This week's presentation is based on a presentation I made for the Virginia Society of CPAs' 8th Annual Industry Conference in Williamsburg on May 28, 2009 on gadgets and gizmos. The presentation includes a look at: Novatel's Mifi Apple's Airport Express Apple iPhone 3G Blackberry Bold, Pearl and Storm Apple iPod Touch Netbooks The slides can be im…

Education incentives have been a favorite of Congress in recent years, but this week we look at the old favorite of education as a business deduction, a provision covered by regulations last updated back in 1967. The Tax Court had cause to look into this in the case of Ray v. Commissioner, TC Summary Opinion 2009-71.Materials for this week's podcas…

Last year there was lots of discussion regarding the changes to §6694 and how tax professionals were to apply the standards there against return positions. However, while the standard to be applied may have changed, there were standards in place before and this week we look at the case of a CPA that ran afoul of the lower standards. In the case if …

The IRS has issued a revised ruling on the use of a net operating loss under the new rules Congress added in February. The new ruling, Revenue Ruling 2009-26, updates and liberalizes the guidance previously given in Revenue Ruling 2009-19 issued on March 16. The new guidance allows taxpayers to simply file a carryback for the appropriate number of …

The definition of an employee is this week's key issue--and we look at the matter in the case of Maimon v. Commissioner, TC Summary Opinion 2009-53. Dr. Maimon attempted to argue that he was not an employee of the professional corporation he worked in (and owned some shares in), but rather was an independent contractor. He was interested in holding…

The Tax Court recently decided a pair of cases related to the innocent spouse provisions of §6015 and time limits on filing for relief. In the case of Mannella v. Commissioner, 132 T.C. No. 10 the Tax Court held that even if the notice of intent to levy and rights under the innocent spouse provisions were never seen by the taxpayer, the two year pe…

The IRS has shown recent interest in disputing whether real estate agents meet the requirements to be treated as real estate professionals that can use the rules of §409(c)(7) to treat rental real estate under the standard passive activity rules rather than having such items automatically treated as passive. The IRS position is that since the law r…

Can nonexistent cattle be overvalued? The Ninth Circuit, disagreeing with the Tax Court and other circuits, says it cannot be in the case of Keller v. Commissioner, 2009 TNT 37-17 reversing on this issue the Tax Court's decision in TC Memo 2006-131.The materials for this podcast can be downloaded at http://www.edzollars.com/2009-03-02_Cattle.pdf .T…

This week we look at a case dealing with the trust fund recovery penalty under §6672. In the case of Richard A. Smith v. United States, 2009 TNT 30-6, CA10, (http://ca10.washburnlaw.edu/cases/2009/02/07-4210.pdf) the Tenth Circuit refused to overturn the holding in the US District Court of Utah that Mr. Smith was a responsible person, even though h…

The new American Recovery Reinvestment Act of 2009 has a number of tax provisions, and this week's podcast looks at the small business net operating loss provisions of the Act. This provision will require action for some taxpayers within 60 days after the bill is signed into law, as well as giving us a "sliding" window for when we start using a net…

Housing problems are all over the news (and with some of our clients), but today's story is a housing problem of a different sort. We look at a case where lots of things went wrong in building a taxpayers' dream home where the taxpayers attempted to claim a casualty loss on their tax return. In the cases of Grief v. Commissioner and Bui v. Commissi…

What if a customer tells you they are going to reduce what they pay you for the work you just delivered to them because you owe them to fix for a bad job you did on an earlier contract? If you are on the accrual basis, can you reduce your accrued receivable or record an expense if you are disputing that claim? That is the issue being dealt with thi…

This week I look at a case involving a Northwest Airlines mechanic who was laid off and ended up using his "bumping" rights in other cities while hoping to return to his original home base. The question of whether the taxpayer could deduct the expenses of working in the various locations is considered by the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals after t…

Last year when Congress added the first-time homebuyer credit found in Section 36, they included the ability for unmarried individuals who jointly acquire a residence to allocate the credit among themselves, and gave the IRS the ability to write the rules to allow this to happen. In Notice 2009-12 the IRS has outlined those rules, and they proved t…

The new year opens up with a podcast based on a topic that was part of a panel I was a part of at the Arizona Forum for Improvement of Taxation's winter conference. I spoke with attorney Tracy Essig of Phoenix regarding these matters. The materials can be downloaded at http://www.edzollars.com/ForeclosureDebtandTaxes.pdf .The podcast is sponsored b…

Medical expenses were the issue this week in the case of Magdalin v. Commissioner, TC Memo 2008-293. In this case the taxpayer had paid expenses for obtaining eggs and the services of a surrogate mother, and argued that these expenses should be treated as deductible medical expenses, pointing to the IRS's 2003 private letter ruling (PLR 200318017) …

