When we pay a tax pro for help, we trust that person. Sometimes we shouldn’t.  Most of use tax professionals to help get through tax season. Thankfully, most paid tax preparers are honest. They want to help their clients meet their tax responsibilities by legally paying the least amount of tax possible under the Internal Revenue Code. But most is not all. Some tax preparers run fly-by-night operations where they simply look to make a quick buck off of honest individuals seeking tax assistance. These pros, and I use the description advisedly, often get paid based on a percentage of taxpayers’ refunds, which they inflate by advising…

Most taxpayers now are focusing on completing their annual tax returns. But if we have to deal with the Internal Revenue Service to finish that Form 1040, or if the agency subsequently has some questions about it, Uncle Sam’s tax collector wants us to know we have some inalienable tax rights. The 10 components of Taxpayer Bill of Rights (TBOR) are this week’s By the Numbers figure. Here they are: 1. The Right to Be Informed: Taxpayers have the right to know what they need to do to comply with the tax laws. They are entitled to clear explanations of…

Tax professionals are feeling all “Mean Girls” Gretchen Wieners right now. Thanks to the new tax law, their services are in high demand.

Picking up some extra cash is nothing new. Now, however, side hustles have become a viable employment option. They’ve also become a problem for the Internal Revenue Service.

Some folks have been asking for clarification on disaster loss claims, specifically with regard to the value of a damaged or destroyed home. A Rockport, Texas, home severely damaged by Hurricane Harvey, which made its first landfall on Aug. 25 at the Gulf Coast town. (Photo courtesy National Weather Service, Corpus Christi, via Twitter) …At issue is how a home’s fair market value factors into a disaster tax claim. I’m sorry to report that a property’s high value — I’m talking for sale purposes, not just your personal appreciation and assessment of the house — won’t help you get more…

Happy Birthday, America! July 4 is special to all of us Americans, the day we declared our independence from Great Britain. Taxes, as everyone knows thanks to James Otis’ famous announcement that “Taxation without representation is tyranny,” were among the reasons we sought to govern ourselves. And taxes, even after we gained control, continue to play a key part in our lives, politics and popular culture. James Cagney, before he became the prototypical movie gangster, was as song-and-dance man. He showed off those talents in “Yankee Doodle Dandy,” the biopic of a man who not only gave us great musicals,…

Estimated taxes can be confusing, but they are required when you get income that isn’t subject to withholding. Here’s the scoop on the process in this estimated tax primer.

This is the original blog post copy that ran on Monday, March 24, 2014. It was updated on Friday, March 31, 2017. Business tax reform has been getting a lot of attention the last few years, with both President Obama on the Democratic side and House Ways and Means Chairman Rep. Dave Camp on the Republican side pushing for change. While Congress and the White House debate tax reform as it relates to big business, the Internal Revenue Service already has made a change to ease tax filing for many owners of smaller companies. For 2013 returns, individuals who claim…

Are we having tax fun yet? We did for while last night when it looked like we finally might get a look at Donald J. Trump’s taxes. OK. We did get to see part of the new president’s 2005 tax return, courtesy tax journalist David Cay Johnston and MSNBC host Rachel Maddow. MSNBC hosts Rachel Maddow and Chris Hayes talk Trump taxes on March 14 with Pulitzer Prize winning tax journalist David Cay Johnston. Trump tells tax all? The tax return provides some basic info, but raises a lot more questions, including who leaked it. I’m among those who believe this…

When Donald J. Trump assumed the U.S. presidency at noon on Friday, Jan. 20, he and his staff also took over the White House website. The image above is the only glimpse of Trump’s taxes the new president has provided. It’s a photo via Twitter of him signing his purported 2014 federal return on Oct. 15, 2015. Although the 45th president’s people made some major changes to the content Trump’s predecessor had posted, they did leave one feature untouched, the We the People petition generator. This option lets people petition the White House for action on whatever is near and…

