In the blogs: Safety nets

SCOTUS versus North Carolina; when a client’s ready for advisory services; Advocate’s bow; and other highlights from our favorite tax bloggers.

Safety nets

• Don’t Mess with Taxes (http://dontmesswithtaxes.typepad.com/): What to tell clients and why about backup withholding, “a safety net for the tax collector…a sort of financial backstop to ensure that this usually untaxed income doesn’t slip through the tax system or tax collector’s fingers.”
• IRS Mind (https://www.irsmind.com/): Time and effort — or, for prompt taxpayers, the lack thereof — in resolving CP2000 notices.
• Taxbuzz (https://www.taxbuzz.com/blog): Mudda Fadda Dep’t: How and why the government allows parents to count the cost of day camp for children under the age of 13 (or for disabled children of any age) as an expense toward the Child and Dependent Care Credit.
• Procedurally Taxing (http://procedurallytaxing.com/) Anthony Hugger v. Lawrence J. Warfield et al. shows the danger of not carefully counting the days before filing for bankruptcy if you seek to discharge taxes.

The Nexus Big Thing?

• Summing It Up (http://blog.freedmaxick.com/summing-it-up): Under a new provision that was recently added to New York State tax law, a marketplace seller is relieved from liability for the collection of New York State sales tax when it receives Form ST-150, “Marketplace Provider Certificate of Collection,” from a marketplace provider.
• Taxable Talk (http://www.taxabletalk.com/): The State of Arizona has asked the Supreme Court to stop California’s illegal (in Arizona’s view) scheme of requiring indirect passive owners of LLCs who happen to own other LLCs that invest in California from paying California’s minimum $800 franchise tax. A look at the high court’s one-line order on the case.
• Rubin on Tax (http://rubinontax.floridatax.com/): States with income taxes have varying rules on when they assert authority to tax income of trusts. In one of the more aggressive assertions of authority to tax, several states assert that they can tax the income of a trust merely because a beneficiary resides in the state. In a challenge to North Carolina’s scheme, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the presence of in-state beneficiaries alone does not empower a state to tax undistributed trust income when the beneficiaries have no right to demand that income and are uncertain to receive it.
• Tax Girl (https://www.forbes.com/sites/kellyphillipserb): How the case arose — “at first blush, you’d think it was a New York trust” — and grew entwined with three sub-trusts then fell in with a law authorizing North Carolina to tax any trust income that “is for the benefit of” a state resident.

Asserting oneself

• The Wandering Tax Pro (http://wanderingtaxpro.blogspot.com/): On June 20, the House Ways and Means Committee approved three tax-related bills: the Taxpayer Certainty and Disaster Tax Relief, the Economic Mobility Act of 2019 and the Promoting Respect for Individuals’ Dignity and Equality (PRIDE) Act of 2019. Where the blogger stands on each.
• Intuit Proconnect (https://proconnect.intuit.com/taxprocenter/): If you ask 100 tax pros what “advisory” means, you will most likely get 100 different answers. “8 Ways to Determine If a Client Is Ready for Advisory Services” covers the asking of finance-related questions, divulgence of non-tax personal challenges, actual implementation of your advice, and more.
• Wolters Kluwer (http://news.cchgroup.com/): Part 3 of the peer review series looks at “assessing risk at the assertion level.” Note that all audit procedures must tie back to assertions….
• National Taxpayer Advocate (https://taxpayeradvocate.irs.gov/about/nta-blog): Nina Olson issues her 37th and final report to Congress as National Taxpayer Advocate.