Posted by taxguru on October 18, 2007
Tax Board Outs Simpson, Sinbad, Warwick – The entertainment press has picked up on my earlier piece on the Calif. FTB’s list of unpaid taxes by celebrities. I didn’t recognize Sinbad’s name on my first review of the list; but now we know who that is and that he owes over $2.1 million to the FTB.
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Posted by taxguru on October 16, 2007
People will move due to taxes, a fact that short-sighted state rulers refuse to acknowledge.
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Posted by taxguru on October 16, 2007
The IRS says taxpayers collected only half of the $8B available for the refund of phone taxes.
The form to claim this refund is very intimidating, with all of its lines and the need to have phone bill info going back into 2003. I have found that this has been another big benefit of having everything on QuickBooks and keeping multiple years running in the same file. When preparing tax returns, clients who didn’t use QuickBooks have had to settle for the tiny standard amounts of $30 to $60. For those with their data in QB, going back at least into 2003, I have been able to fill in all of the necessary data in Lacerte in about 12 minutes and the credits have been averaging several hundred dollars.
Posted in Credits, QB | Comments Off on Telephone Tax Credit
Posted by taxguru on October 13, 2007
IRS Steps Up Scrutiny On Popular Tax Strategy – Thanks to an alert reader for the heads up on this article about upcoming IRS scrutiny of 1031 exchanges. A big stumbling block for IRS will be in educating its agents on the proper application of 1031 rules, especially the fact that different kinds of real estate qualify as like kind. I’ve lost track of the number of IRS agents I’ve had to train on this and other 1031 related issues.
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Posted by taxguru on October 13, 2007
Interesting article from the Journal of Accountancy reporting on the results of their survey of professional tax preparers’ opinions on software. Very handy side by side comparison of the features in the different programs in this pdf file.
I just received a copy of the 2006 Drake program and will be taking it for a test spin to see if it’s a suitable replacement for Lacerte after I make it through the October 15 crunch.
Posted in preparers | Comments Off on Comparing tax software
Posted by taxguru on October 12, 2007
The California Franchise Tax Board has a policy of posting the names of taxpayers (or more accurately, non-payers) who owe more than $100,000 on this special page on their website. They show the amounts and the city where the taxpayer was last known to reside.
As I’ve always mentioned, merely crossing the borders of the PRC is no reason to feel secure from the FTB’s extremely aggressive collection actions. Several of the names have non-California addresses, including some celebrities such as:
Orenthal Simpson of Miami, FL owing $1,435,484.17 for personal income taxes
Dionne Warwick of S. Orange, NJ owing $2,665,305.83 for personal income taxes
What tax collector is crazy enough to go after OJ Simpson for back taxes, knowing his method of dealing with exes (ex-wife, ex home state)?
Posted in StateTaxes | Comments Off on Publicly shaming delinquent taxpayers
Tax Guru - Ker$tetter Letter 