No, we still haven’t seen Donald Trump’s federal tax returns. Donald Trump shared this photo on his Twitter account last October of him signing what he said was his 2015 federal tax return. However, it was old state returns that have given us a glimpse into the Republican presidential candidate’s tax bills. …The information about his $916 million business loss in 1995 comes from state tax returns filed with New York, New Jersey and Connecticut for that year and which were obtained by the New York Times. While that yuge loss could have, as the Times notes, served as a…

Be still, my heart. Daveed Diggs talked about taxes! Diggs, one of the Tony-nominated stars of the Broadway smash “Hamilton,” was on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon last night. He of course talked about his dual roles as America’s favorite fighting Frenchman Lafayette and Thomas Jefferson in Lin-Manuel Miranda’s $10 Founding Father musical. Pre-Broadway jobs: However, just before getting the “Hamilton” parts, the accomplished rapper was at home in Los Angeles and was between gigs. To make ends meet, Diggs delivered catering “in my tore-up Honda Civic … mostly fajitas … at minimum wage, no less.” When he got the…

Even before the Denver Broncos and Carolina Panthers players step onto the field at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, California, we’ll already have one big winner. Screenshot from NFL Super Bowl 50 trailer on YouTube. The National Football League will pocket millions thanks to the Super Bowl host city’s agreement to hand over all its big game-related sales tax revenue to the league. Yep, the NFL, which made $12 billion over the 2014-15 season, demands that cities awarded the Super Bowl waive or reimburse sales tax on ticket sales and parking passes. What Super Bowl cities lose: That, of course, means that…

Today, Oct. 16, is National Dictionary Day. It was created to honor Noah Webster, the publisher of the first dictionary in 1806. Oct. 16 was chosen because it was the day 257 years ago on which Webster was born. Dictionary Day is a day to learn new words with the help of a dictionary. I’m doing my part by updating — OK, creating in large part — a tax dictionary for the ol’ blog.  Photo by eFile989 via Flickr Creative Commons  Many years ago, I posted a mini-glossary of tax terms. Since that day, I’ve meant to put together a…

I once worked for a company that was waaaaaay into scheduling. I mean years and years ahead scheduling. It always cracked me up when I was asked to put such long-term appointments in my datebook. Sure, I’ll mark my calendar and be around then…maybe. Dates, however, are crucial to taxes. Miss one and, if you owe Uncle Sam, you’ll owe him even more. Tax Day 2016 is April 18: So it’s no surprise that the Internal Revenue Service is already announcing a tweak in connection with the 2016 tax filing deadline. At issue is a confluence of tax deadlines and…

The Internal Revenue Service today officially adopted a 10-point Taxpayer Bill of Rights. Too bad for the tax agency that it wasn’t put in place sooner. The National Taxpayer Advocate says that the document could have helped IRS employees avoid problems in their review of Tea Party and other organizations’ applications for nonprofit tax status. The rights, already guaranteed taxpayers but spread throughout the Internal Revenue Code (and IRS documents), are now conveniently encapsulated in the updated IRS Publication 1. It says all taxpayers have the right to: IRS Commissioner John Koskinen and National Taxpayer Advocate Nina Olson jointly unveiled…

This just in from the IRS’ Worst Day-Week-Month-Year Ever Department: A group of tax professionals has officially lent its support to the legal effort to stop the Internal Revenue Service from testing and requiring continuing education of certain tax preparers. In January, a federal judge halted, at least for the time being, the IRS’ Registered Tax Return Preparer (RTRP) program. The idea, formulated during the tenure of former IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman, was to set up a system that would help ensure that more tax returns are correctly completed. The RTRP rules do not apply to Enrolled Agents (EAs), attorneys…

