In the Blogs: Look, Ma – No Earned Income!

Highlights of some of our favorite tax-related blogs from the past week.

Bumps

  • Tax Vox: How Trump’s Carrier deal sets a bad precedent.
  • Taxable Talk: Even ophthalmic surgeons can apparently do stupid things when it comes to paying employment taxes.
  • Summing It Up: True, related companies often use intercompany master service agreements to allocate common costs of doing business among the related entities. Too bad they also sometimes forget about sales tax collection.

Traditions

  • Don’t Mess With Taxes: In the time-tested tradition of piggybanks, savings books and paper statements, the IRS now lets taxpayers access their accounts online, part of the agency’s efforts “to get more of us digitally involved with our taxes.”
  • Tax Policy: The House GOP Tax Reform Blueprint, released last June by Speaker Paul Ryan and House Ways and Means Chairman Kevin Brady, recently got a stern going-over by Goldman Sachs. The report was pessimistic, but in keeping with the fine tradition of the tax world you can’t believe the report, either.
  • Taxing Subjects: Be it football, video games or income tax security, the defensive theory’s the same: Keep the bad guys outside. To kick off National Tax Security Awareness Week, take a hard look at your own passwords.

Questions

  • Mauled Again: Will the concept of the family foundation get the Trump bump? What goes into such arrangements, and their growing popularity.
  • Dinesen Tax Times: Must Be Something in the Corn Dept.: Why is it almost always better for married couples to file as married filing separately instead of married filing jointly on their Iowa return?
  • Procedurally Taxing: So is the IRS deliberately trying to mislead taxpayers with certain letters and notices?
  • Due Diligence: In this week’s collection: “Federal Appeals Court Win for Whistleblowers”; “Huge Win in Allied Home Mortgage Fraud Case”; “Many Bankers Eligible for Overtime Pay”; “Whistleblowers Opportunity! Samsung Influence Peddling Scandal”; and “$85 Million Wasted on ‘Empty Shells’?”
  • BNA blogs: The new “Tell Me Something I Don’t Know” series continues with guest blogger Thomas Yamachika’s look at how individual taxpayers conducting business through a pass-through entity in Hawaii might be able to take advantage of an important notice issued by the Hawaii Department of Taxation.

Look ma, no earned income!

  • Intuit Proconnect: How to advise not only your self-employed clients but also those in the mushrooming sharing economy, owners of businesses who rent out their home to others or drive ride-share services.
  • John R. Dundon II EA: Beyond a doubt, the worst aspect of having your 28-year-old living in your basement has to be the lack of income tax benefits. In fact you’ll encounter quite the opposite of benefits from the taxing authorities if your young-adult children have unearned taxable income and you fail to get this consistent on your respective returns.
  • Solutions for CPA Firm Leaders: The newest generational tidal surge – Millennials, almost a third of American workers today – and their “fairly drastic changes for public accounting.”
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