There has always been a gray area between core government functions and the use of private enterprise. With IRS regulation changes allowing private contractors to participate in tax audits, the tension in this gray area has already begun to increase. According to a recent Forbes article, Microsoft has filed an injunction […]
Category: Audits
Silicon Valley employees at technology companies like Google Inc., Facebook Inc. and Twitter Inc. have enjoyed free cafeterias as well as pizza joints and kitchens stocked with organic produce, on behalf of their employers. The benefit has become ingrained into much of the valley’s culture and is believed to encourage […]
Most banks have some type of customer loyalty points program where you earn a certain number of points based on dollars charged each month. In some cases, the bank may offer a certain number of points for opening an account. When you convert the points into a new television or […]
As part of a recent settlement between Bank of America and the U.S. Department of Justice, almost seven billion dollars will be available to provide relief for homeowners struggling with “underwater” mortgages. Forgiveness of substantial mortgage debt could however lead to large tax bills in April just as these homeowners […]
In general, the Internal Revenue Service treats a cancellation or discharge of debt as income. You may wonder how you are to pay tax on the cancelled portion of a loan, if you did not have the money to pay the debt in the first place. Only the debtor who […]
When homework was completed with a pen and paper, the excuse that the dog ate your homework was plausible. It could happen, although it has always been unlikely. As everyone moves to digital, the excuse becomes the dog chewed up the flash drive or maybe the external hard drive. Recently, […]
Tax audits are not all of the same type. Many people may think of a face-to-face encounter with a revenue agent when they hear the term “tax audit.” Audits of this type, conducted by a revenue agent at a local office of the IRS or at a business location, are […]
Political commentators sometimes opine that in a democracy, we get the government we deserve. As a broad sociological statement, perhaps there is some truth in this statement. For individual taxpayers, however, it is difficult to understand why the IRS fails to provide better customer service. In this post, we will […]
Part of mature thinking is being able to weigh the odds. This doesn’t mean gambling. It means knowing the likelihood that something will happen and tailoring actions accordingly to attain specific goals. In this post, we will consider tax audits as an example of this. It makes sense for a […]
It’s an annual ritual in recent years, one that reflects the dysfunctional, deficit-driven dance of an overly contentious Congress. One again, Congress is letting numerous tax breaks expire. But because Congress also has a pattern of reinstating those breaks months later in a piecemeal manner, the result is to make […]