From today’s excellent batch of Thomas Sowell’s Random Thoughts:

More than half of all people filing income tax forms use someone else to prepare the forms for them. Then they have to sign under penalty of perjury that these forms are correct. But if they were competent to determine that, why would they have to pay someone else to do their taxes for them in the first place?

That actually may be connected to another of his points:

If you read all the fine print in all the documents you have to sign, you would have no time left to live a life. 

 

Q:

Subject: from Brice at TradingMarkets.com

 

Hello Kerry-

 

I’d like to invite you to be a part of  www.themoneyblogs.com/.  It’s gonna be big—we expect it to be the largest money blog site on the Web. The entire site was built around maximizing page views—to our knowledge, no one else has done this. Best of all, it’s free and it would not require any additional work at all from you—we can use your RSS feed to post. You could drive additional traffic to your blog and get even wider exposure. I have a media campaign starting shortly, and it would be nice to have you in there to receive the benefits from this.

 

What do you think? Can I set you up today?

 

Brice

A:

Brice:

I appreciate the offer; but must respectfully decline.  I value my independence and the ability to openly express my uncensored opinions far too much to be able to handle being part of a blog that is controlled by anyone else.

However, I wish you the best of luck in your endeavor.

Kerry Kerstetter

Follow-Up:

OK. Just to let you know, we are just repostintg blogs, not doing any editing.

 

Brice

 

From an interested reader:

Subject: Re: outsourcing to India

Mr. Kerstetter,

Just a note to say I liked what you said on June 12 about outsourcing.  I support anything that promotes an informed consumer.  I feel the same way about genetically modified foods.  I have no problem buying and eating them, but will support anyone who bothers to put that information on the label because it increases my choices.

Also, on the 11th you told a couple they would each qualify for the exemption on their home sales.  You might want to add that it is a per person exclusion, not really a 500k per couple exclusion.  In other words, if they were hoping that if one fell short of the exemption the remainder could be credited toward the other, they are out of luck.

My reply:

That was the point I was trying to make regarding the tax free home sale exclusion; but your explanation makes it even clearer that each spouse’s exclusion stands alone and they can’t be added together in the way that you mentioned.

Thanks for writing.

Kerry Kerstetter

 

India picks up accounting work as part of outsource trend – More on an issue I have discussed on several occasions. 

I still think it’s a good idea for tax and accounting firms that don’t farm their work out to other countries to explicitly state that fact in their promotional and advertising materials.  Since I doubt that most clients are aware of the extent to which accounting firms are using Indian sub-contractors, having that item mentioned in firm literature should hopefully make them more aware to the point that they come out and ask firms that don’t cover it and expose those that are keeping their use of Indian outsourcing a secret.  

Of course, if USA firms openly disclose their use of outsourcing to current and potential clients, and those clients have no problem with that fact, there should be no problems.

Q:

Subject: Love your blog; have a question

Hi Kerry – I’ve been reading your blog this evening trying to see if you’ve already answered this question… I can’t seem to find it answered already, so here goes:

 

My partner and I are planning to get married.  Each of us owns a primary residence (I’ve owned my house about 4 years; he’s owned his house 2 years.) We’d like to sell both houses this year, and we each want to be able to take advantage of the primary residence exemption from capital gains tax.

 

The question:  can we sell the houses and get married in the same year (and still have the tax benefits on our real estate sales)?  or do we need to wait to get married until next tax year?

 

Thanks in advance!

A:

Whether you are married or not won’t make any difference. 

If you each meet the tests for your respective residences, you will each qualify for the tax free exclusion of up to $250,000 of profit, either on a joint 1040 or on two separate ones.

You can see more on this issue in the IRS’s Publication 523. 

Your own personal professional tax advisor can give you more specifics for your particular situation.

Good luck.

Kerry Kerstetter

 

Q-1:

Subject: tax-exempt partnership

 

I got some info today about the 5 Cees Compaines and a “tax-exempt

partnership” for use in real estate holdings.

I dislike anything sold as seminars. But I usually research the ideas they

pitch in their marketing.

I can’t find much info on tax-exempt partnerships and hope that you might

enlighten me. Could it be a tool for long held real estate? Could this be

used with existing partnerships? What exacty is it.

A-1:

I’m not clear on what kind of arrangement you’re referring to.

Please send me a link to the company you are working with and I will check out their info.

Kerry Kerstetter

Q-2:

I can’t find much about the company or the technique.
http://5cees.com/

Here is the ‘plan’
http://5cees.com/UsersWeb/WPP_Strategy.htm

How it works

1.        The owner establishes a family Limited Partnership with two types

of family interests.

a.    One is the general partner who has total control

b.   The other is the limited partner who has no voting rights or control.

2.     Forming a corporation that holds the general partners interest can

provide the owners “Limited Liability Benefits”.

3.      By gifting limited partners interest to a tax-exempt organization –

creates a tax-exempt partnership.

4.      The owner exchanges the property for partnership interests and

maintain 100% ownership of the general partners

5.       The owner now acquires a large income tax deduction, avoids estate

tax and grows tax-free based upon percentage gifted.

a.   When the property is sold it avoids capital gains tax and the owner

maintained 100% control to buy more property or other assets of choice.

I checked out the website and it doesn’t give me a lot of confidence of being legitimate with no names of real people.

Also, the basic premise is completely flawed.  Giving a share of a partnership to a tax exempt entity doesn’t make the entire partnership tax exempt.  Whoever came to that conclusion is completely nuts and not to be trusted.

Unless there is more to back up this plan, I would stay as far away from it as possible.

Kerry Kerstetter

 

And any tax advisor who recommends intentionally losing real money in order to save on taxes should be avoided at all costs.

Exotic Mortgages Remain Popular Despite Their Increasing Risks

Why the super-rich don’t mind the death tax – Interesting take on the matter, even though the supporters of Karl Marx’s wealth confiscation program seem to currently be winning the debate with their exploitation of class envy.  As always, the big winners from retaining this form of grave robbery will be those of us in the wealth preservation profession.  For those practitioners who fear a loss of business due to do it yourself tax and accounting programs, I constantly have to remind them that, as long as the government wants to confiscate anyone’s money, there will never be a shortage of clients for us to work with.

Mutual Fund Investors Unite! – Gail Buckner looks at a pending bill in Congress that would allow deferral of taxes on reinvested income.

GOP Policy Chair Wants Vote on Tax Code Termination – Letting the Internal Revenue Code die on 12/31/09 is an excellent idea. However, the reason this kind of legislation has no possibility of success is the fact that it would only be applicable “provided an alternative is in place by July 4, 2009. “ Such a weasel clause effectively nullifies the entire sunset provision. It should be that the IRC expires 12/31/09 no matter what.