Taxes

After a few days of speculation about the debt ceiling agreement between President Joe Biden and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, we finally have the details. The text of the bill—just 99 pages long—was released on Sunday and is already generating conversation. Here’s what you need to know. Timing The bill would suspend the debt limit

In case you didn’t notice, today, 5/29, is 529 Day. Many states are offering contests and other incentives for their 529 plans. If your state doesn’t have a promotion or if you miss it, your state may still provide a state tax break for contributing to their plan anytime. Should you? Let’s take a look

It is good that President Biden and Speaker McCarthy reached a US debt ceiling deal. If a compromise involves both sides being disappointed, this one appears to be successful. Some conservative Republicans are expressing frustration that the cuts were not much deeper, and there have been similar reactions coming from some Democrats. Speaker McCarthy announced

I write this article on the somber weekend of the Memorial Day Holiday. With the significance of honoring the fallen, it is important to remember how we can help these “Gold Star Families”, a term coined during World War I. During this weekend, I was reminded of the families of the fallen due to my

As an attorney that assists clients with audits, I see simple mistakes turn into huge problems. If you own a small business, you must follow record-keeping rules and if for no reason at all it is to save on attorney fees during an audit. I receive numerous questions in connection with an audit, including the

In the ever-evolving landscape of philanthropy, charities must adapt to new technologies to better engage with donors and support their missions. A recent addition to the toolkit is ChatGPT. Powered by advances in artificial intelligence and natural language processing, it is poised to revolutionize how charities assist donors in making effective giving decisions. Personalize Donor

Effective January 1, 2023 if you are age 70-1/2 or older, you can distribute up to $50,000 from your traditional IRA directly into a charitable remainder trust or gift annuity. The distribution will be excluded from your income, but if you are age 73 or older it will nonetheless count toward your Required Minimum Distribution.

The frustration of business owners with their federal income tax payments is palpable. Though no major tax legislation has recently been passed, federal income tax payments are increasing dramatically. With rising inflation, workforce shortages, and supply chain woes, businesses are coming face to face with the prospects of retraction and survival versus expansion and entrepreneurship.

Tax Notes contributing editors Robert Goulder and Joseph J. Thorndike examine the looming debt ceiling crisis and its likely effect on the IRS’s budget, all in five minutes. This transcript has been edited for length and clarity. Robert Goulder: You’ve heard the news by now: The federal government is just weeks away from hitting the

Tax Notes reporter Andrea Muse provides an update on the state and federal lawsuits challenging Maryland’s digital advertising tax. This transcript has been edited for length and clarity. David D. Stewart: Welcome to the podcast. I’m David Stewart, editor in chief of Tax Notes Today International. This week: getting crabby about digital ad taxes. As

As if texting shorthand wasn’t confusing enough (IKR?), when you have stock options, restricted stock units, or an employee stock purchase plan, you are plunged into an alphabet soup of initialisms, acronyms, and jargon. Do you know NQSOs from ISOs? AMT from FICA or NIIT? What’s the FMV at option exercise? Can you sell company

It will probably be a long time before Congress redrafts section 482, but it’s never too early to propose improvements to the flawed statute that authorizes Treasury’s transfer pricing regulations. The predecessor of what now appears in section 482 of the Internal Revenue Code was first introduced as section 45 of the Revenue Act of

Are you still waiting to hear something from the IRS about the status of your tax return? The agency recently issued updates about filing and processing. Here’s what you need to know. According to the IRS, all paper and electronic individual returns received before January 2023 have been processed. Additionally, the agency claims it is

This is an extremely tough question to answer on your own. The number of major, interconnected factors includes your retirement age, the return you can safely earn on savings, the inflation rate, your retirement accounts, your regular assets, your mortgages, student loans, and other debts, your earnings, your federal FICA and income taxes, your state

Last week I told you about alternative tax thinker Brian Swanson. Others might call Brian a tax protester, which is how Wikipedia refers to someone who claims the tax laws are unconstitutional or otherwise invalid. Less than an hour after I pushed publish I found that two of Brian’s cases had been closed out –

Congress expanded a tax trap for many owners of traditional IRA and 401(k) accounts when the SECURE Act 2.0 was enacted in December 2022. The law delayed the starting age for required minimum distributions (RMDs) to age 73, effective January 1, 2023. The starting age will jump to 75 effective January 1, 2033. If you

More than three years after the COVID-19 pandemic started, returning to the office versus working from home still hasn’t settled down. There’s an ongoing tension around working from home between management’s need for innovation and discipline versus workers’ desires for more flexible arrangements and reduced commuting time. As urbanist and historian Dror Poleg likes to

You’ve probably heard about the Limit, Save, Grow Act of 2023 (LSG, H.R. 2811), which narrowly passed the House of Representatives last month. It features prominently in the ongoing debate over the federal debt ceiling. It’s the GOP’s wish list of spending cuts, totaling $4.8 trillion over the 10-year budget window, according to the Congressional

The IRS does not need to notify third parties when requesting a summons for banking records in collection matters. That was the decision of the Supreme Court in Polselli v. Internal Revenue Service. Background The case involved taxpayer Remo Polselli who underpaid his federal taxes for many years, resulting in an outstanding balance of more

The IRS has announced more cost-of-living adjustments—these focus on changes affecting health savings accounts (HSAs), high-deductible health plans (HDHPs), and health reimbursement arrangements (HRAs) The details can be found in Revenue Procedure 2023-23. Here’s a summary. HSA For calendar year 2024, the annual HSA contribution limit for taxpayers with self-only coverage under a high-deductible health