In the Blogs: Patterns of Force

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

’Tis the other season

  • Taxjar: Dear Santa, all I want for Christmas is no sales tax holidays during the holidays themselves. Well, you’re not going to get it, kid, and here’s why.
  • Liberty Tax Blog: The smart holiday shoppers among your clients nowadays hit thrift shops for both gifts and for conscientiously cleaning out before get-togethers. What to remind them about donations and finding the perfect second-hand deal for grandma.
  • Don’t Mess With Taxes: And it wasn’t your imagination: Cyber Monday 2015 did cost more now that most states have enacted online sales tax laws.
  • Tax Girl: My True Love, the Big Spender: The price tag for the turtledoves, the maids a’milkin’ and so on remains steady this year. Enough to make a lord leap.
  • Rubin on Tax: For whatever consolation, “Identity Theft Victims Can Now Get a Copy of Fraudulently Filed Returns.” You know you might well need this service from the service as the other season looms.

Not business as usual

  • Taxlaw: Ah, it’s the old story: a subsidiary overseas, some questionable payments to foreign government officials, charges and a settlement – and the IRS then denying deductions for said settlement.
  • Tax Vox: Blogger Steven Rosenthal looks at a way to stem such inversions as Pfizer’s recent decision to merge with Irish drugmaker Allergan: an exit tax on U.S. companies with deferred earnings.

Sinks a specialty

  • Backtaxeshelp: Our favorite opening of the week: “A letter from everyone’s favorite tax agency is not a letter most people are looking to get in their mailbox, and usually it’s not good news when that kind of letter shows up.” How to talk your client off the ledge when the IRS sends such a note.
  • Taxes at About.com: Whip this on them next time they balk at the bill: ‘ “Should I pay someone to do my taxes?’ is a bit like asking, ‘Should I pay someone to do my plumbing?’ ”

Rules rules rules

  • Tax Policy: If you follow the gridiron, you may have caught “Sunday Night Football” color man Chris Collinsworth saying that the NFL rulebook is as long and complex as the IRS Code. It is, of course, no contest.
  • Mauled Again: Soon a shortage of cash won’t be the only reason you can’t travel overseas if you owe taxes. How a provision in a bill pending in Congress would permit the State Department to withhold, revoke or limit the passport of a person who has a delinquent tax debt of more than $50,000. As one commentator reportedly suggests, “I had no idea delinquent American taxpayers were willing to have liens imposed upon their property just to avoid paying money they actually have lying around. Maybe it’s all earmarked for a trip to Tuscany?” Any “Seinfeld” fan knows there are no houses to rent there, anyway.
  • Taxable Talk: How a flight delay produced time to find that the IRS’s new de minimis rule for small businesses (allowing expensing of items costing $2,500 or less) is actually good news for taxpayers.
  • Procedurally Taxing: Is a claimed refund the taxpayer’s property? Tax Court says yes; a look at Estate of Badgett v Commissioner.
  • Roth & Co.: A recent tax case involving a solar energy company remind the blogger of the Tax Fairy and, more down to earth, cattle shelters of the early 1980s.

Patterns of force

  • BNA blogs: Long before Luke, the Falcon, a fighting princess and a couple of wisecracking droids, there was, don’t forget, taxes.
  • The Wandering Tax Pro: You can lead a preparer to water but you can’t make them be unwillingly honest: “Forced ethics CPE will not reduce tax fraud!”
  • ClientWhys: How can you pop up high in a branded versus a non-branded Internet search?
  • Tax Analysts: This time pre-election year tax proposals fly like fruitcakes. How Hillary Clinton’s idea of a tax break for family caregivers of the elderly or disabled may suggest the wrong source for badly needed help.
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