Archive for the ‘Individual Taxes’ Category

How to get every stinking tax deduction

Tuesday, May 8th, 2012

It hap­pens every year.  A client wan­ders in with a shoe box and a prayer and wants me to put a mir­a­cle out of my hat.  Then they get depressed or angry or both because they have to pay tax, some­times a lot of tax.

So you wanna know the secret to get­ting every stink­ing tax deduc­tion you are enti­tled to?  Rule No. 1. Keep good records. It is as sim­ple as that. (more…)

Go for the real tax thing, use an EA.

Saturday, July 23rd, 2011

The whole tax return land­scape is chang­ing. Big things are hap­pen­ing to pro­tect the aver­age tax­payer from shoddy tax return pre­par­ers.
Until 2011, there was no reg­u­la­tion of unli­censed tax return pre­par­ers. Any­body could wake up in the morn­ing and decide to do
taxes for money. At the same time the gov­ern­ment sub­jected Cer­ti­fied Pub­lic Accoun­tants, Attor­neys, Enrolled Agents, Enrolled Actu­ar­ies, Enrolled Retire­ment Plan Agents, and Apprais­ers were to strict reg­u­la­tion via Cir­cu­lar 230; licensed tax pre­par­ers could face severe penal­ties and lose their licenses for if con­victed of cer­tain kinds of crimes, if they did not file their taxes, if they gave mar­ginal tax returns or gave bad advice. That has changed. Now the IRS will reg­u­late all tax return preparers.

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That Pesky Bonus Depreciation & Automobiles — 2011 Taxes

Thursday, July 14th, 2011

If you are in busi­ness, you prob­a­bly use your car, truck or SUV for some busi­ness pur­pose.  Indeed your busi­ness may have pur­chased a vehi­cle. How much of the pur­chase price you can deduct as a busi­ness expense dur­ing any given year is a com­plex cal­cu­la­tion, called depre­ci­a­tion, which con­gress has fur­ther com­pli­cated with the addi­tion of things like 100% Bonus Depre­ci­a­tion.  This blog talks how you depre­ci­ate a new car placed in the ser­vice in 2011 includ­ing what to do about that pesky 100% Bonus Depre­ci­a­tion. (more…)

Get The Receipt From The Charity In Writing Now

Sunday, July 10th, 2011

Do you remem­ber when you could esti­mate the amount of a cer­tain amount of giv­ing to a char­ity with­out hav­ing a lot of doc­u­men­ta­tion?  “I esti­mate I dropped $20 to the Sal­va­tion Army ket­tle, and another $5 per week to the church col­lec­tion, plus donated some clothes and other items val­ued at around $50… call it $330.”   Those days are long gone. (more…)

Woo Hoo, the IRS Increases Mileage Rate

Thursday, June 23rd, 2011

Do you use your car for your busi­ness or for work? If you keep good writ­ten records, the busi­ness use of your car can be a very nice busi­ness deduc­tion, unre­im­bursed employee expense, or your employer may even reim­burse you.

On Jan­u­ary 1, 2011 the optional mileage rate was 51 cents per mile-that’s more than a dol­lar for every 2 miles you drive for busi­ness.   In recog­ni­tion of the increase in gas prices, the IRS announced they would increase the optional mileage rate to 55.5 cents per mile on July 1, 2011; nor­mally they only adjust this rate once per year. (more…)