Nobody wants to be audited by the IRS, but most taxpayers have had nightmares of an agent showing up at their door, asking a lot of questions about their tax returns. While it is natural to worry about an audit, the reality is that audits are increasingly rare. As CBS News […]
Category: Audits
In the first part of this post, we posed the question of how far the IRS can go back into your past when conducting tax audits. As we noted, the IRS by no means has a blank check to do this. Generally the limitation is three years, or up to […]
Tax Day has come and gone, and usually comes the time of the year when people start to worry about their taxes potentially being flagged by the Internal revenue Service. An audit is possible, though the likelihood of such a reality is very low. Still, it is good to be […]
“Don’t look back” is a memorable line in literature. It is the title, for example, of a notable documentary from the 1960s about a high-profile British concert tour by the enigmatic singer Bob Dylan. We may all agree that, in general, it is best to focus on the future. But […]
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 […]
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, […]