Keeping Your Money and Peace of Mind Step 2 – Your Rights The Tax Code includes a Taxpayer Bill of Rights The right to be informed You have the right to be informed about the amount of tax you owe and any interest and penalties you owe. The IRS must also explain why you owe...Read More

Keeping Your Money and Peace of Mind Step 1 – Understanding Burden of Proof It’s important throughout the process of dealing with the IRS to know everyone’s rights and duties. The Restructuring and Reform Act of 1998 shifted the burden of proof from the taxpayer to the IRS in civil tax disputes. The “burden of...Read More

The sale of rental property may trigger capital gains tax or may generate a loss. Your taxable gain or loss is determined by subtracting the property’s adjusted basis on the date of sale from the net sales price. The net sales price is your sales price less commissions, closing costs, and fix-up expenses. Your adjusted...Read More

You can successfully deal with many  IRS notices yourself.  Many require only a simple response, such as sending the IRS additional information or paying taxes on Form 1099 income you forgot to include on your tax return. The following tips apply whenever you deal with an IRS employee in his or her official capacity. Read...Read More

“Why me???  Why is the IRS auditing me?” The IRS has limited resources. IRS management doesn’t want to spend $10,000 of their employees’ time to get $2,000 of additional tax.  Their performance is monitored by the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration and the IRS Oversight Board, and their budget must be approved by Congress....Read More

A Business Owner’s Trash Can Be Treasure to a Community From Trashy Liability To Paradise, With Tax Benefits to Boot: Making Charitable Contribution in Lieu of Abandoning Unwanted Real Estate Note: the examples provided in this article for the use of land by not-for-profit organizations are included for the purpose of showing how real estate...Read More

The major effect of computer technology on U.S. tax administration from the taxpayer’s point of view has been a staggering increase in complexity. Aside from the single individual with no source of income other than wages, taxpayers have been forced to either retain the services of a paid tax return preparer, or to use tax...Read More

Season Tickets to Sports Events You cannot deduct the cost of “facilities” such as deer leases or country club memberships. However, the special rules for facilities do not apply to season tickets. You can deduct the cost of season tickets, but you must allocate the cost to each separate entertainment event. For example, here in...Read More

Several readers have written to ask what happens to business assets when a sole proprietorship becomes a Limited Liability Company (LLC). Last time I wrote about the legal aspects of transferring non-cash assets from the individual sole proprietor’s name into the name of the LLC. Today I would like to discuss the tax effects of...Read More