005

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