Category: Tax Planning
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The benefits of increasing estimated tax payments
The traditional financial planning and tax management strategy is to minimize tax withholding and estimated tax payments throughout the year. Now with interest rates so low and the economy generally on the rise – meaning that actual taxes are more likely to be higher than estimated – it may make more sense to over withhold…
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Forecasting the presidential election
Accurate forecasting of the outcome of the upcoming presidential election is important for a number of business reasons. Forecasting is an important part of financial planning and tax planning, for example. Forecasting the outcome of the presidential race does not seem to be a difficult task at this point: “Most nonpartisan political analysts currently see the…
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Testing a new social media marketing message
I plan to test a new social media marketing message in this last week of June. The volume of incoming phone calls to my office that I rely upon to keep my practice in operation has dropped off since the end of tax season. This is partly due to seasonal variation but I also sense that…
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The goals of compensation and benefits planning
It occurred to me over this weekend that over more than three decades I’ve produced hundreds of recordings, articles, columns and radio spots on various technical aspects of compensation and employee benefits planning, but that I’ve never talked about the basic primary goals that we all share in this work. There are four primary…
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Tax planning for same sex couples
In 2013 the Supreme Court ruled on a case that effectively put same-sex couples on equal tax and financial footing with other couples. I summarized the financial planning impact in this June 27 2013 blog post. Five significant financial planning effects of the legal change were: 1) transfer of property to a spouse during one’s…
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How to copy Trump’s financial success
Comedian Steve Martin did a routine in the late 1970s on “how to be a millionaire”. A million dollars seemed to be a lot more money back then and a worthy goal for many. The January 21, 1978 skit on Saturday Night Live was performed for all of America: “You can be a millionaire and never pay taxes!…
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Why should you pay more tax than Donald Trump?
“Politics aside, the real question here is why do you pay more tax than Donald Trump and what do you plan to do about it?” Donald Trump further agitated critics recently by refusing to reveal his income tax details, instead hinting only that he pays as little as possible. ABC News drew attention to the issue.…
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New restrictions on partner’s employee benefits
Treas. Reg. § 301.7701-2T(c)(2)(iv)(C)(2), (TD 9766 May 4, 2016) has an adverse impact on planning of employee benefit plans for partners including participation in qualified retirement plans, health and welfare plans, and fringe benefit plans. The bottom line is that partners are not common law employees when the partnership owns a disregarded entity like an LLC that…
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A change to my income tax service agreement
IRS knows that if five different tax professionals prepare the same moderately complicated income tax return, there will be 5 different returns with 5 different outcomes in terms of the amounts of income tax liability. IRS also knows that it will receive at least 4 of these 5 submitted returns as filed and accepted tax…
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How to get a copy of your tax return
If you need a copy of your tax return the fastest, easiest, cheapest solution is to order a transcript from IRS. This is free but delivered only by mail for security reasons. Put in an online request at https://www.irs.gov/Individuals/Get-Transcript . A transcript is a printed version of the electronic data contained in your tax return. It is formatted differently…