Category: Taxes
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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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Are you hurt by the Trump tax hike?
Are you paying more in federal income taxes this year despite a promised tax cut? Across the nation over 8 million people fall into this category critically referred to in the news as the “Trump tax hike”. Here in New Jersey the situation is worse. By the next tax filing time in the spring of…
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Legal impact of residency and domicile
Taxes and a wide range of other legal and business issues are affected by the legal concepts of residency and domicile. Individuals who have physical connections to more than one state should carefully consider the implications of the laws in each state that may claim jurisdiction of any legal or business issue. In some cases it…
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Tax review for single retired woman in Florida
A friend asked me to review the tax return of a single retired relative living in Florida. The simple question was why were here taxes so much more in 2017 than in 2016? She offered to pay for the review but I insisted on doing it as a no fee/no obligation courtesy. I might have…
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Sample tax preparation and filing services engagement agreement
This page is outdated. A more recent version is available: Sample accounting services engagement agreement 2021
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How to cope with the tax travel ban
The IRS is rapidly expanding one of the largest federal tax crackdowns of our lifetime. The tax travel ban program intends to deny or revoke the passports of more than half million people who, the IRS claims, owe more than $50,000 taxes. The strategy is allowed by law and the intent is apparently to prevent…
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How to know if you are subject to the tax travel ban
Last week I wrote about the shocking expansion of the tax travel ban now potentially affecting up to half a million people in the United States. How do you know if you are among them? The IRS is now sending letter CP508C to notify affected taxpayers who, IRS says, owe more than $50,000 in taxes. It is…
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Travel Ban Because of Taxes
The Internal Revenue Service has acted quickly this year to work with the U.S. State Department to revoke or deny renewal of passports of almost a half million people who are alleged to owe taxes to the US government. This often affects people who run international businesses (whose earnings will decline without a passport) or even…
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US Treasury to introduce IRS “sucker cards”
U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin announced that “Next week we will be unveiling the new 1040 and it will be a postcard as we promised.” After decades of moving Americans to a computerized online tax filing system the IRS is now reversing course and going back to promoting a physical post card based filing system…
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Shared concerns over small business survival
I had a long conversation with a stranger at dinner last night. Actually it was at the bar at McCormick and Schmick’s in Atlantic City. He was a farmer and business owner near Harrisburg who sold the farm when he retired. He now lives in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. We discussed the difficulty of running a…