My kids are minutes away from their annual Easter Egg Hunt. Set among the backdrop of rural North Carolina, it’s miles away – both literally and figuratively – from the White House Easter Egg Roll. Both are scheduled to go on this year, despite fears to the contrary. While there was no scandal at my…
Q is for 1099-Q. If you are the owner of a qualified tuition program (QTP) (like a section 529 plan or a Coverdell ESA), you should receive a federal form 1099-Q, Payments from Qualified Education Programs, when funds are withdrawn in order to pay qualified education expenses of the beneficiary. The form 1099-Q will include…
P is for Passive Activity Rules. The Internal Revenue Service likes to match up income with deductions. And in most cases, when it comes to individuals, if deductions (or losses) exceed income, those deductions are either lost or limited. That’s the general idea behind the passive activity rules. When losses from passive activities exceed the…
When you sock money away in your retirement plan, the appeal is that the money will grow tax-deferred and be available to you for “someday.” For many taxpayers, that “someday” is right around the corner. Taxpayers who reach age 70½ in any calendar year must generally begin making withdrawals by April 1 of the next…
O Is For Ordering Rules. Roth individual retirement accounts (Roth IRAs) have been around for a relatively short period of time. Specifically, Roth IRAs were part of the Taxpayer Relief Act of 1997, signed into law under President Clinton. They’re still fairly new, so the rules aren’t all that familiar to many taxpayers. Unlike traditional…
On December 11, 2012, I posted the piece that follows about the Supreme Court’s grant of cert to hear cases on same-sex marriages. I’ve often said that I thought the arguments would come down to financial and tax matters and, at least as it applies to DOMA, that’s the case. Since these cases are at…
Each year, the Internal Revenue Service issues a list of “Dirty Dozen” tax scams that can affect taxpayers. The list runs the gamut from schemes involving taxpayer participation (hiding offshore income) to schemes that taxpayers may know nothing about (identity theft). The IRS posts the list to educate taxpayers about the need to protect financial…
My kids are on spring break this week which means we are spending a lot of time together. A lot. In the space of a few days, I’ve learned some invaluable information. The best car ever made? An Audi R8, according to my six-year-old. A love of coleslaw? Not hereditary (I’m still reeling from this…
N is for Notice of Deficiency. Few things can be scarier for taxpayers than receiving mail from the Internal Revenue Service. No matter how intimidating it might be, always open the mail. Always. Sometimes, those letters can be good news. More often than not, however, the IRS is sending you a notice because they want…
For one week, the eyes of the world were turned to a tiny island nation in the Mediterranean. Cyprus, the third smallest economy in the Eurozone (the term used to refer to the 17 countries which use the Euro as their currency), was on the brink of default. Its economy was in shambles and it…