You need preventative steps to ensure that you are paying the wages you think you are paying to your employees and that your payroll tax deposits are actually being sent to the IRS and not to an embezzler’s pockets.

You want repairs and maintenance deductions on your business and rental properties. Here are tax tips on finding tax deductions in your lawn, landscaping, and other land improvements.

Even if you are not required to file a tax return, you need to file a return within the statute of limitations if you are due a refund and you want the cash. If you fail to file a return within the statute of limitations, you forfeit your refund and make a contribution of that refund to the government.

Most of this issue explains how you pocket money from the new health care tax credits. That’s nice. But you have to ask, who is paying for my tax credits?

Swiss UBS AG and other supposed tax havens and secret banks are divulging the names of tax cheats to the U.S. government.

Distributing the assets of an estate needs a tax plan to ensure the favorable results embedded in the tax law.

Federal Reserve Board Chair Ben Bernanke told a House Budget Committee to address the government’s long-term fiscal shortfall with higher tax rates that do not impede economic growth.

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner told the Senate Finance Committee that more 1099 reporting and IRS audits provide the solution to the tax gap.

The Congressional Budget Office estimates that this year’s federal budget deficit will top last year’s by more than 250 percent.

Every business meal absorbs your personal consumption, and the IRS allows that consumption as a business expense almost all the time. But the IRS can, whenever it gets the urge, invoke Sutter to destroy your deductions.

In upcoming years, taxpayers with cash income greater than $50,000 are more likely to pay the AMT than taxpayers with cash income of $1 million or more. Fixing this will require a large tax package.

In testimony before the Senate on January 29, 2008, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) said: “Under any plausible scenario, the federal budget is on an imprudent and unsustainable path. This budget imbalance will necessarily result in tax increases and spending cuts. (And all this is before Treasury Secretary Paulson’s first $700 billion bank bailout.)

In what is becoming an every year outrageous event, lawmakers patched the alternative minimum tax (AMT), adding $50 billion to the federal deficit.

Despite the new law’s press, the Mortgage Forgiveness Debt Relief Act of 2007 only offers relief to a limited number of qualified homes.

A government committee identified the capital gains’ 15% rate as the biggest tax expense from 2007 to 2011. This expense is growing, and just might prod some lawmakers to increase the rate that’s now available. Take advantage of current rates!

With four exceptions, tax law prohibits contingent fees with regard to any matter before the IRS. The beauty of the contingent fee for the taxpayer is the certainty that you don’t pay if you don’t get a positive monetary result. This certainly beats the alternative: big payments, no results.

A new law makes tax preparers subject to higher penalties for errors, and establishes high standards for claims made on tax returns. The moral: if your tax advisor examines your issue and tells you that you can claim that deduction, you have a very solid claim.

Be alert to, and beware of, government studies. The result of a tax study is almost always bad news for you. In this case, we foresaw the problems with the 1986 tax “reform.” What’s on the radar next: the new social security study group and the AMT.

Be alert to, and beware of, government studies. The result of a tax study is almost always bad news for you. In this case, we foresaw the problems with the 1986 tax “reform.” What’s on the radar next: the new social security study group and the AMT.

Anthony Lee was sentenced to seven months in prison and three months of home detention for failure to file his tax returns. He owed $76,853 in taxes and an extra fine of $10,000. Know the law!

IRS auditors do most of the audits. They are not accountants (IRS agents are accountants); they might be wrong about tax law. It’s your responsibility to know the law and use it to prove your point. This article tells you how to use court rulings and documents that enforce your rights in your tax-law partnership.

Getting the IRS to give you an advance ruling on a transaction or deduction can be very worthwhile. It now costs money, but it might be worth getting the opinion you seek. If your ruling does not fit into the three major categories they list, your fees may vary. The highest fee is $50,000 for a pre-filing agreement.

Extenders delay the expiration of a specific tax law, which hides budget costs and allows lawmakers to shirk their responsibility to make good law. We summarize the current extenders to inform you of where you stand with the tax law.

In the latest installment of gimmicky extenders, lawmakers have created a one-year tax benefit window for deducting mortgage insurance. What are the lawmakers thinking? Presumably, they hope the mortgage insurance deduction will boost the housing market in 2007. If this works, look for an extension to 2008.

It matters not that you used a paid tax preparer to help you, you commit tax fraud and face jail time when you take illegal tax protestor positions on your tax returns.

The federal budget is understated because it does not include amounts for tax extenders—tax laws that are scheduled to expire, but that will not expire because they will be extended. Yes, it’s lunacy.

Winning a court case for physical or nonphysical injuries triggers tax laws that can dramatically impact the after-tax value of any cash you receive for injuries or damages.

By using outside collection firms instead of IRS personal, the government is going to lose $8.6 billion a year in revenue.

Government whacks 157 estate tax lawyers at a cost to taxpayers of $2.6 million a day.

The AMT taxes the deductions you claim on your regular tax return. For example, the AMT taxes the deductions you claim for state income and sales taxes. Further, the AMT taxes the personal exemptions you claim for yourself, your spouse, and your dependent children. This is not a typo. It’s true. The AMT is the most unfair tax since direct confiscation of assets.

Tax law continues to favor the heavy SUV over the typical passenger automobile. The heavy SUV qualifies for additional first-year expensing of up to $25,000 and it’s exempt from the gas guzzler tax.

It is highly unusual for the IRS to revoke a private letter ruling. You can protect yourself from a revocation by making a proposed transaction the subject matter for the ruling.

Tax law places your collectible activity in one of four tax categories: (1) hobby, (2) investment, (3) trader, or (4) dealer. This means your collectible activity can, depending on category, trigger the AMT, capital gains, and self-employment tax. When you know the rules that place you in these categories, you can make adjustments. Sometimes the adjustments are easy; at other times, they require rethinking the collectibles activity.