Our next tax trivia question is: Cristina Warthen (née Cristina Schultz), now married to Ask Jeeves founder David Warthen, is a Stanford Law School grad who grossed more than $300,000 working as a hooker in California under the name “Brazil.” She escaped prosecution for prostitution but admitted to hiding money from the taxing authorities by stashing funds…
Yep, it’s that time of year: free tax software! I have 20 access codes for free CompleteTax online tax prep software to give away to taxgirl readers, thanks to the good folks at CCH. Each code is good for online tax preparation and filing for one 2011 federal and one 2011 state tax return using…
It’s the New Year and sadly, the same old Congress. With that in mind, I thought that Congress could use a little help with their New Year’s resolutions for 2012, so a couple of days ago, I posed this question on my blog: What’s on your tax and financial #wishlist for Congress in 2012? Here’s…
The New Year is almost here! And Congress is still, well, Congress. Clearly, they need a little direction for 2012 so I thought I’d ask you, my readers, what you hope to see happen next year and we’ll make a contest out of it. So since Congress is so fond of pork… the prize is…
After all of the drama, Congress managed to push through a payroll tax cut extension just before the holidays. The payroll tax cut was extended for two months, saving the average taxpayer a grand total of $166. These days, that won’t get you very far. Depending on where you live, it works out to: 43…
Whew, it’s nearly mid-December already. How did this happen? The month has flown by so quickly that I haven’t had time to thank the editors of the ABA Journal for selecting taxgirl as one of the Blawg 100, the top 100 best law blogs by lawyers. The ABA said, about my blog: Kelly Phillips Erb…
There are 38 days left until the end of the year. That means you have just a little over a month to whittle down your taxable income (yeah, we tax people tend to think about the end of the year in slightly different ways). Sure, you could buy your entire family and staff a set…
Over the weekend, I ran my first ever half marathon. I’m not gonna sit here and say it was easy. It was not. It was hard (note to self: When the web site warns, “Our course is not considered easy and fast,” pay attention.) But I finished in a quite respectable 2:18. So why did…
Remember the IRS redesign? Like many others, I was puzzled by the new color combination (blue and orange, really?). As promised, I sent IRS an email asking them why those particular colors. To my surprise, they replied fairly quickly. Perhaps not so surprising, there was no real answer. Instead, I received this reply: We have…
It’s nearly the end of September (whew) and we’re wrapping up back to school. To help you stay organized, I’ve made a list of five quick tax tips – for everyone but especially students – to keep in mind: April 15 of each year is the due date for filing your federal individual income tax…