Taxes

Topline Top earners in New York City—one of the biggest billionaire enclaves in the world—are reportedly on track to pay the highest combined local tax rate in the country as part of a new budget deal among state lawmakers that would raise corporate and income taxes by $4.3 billion annually, the Wall Street Journal reported

Today’s column addresses questions about filing before 70 in case congress raises the retirement age, how benefits are calculated and can be similar despite different earnings records and SSA taxes paid and how the 10 year marriage requirement for divorced spousal benefits can potentially be met. Larry Kotlikoff is a Professor of Economics at Boston

As a pet-loving financial planner, I tend to attract a lot of clients who are also pet lovers. With this in mind, I have been asked countless times if there are any tax breaks for the owners of pets. I would like to share the top five tax deductions for pet owners according to Pawlicy Advisor

On March 25, 2021, Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) introduced the “FOR THE 99.5 PERCENT ACT” which will dramatically and historically change estate planning by reducing the federal estate and gift tax credits, increasing estate, gift, and GST tax rates and including assets in certain trusts that are not now includible

The Internal Revenue Service has announced that it’s sent out a third batch of American Rescue Act stimulus payments, and this is the first batch that includes “plus-up” or “supplemental” payments for those who got partial $1,400 payments earlier. The $1,400 payments—a third round of Covid-relief economic income payments—were authorized by the March 11 American

The IRS is actively hunting for crypto tax cheats by demanding cryptocurrency exchanges release user information through “John Doe” summons. Once John Doe summons are issued, exchanges are legally required to release requested user information to the IRS. On March 30, 2021 a John Doe summons was issued to Kraken. On April 1, 2021, another

My Millennial friend (MF) asked me to check out some tax observations on a podcast on Game of Roses by someone who goes by Bachelor Clues(BC). MF’s job calls for them to be in touch with Gen Z, so they have provided me with some valuable leads. Without MF I don’t know when I would have learned

Topline Benefitting from Trump-era tax cuts and capitalizing on loopholes in the tax code, at least 55 prominent U.S. companies paid $0 in federal corporate income taxes in 2020 on billions of dollars in profits, according to a report published Friday by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy. Key Facts Analysts determined that the

In the past few weeks, the internet chatter has been about something called “nonfungible tokens,” or NFTs. Although this object is a creature of blockchain technology, it is by definition not a cryptocurrency. This is what “nonfungible” means. Each token is unique. Much of what we are seeing seems to be an early proof of

The IRS wants crypto tax data in a big way, from asking on each tax return, it’s latest Hidden Treasure initiative and more. Now, a federal court in Massachusetts entered an order authorizing the IRS to serve a John Doe summons on Circle Internet Financial Inc., or its predecessors, subsidiaries, divisions, and affiliates, including Poloniex

Today’s column addresses questions about potential effects of retroactive retirement benefits on later spousal benefits, potential survivor benefits for non-citizens living outside the US and how marriage can affect eligibility for disable adult child benefits based on a parent’s record. Larry Kotlikoff is a Professor of Economics at Boston University and the founder and president

On March 30, the Department of Justice, Tax Division, filed a petition for leave to serve a “John Doe” summons on Payward Ventures, also known as “Kraken,” requesting account information for all United States taxpayers who held accounts there with the equivalent value of $20,000 or more in cryptocurrency for any one year from 2016

US-based multinational corporations can’t say they were not warned. President Biden today proposed the major tax increases on US firms that he promised during the 2020 campaign. He’d use the new revenues to pay for his  American Jobs Plan, a massive new $2 trillion-plus effort to improve US infrastructure and expand other domestic programs. Could

On Friday, we will get the unemployment reports for March, and forecasters are hoping for continued improvement from the deep Covid-19 recession.  But we are still hurting from that dramatic decline and the economic recovery is at risk if we relax our public health measures too soon.   We’re still feeling the economic effects of the Covid-19

Got a .edu email address? You might be the target of the latest Internal Revenue Service impersonation scam. The IRS issued a warning today that scammers using phishing emails are targeting university and college students and staff from both public and private, profit and non-profit institutions.  The scammers appear to be targeted those who have

The Internal Revenue Service announced today that most Social Security, SSI and RRB benefit recipients who don’t file a tax return should get their $1,400 Round 3 stimulus payments electronically by April 7, while stimulus payments for Veterans Affairs beneficiaries who don’t file a tax return could be sent out by mid-April.  These folks—among the

Two of our good friends just got married, and of course, they asked me what this meant for their taxes as a gay couple. While I am a huge fan of marriage equality, I don’t love all the marriage penalties in our tax code. Many of these penalties are especially onerous for high-earning gay couples.

When is a tax return not a tax return? What does it mean for a return to be properly filed with the IRS? When is a nonfiler not really a nonfiler? These seem like basic questions that should be easily answered under a modern tax system. In most cases they are — but not universally. Things

When President Biden unveils the next phase of his Build Back Better recovery agenda in Pittsburgh on Wednesday, he’s expected to propose a $3 trillion spending plan broken into two major components. The first consists of investments in “traditional” infrastructure, such as transportation, waterways, broadband, and clean energy. The second component will consist of what

Today’s column addresses questions about benefit rates after filing early, who can still file restricted applications for spousal benefits only and what happens when a disabled child turns 18. Larry Kotlikoff is a Professor of Economics at Boston University and the founder and president of Economic Security Planning, Inc, which markets Maximize My Social Security