After a bit of a break while I was out speaking in the past couple of weeks in Nevada, California, Ohio and Virginia we return to a Thanksgiving Day podcast dealing with self-employment taxes and employee status. We look at the Tax Court's ruling in McWhorter v. Commissioner, TC Memo 2008-263 where a taxpayer argued he was not subject to self-emplo…

The podcast this week is based on a presentation I made Thursday at the Arizona Tax Institute on the current state of Section 6694. The session was scheduled back a few months ago, but proved timely given recent tax law changes. A copy of the slides can be downloaded at:http://www.edzollars.com/2008-11-09_6694Slides.pdf .The podcast is sponsored by…

We continue with issues related to S Corporation debt and the many ways to end up not being able to use debts to deduct losses flowing through. This week we look at the Tax Court's opinion in the case of Russell v. Commissioner, TC Memo 2008-246.The materials for the podcast can be downloaded from http://www.edzollars.com/2008-11-03_SDebt.pdf .The …

The IRS has issued final regulations on S Corporation open account debt that will change the way that many clients have to deal with their loans to the corporation. These changes are effective immediately, so we have to understand how these rules work. The podcast is being recorded this week while I'm at the Hilton Garden Inn in Owings Mills, Maryl…

Another taxpayer found out well after filing his return with less than stellar results from his trading activities that there had been an option to file an election under §475(f) to use mark to market accounting which also converts the transactions from short term capital gain/loss to ordinary gain/loss. Since the taxpayer had over $90,000 in net l…

This is a "travel" podcast of sorts this week--the materials were prepared on a Southwest Airlines 737 flying from Phoenix to Baltimore, and recorded in the Hotel Roanoke in Roanoke, Virginia. This week's topic doesn't deal with any of that--rather it deals with the issue of a CPA that got "creative" in planning with himself and his clients, and in…

We look this week at a difference in application of IRC §162(k) between the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals and the United States Tax Court given the Tax Court's decision in Ralston Purina v. Commissioner, 131 TC No. 4 that dealt with the taxpayer's attempt to claim a deduction for dividends paid to participants in its ESOP when it had to redeem cer…

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals this week affirmed the Tax Court's decision in the case of Johanson and Melzig v. Commissioner, TC Memo 2006-105 involving alimony. In its original decision, the Tax Court expressed exasperation at having to yet again decide an issue the parties could have resolved in the decree itself-whether the payments would c…

Accounting issues we often run into involve the differences between tax and GAAP treatment of items, and this week we look at one such case involving the time for recognizing an expense. In this case, the matter involved rebates and we look at a Chief Counsel Memorandum (ILM 200834019) outlining the IRS's view on why the taxpayer in this case could…

We review the requirements found in the regulations for obtaining the required support for a tax position, concentrating on the methods outlined in Reg. §1.6662-4(d) in the definition of "substantial authority" which are cross referenced multiple times when considering other levels of authority.The materials can be downloaded from http://www.edzoll…

This week we look at the Recent United States Court of Federal Claims decision in Fisher, Trustee v. United States, 2008 TNT 154-7 where the court sided with the taxpayer and held that the proper treatment of amounts received in lieu of shares in the demutualization of Sun Life were to be treated under the open transaction doctrine rather than trea…

The IRS issued new proposed regulations to explain the reduction of the NOL substitute in an S corporation setting when cancellation of debt is excluded from the S corporation's income under Section 108. While the regulations are in proposed form only, the "deemed NOL" rules have existed in the IRC since 2002, and Section 108 is likely to be an iss…

This podcast is the sequel to a November 2006 podcast on the same case--that of Kadillak v. Commissioner where an individual who was caught by the "dot bomb" crash of the technology stock of his former employer attempted to mitigate the damage caused by his ISO exercise and 83(b) election made at the height of the craze. A year later, Mr. Kadillak …

In a special podcast, we look at the just passed American Home Rescue and Foreclosure Prevention Act of 2008, taking a detailed look at a few tax provisions in that bill of interest. We look at the new, refundable first time homeowners credit, the property tax deduction for nonitemizers and the soon to start restrictions on the ability to get a ful…

In the past year we've talked a lot about the preparer standards and tax return positions. This week, in the case of Wadsworth v. Commissioner, TC Memo 2008-171, we see a real world situation where a tax professional decided a position was not one that he could accept and what happened when the client decided to find another person who would take t…

I gave a presentation at the offices of the Arizona Society of CPAs on the use of virtual machines to deal with the transition from Windows XP to Vista in a tax practice. This podcast is based on that presentation, and it will be fairly useful to actually have the materials in front of you as you listen to this one. The materials are at http://www.…

The IRS issued new temporary regulations that deal with start-up and corporate and partnership organization costs. Interestingly enough, the new regulations now create an automatic election to expense/amortize all such costs, and treat problems related to the identification of costs or the proper year to begin amortization as accounting method issu…

