Author: Tony Novak
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Simplest tax tip: your name
Use your full legal name consistently on all tax forms to save time and headaches. Listen to the podcast.
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Concern over unsustainable tax policy
Most accountants, as far as I can tell, are concerned about unsustainability of our national deficit spending. This recent tax cut was a big step in the wrong direction. My latest podcast discusses the basics.
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Concern over Tether
I’ve written a series of posts on the theme that investors have good reason for concern about cryptocurrency investments. The latest concern is Tether. Here’s what we know: Tether is the second largest cryptocurrency behind Bitcoin. Tether claims to be backed by US dollars, therefore eliminating market value fluctuation risk. Despite its massive market trading…
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Biggest tax news of the year: 30 million will owe IRS this spring
The biggest tax news of the year came out buried inside the pages of a report issued last month by the General Accounting Office. I call this the ‘biggest news’ because it adversely affects almost 30 million people. The people most likely to be affected are upper middle income taxpayers – in other words, my…
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HRA for a sole proprietor business
(This inform is not updated to reflect 2019 proposed regulations so should be presumed to be partially obsolete). This podcast discusses the two main issues controlling a Health Reimbursement Arrangement in a sole proprietorship. Spoiler alert: it is possible but there are no income tax benefits for the business owner so it rarely makes sense…
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Three QuickBooks insights
Intuit is the world’s leading publisher of tax and accounting software. The company offers both self-serve and professionally assisted platforms. These published insights are useful: 1. QuickBooks dominates QuickBooks is used by 82% of small businesses that use accounting software. The market dominance speaks for itself, 2. Small business prefer getting help Nine out of…
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Capital gains indexing overview
The Treasury Department’s current proposal to index cap gains would certainly save a lot of money for some people. News coverage refers to the proposal as “Tax Cuts 2.0”. This single proposal would cut federal income taxes by $102 billion over the next decade. 86% of the savings would go to top 1% wealthiest people.…
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Simple tip: keep electronic bank statements
This might be the simplest tax tip I ever offer: Download and securely store copies of all your bank statements for all your accounts. Very few individuals and businesses actually do this but in the event of a tax audit, it will save a lot of time and worry. A few other tips along the…
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Abusive tax shelter still alive for the ultra-rich
This past week an interesting Appeals decision from a Tax Court case in the 9th Circuit was published in an older tax matter of Altera Corporation and Subsidiaries vs. IRS. I must immediately qualify the use of the word “interesting”. By any common usage this is not an interesting topic. This is a tax shelter…