From Russ Fox, EA, of Clayton Financial and Tax of Las Vegas, NV. All of the items below are for information only and are not meant as tax advice. Please consult your own tax advisor to see how each item impacts your own situation.
Whether you should take the deduction in 2009 is another question, though. For most individuals, it won’t make a huge difference. For high income individuals, given that 2010 tax rates figure to be higher, you will likely get more bang for the buck by waiting until you file your 2010 taxes to take the deduction.
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Many of you may remember the movie classic Network:
On Tuesday, voters in Massachusetts sent a message to politicians. Massachusetts elected a Republican Senator. To put that in perspective, the last time a Republican was elected to the Senate in Massachusetts was in 1976, nearly forty years ago.
Massachusetts elects Democrats the same as the Sun rises in the eastern sky every day. But that didn’t happen on Tuesday. The why of that has to both directly and indirectly with taxes.
Massachusetts has been known informally for years as “Taxachusetts.” Actually, the Commonwealth is no longer among the “leaders” in high taxes in the U.S. It’s not that Massachusetts has gotten better; rather, other states, California included, have gotten worse. Still, Massachusetts recently had an initiative to eliminate its income tax (it failed). The current governor, Democrat Deval Patrick, has proposed tax increases. The voters in Massachusetts haven’t shown much love for that idea.
With the Massachusetts legislature and the governship in the hands of Democrats, wouldn’t voters in liberal Massachusetts be happy? Not hardly. Now add in Congress–completely in the hands of Democrats–and a Democratic President. During the past year, they have spent like there’s no tomorrow. Massachusetts residents may be liberal, but they’re not dumb. Sooner or later the bill for that spending must come due.
The last straw was the current health care “reform” measure. It doesn’t take a genius to see the money being wasted in this legislation. To get enough votes so that it would pass the Senate, giveaways (measured in billions of dollars) were done for Louisiana, Nebraska, and Connecticut; there are probably many, many more that no one knows about. After all, the legislation runs over 2,700 pages. I, and other bloggers, have noted, “It’s unpopular, unworkable, and insane, so naturally they’re in a hurry to pass it.”
Voters in Massachusetts and elsewhere want a small, nimble government. What they see coming out of Washington and the local state house is bloated bureaucracy. If you are a politician running for office this year a message has been sent. Imagine you’re going through a tunnel, and you see a light getting brighter and brighter. For those politicians who will embrace what voters want, the tunnel is at an end. I believe that for many politicians the light is an oncoming train.
There is some good news in California this weekend. We’re apparently about to be hit with a lot of rain. The television stations are saying we’ll get four to eight inches this coming week. That doesn’t sound like much, but it’s a lot when the average annual rainfall in Irvine is just over ten inches. The El Nino rainfall should help end the drought that’s hit Southern California (and the entire state). If only Mother Nature could help California’s budget.
That, though, isn’t going to happen. We still have the Democrats who want to tax our way out of the problem and the Republicans who want to cut [spending] their way out of the problem. When I took physics in college, the professor asked, “When the unstoppable force meets the immovable object, what do you get?” I now know the answer: California.
The problem is that this budget, and the budgets for the last several years, have used gimmicks, slight-of-hand, and everything but looking at the core issue. It’s simple, really: California spends too much money. We need to drastically cut government spending. This means that public employees need to get less, public employee pensions need to be cut, and staffing needs to be cut. Costs shifted from the federal government to California need to be shifted back to the federal government. It’s time to be realistic about what we have coming in, and not spend a penny more.
It really is that simple. Unfortunately, there’s almost no chance of the state legislature actually dealing with the issue. Instead, more gimmicks will be in the future.
If someone tells you there’s no such thing as an income tax, run, don’t walk, in the other direction. If someone tells you that all you have to do to avoid the IRS is submit a report of your IRS decoded individual master file to the IRS, run very fast in the other direction. Unfortunately, Lin Bartee and his wife Christine Wenger-Bartee didn’t heed this advice.
Back in 2001, the IRS and Department of Justice allege that the Bartees earned $472,933 from income and liquidating their assets. They filed an extension, but didn’t get around to filing their actual return. Then they allegedly transferred $240,000 to Ms. Wenger-Bartee’s parents who then sent much of that money on to Costa Rica.
In February 2003, they allegedly sent a letter to the IRS noting that they didn’t have to pay taxes because they had decoded their tax file, or some such nonsense. In April of the same year, they declared bankruptcy; however, they allegedly left off the IRS from their list of creditors. In 2004, the bankruptcy court refused to discharge their case. The Bartees then left to join their money in Costa Rica.
The Bartees were arrested in 2009 in Costa Rica but fought extradition. They lost that battle; they’re back in Sacramento as I write this. They’ve been arraigned on charges of tax evasion and bankruptcy fraud.
