It’s Fix the Tax Code Friday! This week, Warren Buffett continued to be all over the news for his statements about taxes for the very wealthy. In case you’ve missed it, Buffett has amped up the rhetoric on tax reform by suggesting that those in higher brackets benefit disproportionately from existing breaks in the Tax…
Are you ready for some football? Preseason is in full swing already for the NFL and yet all anyone can talk about in the football world is college football. Specifically, the chatter is centered on the University of Miami. Yes, Miami. Unfortunately for the Hurricanes, the talk focusing on Miami has little to do with…
Every person in America has that certain uncle, brother or father that you joke does all their best work in the bathroom. Well, now you can point to Luis Bulas, a Florida accountant, as proof that best work or no, the bathroom is, in fact, not necessarily deductible as a home office expense. And nope,…
This week, from Bachmann to Obama, the focus has been on prices at the pump. It’s been suggested that a steep drop in gas prices would kick start an economic recovery. If that’s true, the question is how to make that happen. Realistically, the U.S. government only has so much control over the price of…
Whew. It has taken awhile but the IRS has finally issued guidance for the treatment of basis for certain estates of decedents who died in 2010. As you’ve probably heard, there was no federal estate tax due for decedents who died in 2010. Well, er, sort of… Under the Economic Growth and Tax Relief Reconciliation…
So let’s get one thing out of the way from the start… I love Philadelphia. I love that I can grab an authentic Ethiopean meal in one part of the city and a greasy cheesesteak in another. I love the way the modern cut of the relatively new Cira Centre contrasts with Billy Penn sitting…
You have to give scammers credit: they sure don’t give up. There’s another set of IRS phishing emails making the rounds this week. I’ve seen two versions, one purporting to be from “info manager@irs.gov” and another from “support manager@irs.gov.” Both have headers announcing “IRS notification.” To be clear, both are scams and should be ignored,…
Rapper Beanie Sigel, whose real name is Dwight Grant, may be facing more time in prison – this time for tax troubles. The Philadelphia rapper pleaded guilty this week to failing to file federal income tax returns for 2003, 2004 and 2005. The IRS believes that Sigel failed to pay nearly $350,000 in federal income…
That horrible crash you heard today? It was the market. And it was not pretty. The Dow fell 630 points today, marking the worst day for investors in three years. As a result, you can’t swing a cat without some kind of market analysis. Except here. Between you and I, I don’t know enough about…
Never look a gift Congress in the mouth. What they give today can always be taken away. And if you know Congress, it probably will. Remember the whole Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) ticket tax fiasco? Here’s a brief recap: Congress, squabbling over unions and subsidies, failed to pass a budget for the FAA so that…