Bradley Birkenfeld, the former UBS banker credited with helping break open Uncle Sam’s investigation into secret untaxed Swiss accounts, is about to be $104 million richer. The Internal Revenue Service has recommended that Birkenfeld, who served around two and a half years in federal prison for a fraud conspiracy conviction related to the case, get that amount of money as a reward. It’s the largest whistleblower amount ever awarded by the IRS. Birkenfeld’s insider info helped the IRS collect more than $5 billion in unpaid taxes from foreign banks and nearly 15,000 individuals who used their services to avoid paying…

What the heck is up Mother Nature? I know we humans are an annoying bunch, but do you really have to keep whacking us? In less than 24 hours, strong earthquakes have rattled the East Coast and the Rocky Mountains region. The 5.3 temblor that shook Colorado Monday night was the strongest recorded there in more than a century. It also was felt by residents of Kansas and New Mexico. Then this afternoon, a 5.9 quake centered in Virginia prompted evacuation of buildings in the nation’s capital and shook folks from North Carolina to New Hampshire. It was the strongest…

One of the hardest things about filing your taxes is trying to decipher the forms. You practically have to learn a new, tax- specific language. And the IRS-speak makes that dang VCR manual (yes, a few of us still use those antiquated devices!) seem almost coherent! To help out, Don’t Mess With Taxes is gathering some common tax terms and phrases and their plain English meanings in this post. This is an ongoing list, so don’t be discouraged if the word that’s stumping you isn’t here yet. It soon will be. In fact, just go ahead and e-mail it to…

During this string of hot and dry spring days, it’s hard to image that 25 years ago today, Austin suffered a deadly flood. Austin’s Memorial Day Flood of May 24, 1981, killed 13 people, destroyed 600 homes, flooded dozens of businesses and left $36 million in damages in its wake. The picture below shows damage done to a car dealership along Shoal Creek. Flood photograph courtesy of Austin Public Library and Austin History Center. …The power of water has always captivated me. Much of the fascination is because I grew up in desert West Texas, where not a stream was…

  Time. An artificial construct. A futile attempt by humans to control yet another immutable piece of the universe. What is a second, a minute, an hour, a year? Purely random segmentations that have no real meaning. At least that’s what I tell myself when my birthday rolls around. We have a clock that also has issues with time measurement. It’s a lovely handmade German timepiece that belonged to my grandmother. When I was young and living in the same small West Texas town as my grandparents, I was at their house often. And each time I was there, I…

… and taxes. Granted, the world’s most romantic three words aren’t “Internal Revenue Service.” But when you look at the tax code, you’ll find that sometimes the IRS does play cupid. I know, I know. What about the marriage penalty? Well, that’s a topic that, like most things taxes, has undergone a lot of spin. As is usually the case with taxes, the penalty was primarily situational and, as discussed in this story, provided almost as many couples a benefit when they married as it hurt. But it was a nice hook — who’s for penalizing marriage in this day…

I am so happy for them! Those two kids belong together and I’m glad they finally realized it. Lance and Sheryl are calling off their split? Nick and Jessica, perhaps? No. Ken and Barbie are reunited! Just in time for Valentine’s Day. The New York Times reports that the leggy blonde has dumped interloper Blaine, the Aussie surfer, and is back in Ken’s arms. Or at least standing next to Ken, since neither his nor Barbie’s nonmalleable plastic arms allow for actual embraces. Cynics may question whether it’s true love. After all, it was Barbie who left Ken almost exactly…

Bet on it: The IRS will not collect on most of the Super Bowl wagers.

It’s Friday the 13th. I can hear Count Floyd now: “Oooohhhh. Scary.” It certainly is scary for some celebrities who are facing some potentially costly tax issues. Jury selection began this week for Richard Hatch, the first winner of CBS’s “Survivor.” The IRS contends that he didn’t pay taxes on his $1 million winnings from the popular show. But that’s not the only charge. The jury also will hear government evidence that Hatch spent money designated for a charity he created, filed false tax returns and committed bank, wire and mail fraud. What was he thinking? We first asked that…

The IRS is offering filers a MSRP for getting their taxes done.