A look back at tax law, IRS history, and the stories behind how we got the tax system we have today.
Today, we celebrate the life of Martin Luther King, Jr. To honor the day, I am reposting something that I wrote around this time three years ago. It remains one of my favorite posts. Enjoy! — I’ll be frank. I don’t always love being a lawyer. When I was a little girl, I used to watch…
Today, more than 500 elementary school students in our local public school hauled recyclable bags filled with more recyclable plastic bags to school to mark America Recycles Day. Our green clubs are counting the bags – we already know that one kindergarten class brought in nearly 2000 – and putting them aside to reuse (for…
Let’s say that you have a shot at your dream job. You’ve done your homework, you’ve put in the hours, you’ve managed to get through the interview. There’s just one more thing: your tax return. Your potential employer has asked to you to disclose your tax return with the understanding that the information on the…
Twenty-five years ago, pop singer Michael Jackson was in the news. Big shoulder pads were all the rage. Libya was under siege. Federal spending outpaced revenues. The U.S. was fighting its way out of a recession. And following a round of tax cuts that didn’t live up to expectations, the words “tax reform” were on…
I wasn’t going to write this post. I thought about it long and hard and I had promised myself that I wouldn’t write it because I didn’t feel that I had anything meaningful to add to the conversation of the day. And I didn’t want to appear self-serving. And I didn’t want this to be…
I’ve received a lot of emails lately asking me to explain what the debt ceiling is and what it really means. It seems that it’s a term that Congress likes to throw around without a lot of explanation. So here’s the scoop: As of August 2, the United States can’t pay its bills anymore. We…
Today, kids will decorate wagons with streamers and drag them down small town streets while big marching bands play John Philip Sousa tunes. There will be floats and beauty queens with big smiles (and even bigger hair). Smells from cookouts and barbecues will fill neighborhoods as folks fire up the grill to make hotdogs, hamburgers…
Remember Studebaker? Studebaker was a manufacturing company that started in 1852 in South Bend, Indiana, making wagons for farmers, miners, and the military. Ten years after the first gasoline-powered car was tested in the U.S., Studebaker entered the car manufacturing business and it was, at one point, the largest automobile maker in the world. By…
Wait? You mean that you didn’t know that there was such a thing as the tax attorney’s fees deduction? Well, perhaps that’s because it’s not actually called the tax attorney’s fees deduction. Tax attorneys like me just like to call it that. It’s technically part of the Job Expenses and Certain Miscellaneous Deductions subject to…
When you ask most taxpayers about available tax deductions, the deduction for medical expenses immediately springs to mind. It’s probably one of the most talked about deductions (in fact, a fairly significant portion of the questions submitted to the blog by taxpayers focus on the medical expenses) but the reality is that very few taxpayers…