In the Blogs: Sports, Taxes and Racism

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

Be a sport

  • Don’t Mess With Taxes: What losing the Los Angeles Clippers could cost owner Donald Sterling, recently slapped hard by the National Basketball Association for racist remarks. Though as of this writing the long-time doormat Clippers are advancing in the NBA playoffs, Sterling faces a potentially harder fight to retain the team – and avoid heavy capital gains. Foul, indeed.
  • H&R Block blog: And they’re off for this year’s horse trot for the Triple Crown. Here’s how the prize money breaks down by place and (human) involvement, along with a handy guide to parimutuel betting. (Makes a great gift for the kids.) Oh, and “Gambling Winnings and Income Taxes.”

 
You can’t tell them often enough

  • The Income Tax School: Everybody outside for spring – but before you go, remember to answer what’s probably about a billion questions from clients about the Affordable Care Act.
  • Taxes at About.com: A reminder to clients to adjust withholdings now that another tax year is a wrap. Keeping an eye on changing income or deductions or heading off that big bill in April of 2015. Also, another in the series examining the Tax Reform Act of 2014.
  • Backtaxeshelp: Stopping just short of pixies and unicorns, clients’ beliefs about extensions contain more than their share of outright baloney. A look at three extension myths. Also, the worst ways clients can spend their refunds.
  • John R. Dundon II EA: A breakdown of the top 10 IRS bills, penalties and interest charges – a.k.a., what your clients face if they missed the all-important deadline of some three weeks ago – and an idea of how those dreaded things kick in.
  • TaxMama: Mama helps sort out whether medical health-care payments for providing for a veteran receiving VA benefits are subject to Social Security tax.

 
One nation

  • Roth & Co.: The good ol’ USA boasts one of the highest corporation tax rates – if not the highest – in the world. Iowa, home of this blogger, has the highest corporation income tax rate in the U.S. and, so, in the entire developed world. Congrats to the Hawkeye State. Too bad that distinction doesn’t translate into “gushers of corporate cash.”
  • Tax Policy: Land of the Flee: A look at the Treasury Department’s announcement that 1,001 more Americans recently renounced citizenship, largely due to taxes. Also, “Six Months Until the Internet Tax Moratorium Expires.”

 
The Rough Old Road

  • Liberty Tax: Truest opening of the week: “Nothing can really prepare you for life after college, especially when it comes to taxes.” A real-world primer on such wonders of life as student loan interest, deductible costs of job searches and moving costs, retirement contributions and emergency funds. Young clients’ biggest lesson: A frat kegger life ain’t.
  • Procedurally Taxing: Splitsville is painful enough on couples without having to consider tax implications. A look at how cases run – and how courts might divide – refunds when one spouse files for bankruptcy.
  • Tax Girl: The tangled tax web of The Amazing Spider-Man 2, plus the dangers, both financial and non-, of privatizing sale of alcohol; how a widow lost her house over a whopping $6.30 tax bill; and how taxes play out in the death penalty.
  • Mauled Again: For Whom the Toll Tolls Dept.: A look at how the Obama administration’s budget proposes repealing a law that prohibits imposing tolls on interstate highways other than the roads that were toll roads before they became part of the interstate system. Turns out governments’ cash for interstate highways is running out faster than your gas tank right after you pass the last exit for 20 miles. “The administration’s proposal, though well-intentioned as a solution to a problem created by the Congress, is far from ideal and poses challenges.”

 
Just the FATCA

  • Tax, Society & Culture: The Treasury’s “little game” to refrain from actually imposing FATCA’s sanctions “except in those countries it is publicly acceptable to sanction.” Also, putting to rest the nature of FATCA’s “withholding tax.”
  • Due Diligence: In this week’s round up: “Too Big To Fail Really Means To Big To Jail”; “FATCA to ‘GATCA’ to OECD FATCA?”; “FATCA in the Land Down Under”; and “India, U.S. Agree on FATCA Accord.”
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