It’s rare that an individual wins a victory against the IRS.
Rarer still is a landmark victory that could mean thousands in deductions for others.
But that’s exactly the double-feat nurse Lori Singleton-Clarke accomplished, winning a ruling that her nearly $15,000 in business school deductions were legitimate. This judgment makes it easier for other professionals to claim from an MBA tax deduction. (more…)
While nationalized healthcare continues to be this young decade’s political event, there are still those of us who, whether self-employed or who work for businesses that don’t offer healthcare, pay for our own healthcare. Here’s some tax tips for we brave souls on the frontier of the healthcare debate. (more…)
Planning on buying a new car? Now might be the best time. The American Reinvestment and Recovery Act, commonly known as the Federal Stimulus Bill, provides some enticing incentives for purchasers of new cars and several other types of motor vehicles. The incentive is in the form of a tax deduction on your 2009 tax return. The initial form of the legislation provided for a tax credit, but the final legislation that was passed made it into a tax deduction. Depending on your income level and the vehicle you are planning to buy, this benefit could yield a fair chunk of change in your pocket.
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This just in: the IRS wants taxpayers to help them decide which tax preparers… they can decide to work with. At first, it seems like a pretty redundant exercise: the IRS is asking taxpayers and other interest groups to decide what criteria they’d like someone to satisfy before that person can prepare their taxes. People already do this — by paying someone to prepare their taxes.
So what is the IRS trying to add here? (more…)
Bloggers and forums are abuzz over the news that TurboTax may be calculating the Recovery Rebate incorrectly. Apparently TurboTax users are getting letters from the IRS complaining that they claimed too large a credit for the rebate, and that they’ll need to pay it back. The TurboTax team has responded to explain some of the confusion, but that’s not the whole story.
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It may feel like taxpayers always complain and Congress never listens, and perhaps most of the time that’s true. But once a year, Congress asks the National Taxpayers advocate to report on taxpayer concerns. And the latest report just came out. So what’s coming up next? Ten highlights:
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One of the keys to Amazon.com’s remarkable growth has been their “affiliate” program. They allow anyone to link to Amazon products and get a cut of every purchase. It’s a great program for Amazon, because it gives them a sales force with hundreds of thousands of members, none of whom need a salary. And it’s good for customers, too, since it gives people an incentive to write about the products they like, that others might like, too. In fact, some bloggers have been able to make a decent income off of Amazon affiliate payments. But all is not well for Amazon or Amazon’s affiliates.
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One of the fastest responses to the real estate slump was a new homebuyer credit. The plan, of course, was to stimulate new home purchases. It may have already had an effect — housing starts have jumped lately, and the property market has stabilized — but that may not be enough. If the National Association of Realtors gets their new plan enacted, the credit will be nearly doubled, and the “First-Time” part of “First-Time Home Buyer Credit” will be dropped.
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Contrary to recent rumors, the IRS isn’t trying to tax employee mobile phones as a benefit. Instead, they’re getting rid of the existing tax — which nobody had bothered to pay.
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Two big, related stories today:
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