If you really, really want to go to ClubFed for committing tax evasion, do what Tom Daugherty of Fort Myers, Florida did. Mr. Daugherty, a commercial real estate broker, bought $2.19 million of cashier’s checks from Orion Bank. He also paid $53,000 in overdraft fees from the bank. When a bank employee asked why he was doing this, Mr. Daugherty apparently told the truth. “I’m hiding the money from the IRS,” is what he apparently said.
The Wall Street Journal editorializes on Friday that Oregon is at the tax crossroads. The Oregon Legislature, dominated by Democrats, voted to increase the state’s top personal income tax bracket to 11% from 9%; they also voted to increase the state’s business income tax to 7.9% from 6.6%. Signatures were gathered and a mail election is underway on whether or not these tax increases actually go into effect.
The Journal notes,
In the last budget, the Democratic controlled state legislature doled out a $259 million pay raise to the government work force, even as the state was facing a near $1 billion deficit. In the last three years, the state has added 25,000 new public employees while losing 40,000 private sector jobs. The union TV ads say the tax hikes are needed to preserve schools, roads and public services.
The 11% income tax rate will make Oregon’s income tax about twice as high as the national average. Businesses in Portland can move across the Columbia River to Vancouver, Washington and pay zero income tax. Oregonians used to argue they didn’t have to pay a state sales tax. But the current tax proposal imposes a first-ever “gross receipts tax” on certain retail and wholesalers. This is a disguised sales tax.
The days of unlimited tax and spend are ending. The election in Massachusetts is demonstrating the anger of Americans towards the Democrats’ tax and spend proposals. We’ll have to wait a couple of weeks to see if Oregonians send a message to their legislature about increasing taxes in a recession.
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1. Check the person’s qualifications Ask if the preparer is affiliated with a professional organization that provides its members with continuing education and resources and holds them to a code of ethics.
2. Check on the preparer’s history Check to see if the preparer has any questionable history with the Better Business Bureau, the state’s board of accountancy for CPAs or the state’s bar association for attorneys.
3. Find out about their service fees Avoid preparers that base their fee on a percentage of the amount of your refund or those who claim they can obtain larger refunds than other preparers.
4. Make sure the tax preparer is accessible Make sure you will be able to contact the tax preparer after the return has been filed, even after April 15, in case questions arise.
5. Provide all records and receipts needed to prepare your return Most reputable preparers will request to see your records and receipts and will ask you multiple questions to determine your total income and your qualifications for expenses, deductions and other items.
6. Never sign a blank return Avoid tax preparers that ask you to sign a blank tax form.
7. Review the entire return before signing it Before you sign your tax return, review it and ask questions. Make sure you understand everything and are comfortable with the accuracy of the return before you sign it.
8. Make sure the preparer signs the form A paid preparer must sign the return as required by law. Although the preparer signs the return, you are responsible for the accuracy of every item on your return. The preparer must also give you a copy of the return.
My usual rule of thumb holds: If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.
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Tax protester Ed Brown received 63 months for tax evasion. You may remember that he decided to barricade himself in his New Hampshire home, fill it with weapons, and tell the government to go somewhere else. As Joe Kristan notes, “Armed holdouts are poor tax planning.” Mr. Brown got 37 years for the weapons charges. Joe Kristan has more.
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If you’re ever accused of a criminal offense, and you’re under bond (bail), you should show up at your trial. If you don’t, you are certain to find yourself in even worse trouble. Add in allegedly committing tax evasion and making up your own US debt instruments and your trouble is likely to multiply. Such is the case for two Ohio dentists.
Of course, we should start at the beginning. Dr. Bruce Mrusek of Maineville, Ohio and Dr. Bradley Brennecke of Pleasant Plain, Ohio were audited in 2004. The results of that audit aren’t available, but a criminal probe opened following the audit. That in itself says all we need to know.
The problems of the dentists were deep. First, the dentists allegedly transferred assets into their wives’ names to hide them from the IRS. They then allegedly sent phony documents to the IRS to pay their 2002 – 2004 taxes. Now, they didn’t send $1,000, or $10,000, or even $100,000 or $1 million in fake payments.
They allegedly each sent over $19 billion in phony payments. According to a Department of Justice press release, the documents were labeled as “‘Secured Promissory Notes’ to the U.S. Department of the Treasury as purported payment of their tax debts.” They then asked for $9.6 billion of refunds. That takes chutzpah.
Unfortunately for the dentists, the IRS and Department of Justice lack much of a sense of humor regarding payments of fake money. They were indicted on tax evasion, conspiracy to defraud the IRS, and passing fictitious instruments. Dr. Mrusek was also accused of filing false business tax returns. They were released on bond, with the trial set to start on Monday.