The IRS this week issued some relatively unsurprising guidance on the treatment of life insurance and an S corporation's accumulated adjustments account, so this week we'll look at the more general issues of the relevance (and lack of relevance) of AAA for an S corporation and its shareholders, and how the item is computed.The materials are availab…

The IRS has issued new guidance in the form of a series of questions and answers related to Health Savings Account in Notice 2008-59. This podcast goes over the various items covered in this notice, and some of the planning and design opportunities available under this notice.Written materials for this podcast can be downloaded from http://www.edzo…

This is part two of a series of two podcasts on the proposed regulations for preparer penalties released recently. .The materials are at http://edzollars.com/2008-06-23_Penalty.pdf .The podcast is sponsored by Leimberg Information Services, on the web at http://www.leimbergservices.com .

This is the first of what will be a series of two podcasts on the proposed regulations for preparer penalties released here recently. Considering the length of the regulations and podcast, the first hour is in this file to listen to and digest, with part two to be posted later in the week.The materials are at http://edzollars.com/2008-06-23_Penalty…

Securing our client's data is the responsibility of all of those in tax practice. This past week I gave a presentation at the Arizona Society of CPA's Financial Planning Conference on this matter, and that presentation serves as the basis for this week's podcast.The slides used for this presentation are available at http://www.edzollars.com/2008-06…

This week we look at the step transaction doctrine and where the line is drawn when we deal with the application of the step transaction doctrine in the formation of a family limited partnership. The IRS attempted to use their victory in the Senda case to get the same result in the case we'll look at this week, Holman v. Commissioner, 130 TC No. 12…

This week we look at a Court of Claims case that deals with an IRS examination and the imposition of the fraud penalty--a penalty the Court of Claims found was not justified. The case is the one of Gagliardi v. United States, 2008 TNT 98-20, and is instructive both in the outline of the law, as well as allowing us to consider the ways an examinatio…

Simplified employee pensions (SEPs) are a popular retirement plan for extremely small businesses, with one of the key attractions being that don't require many of the formalities of regular qualified plans. But that has led to taxpayers treating them too informally, and in the case we look at this week (Brown v. Commissioner, TC Summary 2008-56) a …

The Fifth Circuit came down with a ruling in Kornman & Associates, Inc. v. United States on whether a taxpayer who set up a Son of BOSS style shelter would get the benefit that was expected--and the taxpayer was disappointed. The case offers a chance to review the unusual impact that liabilities have in a partnership context, as well as the questio…

Since we've discussed mailing returns in previous podcasts, this time we look at the problems a taxpayer who tries to hand file a return can run into getting that done correctly. In the case of Allnut, Sr. v. Commissioner, 2008-1 USTC ¶50,310 the taxpayer failed to make delivery as required by the regulations, and the court found that what the taxp…

Partnership taxation is one of those areas where things may not work exactly as many practitioners expect, and those unexpected workings are things that tax shelter promoters have attempted to make use of. But if you are going to try and use the technical details of the tax law to force the IRS to grant you a tax benefit that otherwise doesn't seem…

This week we follow the continuing saga of the self-employment tax and qualified joint venture that we've been following since the early part of this year. This week we analyze CCA 200816030 issued by the IRS that outlines the "new improved" IRS position on self-employment tax and the Qualified Joint Venture election under §761(f).The materials for…

The issue of whether §7502(c) provides the exclusive means to prove timely filing of a document by a taxpayer is addressed yet again by the courts--and what the Third Circuit had to say, the IRS didn't like hearing. In the case of Philadelphia Marine Trade Ass'n.-Int'l Longshoremen's Association Pension Fund et al. v. Commissioner, 2008 TNT 74-16 t…

After a hiatus at the end of tax season, we return with a new show dealing with an issue of whether a payment to a person was compensation income or a gift. The case in question is the case of Larsen v. Commissioner, TC Memo 2008-73.The materials for the podcast are at http://www.edzollars.com/2008-04-16_GiftorComp.pdf.We also briefly discuss an in…

The self-employment tax is our topic for this week, specifically dealing with two topics. We revisit an issue last visited in the early days of the podcast (back in June 2005) of the treatment of LLC members for self-employment tax purposes. We look specifically at the case authorities we have (which are scant, and not terribly promising for LLC me…

The question of whether a problem on a return was an error or a method of accounting is important, as we'll discuss this week looking at the Sixth Circuit's ruling in the case of Huffman v. Commissioner, where the appeals court sustained the 20006 ruling of the Tax Court (126 TC 322) that the CPA's consistent flawed attempt to calculate inventory a…

This week we look at the Tax Court's second pass at the case of Hubert v. Commissioner, TC Memo 2008-46, a case that sent back to the Tax Court by the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals to decide if the LLC debt restoration provision made the taxpayer the payer of last resort under the Sixth Circuit's test. The Tax Court comes back saying no.The materi…