Family pets are never deductible. But expenses for dogs, cats, and other animals can be deductible if the animal qualifies as a medical expense, business expense, or charitable deduction.

You can plan your tax-deductible business life to avoid cold winters and hot summers. To do this, you need to know what a tax home is and where your tax home is located. The good news is that you have just one tax home, unless you are one of those rare individuals who have no physical home.

At a time of surging cryptocurrency prices, many crypto owners are enjoying substantial gains. Where multiple crypto units are sold in the same year, taxable gains can be reduced by using a crypto accounting method that provides the highest possible tax basis for each unit that is sold. This ordinarily requires that crypto owners use a method other than the default method: first in, first out (FIFO).

The IRS can impose a 20 percent accumulated earnings tax on C corporations that retain too much in earnings to avoid issuing taxable dividends to shareholders. Corporations can avoid this penalty tax by retaining no more than the accumulated earnings tax credit, electing S corporation status, or retaining no more than necessary for reasonable business needs. Proper documentation is key to avoiding the tax.

You have two possible ways to let an employee use your timeshare, one of which is tax-free to the employee. The second method is to call use of the timeshare “compensation” to the employee, which produces the unusual result of taxable income to the employee in an amount often different from the tax deduction for the business.

Here’s a common question: Who should own the business vehicle? You? Your corporation? If you just formed your corporation, it’s likely that the vehicle is in your name. How does your corporation deal with it? This article gives you answers.

Could you use your timeshare for business lodging and other business purposes? If so, why should you consider it? Business deductions usually produce the best tax benefits, that’s why. Further, you need to know the special tax rules that can make your timeshare a rental property, personal residence, or business lodging facility.

The 105-HRA is the medical reimbursement plan you likely want to use if (a) you report your business income and expenses on Schedule C, E, or F of your Form 1040, and (b) you can make your spouse your one and only eligible employee. Also, if you are single and operate your business as a C corporation, and if you are the one and only eligible employee of your C corporation, the 105-HRA is the medical reimbursement plan for you.

Do you operate your business as a corporation, a partnership, or a proprietorship, or as an LLC taxed as one of these three entities? Your choice of entity impacts whether you can create a no-hassle, tax-free fringe benefit for you and/or your employees’ smartphones. In this article, you learn the rules that apply and which ones give you the best benefits.

The next time you plan a vacation, stop and think about how you could make it deductible. If you find a good business reason to visit that destination and you throw in enough business hours on the trip, you suddenly convert a non-deductible personal trip into a deductible business expense.

If your S corporation reimburses you for your personal vehicle, you need to report the gain or loss on the sale of that vehicle. This article gives you two clear examples of how this works and what forms to use.

Proposed IRS regulations scheduled to go into effect for the 2025 tax year will require people and companies that help customers transfer digital assets such as Bitcoin to file a new Form 1099-DA with the IRS. This form reports information similar to that reported for stock sales, such as sales proceeds, as well as (starting in 2026) tax basis and gains and losses. The new reporting rules will apply to digital asset trading platforms, payment processors, many wallet providers, and other “digital asset brokers.”

The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) changed the landscape for a host of business meal and entertainment deductions. For supper money, the TCJA did damage, in both the short and the long term. But the deduction, albeit damaged, continues in place for tax years 2018 through 2025, before its death in 2026.

First question: Is your ERC claim improper? Are you sure? If you’re sure, the IRS has a proposition for you. Pay back 80 percent of all your ERC claims, and keep the remaining 20 percent. But hurry, this deal expires soon.

The IRS is on a tear against improper ERC claims, and this intimidates some tax professionals and business owners. Read this article for insights on what’s going on and what you need to consider.

The Augusta rule gets its name from the Masters Golf Tournament where some members and others who live in the area receive tax-free rent by renting their homes for a week or two. You don’t have to live in Augusta to benefit from this rule, as this article shows.

You have a wide variety of choices on how to travel for business. You can use a car, train, plane, or boat. You can fly economy, business, or first class. Should you own a plane, you can use it for business travel. Special rules apply to the car, plane, and boat; accordingly, if you travel for your business, you should know the rules in this article.

If you are going to form a new business in 2024, or use an LLC to buy a rental property, or change your sole proprietorship to a corporation, you need to know about the Corporate Transparency Act’s new filing requirements. Why? Penalties for failure to file are $500 a day, plus (a) up to $10,000 in criminal penalties and (b) up to two years in prison.

If you have not done so before, put your safe-harbor de minimis expensing election in place now. The de minimis rules make your tax record-keeping easier. With this safe-harbor expensing, unlike with Section 179 expensing, you don’t need to track the assets and keep them in a depreciation schedule.

The initial good news is that your real estate portfolio can contain both investor and dealer properties. The additional good news is that you are in control, and by knowing just a few rules about dealer and investor classifications, you can do much to increase your net worth.

It’s been a busy year for natural disasters—the wildfires in Maui are the most recent as we write this article. The IRS is one of the government agencies that offers relief from disasters. Here’s what you need to know about IRS tax relief.

Your non-cash charitable contribution must run the gauntlet before giving you tax benefits. This article examines a court case in which one hurdle prevented clothing donations to Goodwill and the Salvation Army.

Lawmakers reduced your deduction for legitimate business entertainment meals from 100 percent to 80 percent in 1986 and then from 80 percent to 50 percent in 1993. There’s almost no good news here, except that 50 percent is far better than zero.

Although the Individual Coverage HRA (ICHRA) works for businesses of all sizes, it’s particularly helpful for small businesses with fewer than 50 employees that want to provide health care benefits to their employees. With an ICHRA, a business can reimburse individually purchased health insurance without triggering the $100-a-day-per-employee penalty.

If you operate your business as a corporation, make sure to properly handle corporate advances. For the C corporation, getting this wrong can create taxable dividends. For the S corporation, it can create taxable wages.

Learn how your failure to keep an adequate mileage log costs you time and money during an IRS examination and then can result in no vehicle deductions, as it did for this business taxpayer.

Whether you operate your business as a corporation or as a proprietorship, you need to record your tax-deductible travel expenses in an IRS-approved manner. This means you need to know technically what a receipt is and when you do and do not need one. By the way, the credit card statement is not a receipt. This report explains how to keep your tax records, gives you an easy record-keeping resource to use, and helps you build audit-proof records that prove your travel expenses.

NFTs—short for “non-fungible tokens”—are one of the hottest types of digital assets. Unlike Bitcoin, they are not digital currency. Instead, they represent ownership of virtual or physical assets. NFTs can be bought and sold on online platforms. Such sales result in ordinary income for NFT creators. Purchasers face the collectibles rules if the NFTs are collectibles and the owner can recognize capital gains or losses both on initial purchase and later sales.

Confused about when you need a receipt for a business expense? The rules can be tricky. Don’t risk getting it wrong. Here’s what you need to know about the $75 receipt rule.

If your securities trading activity can rise to that of a tax-favored trader, you can benefit in multiple ways as discussed in this article. For example, with the mark-to-market election, you can deduct your tax losses without running into the $3,000 ceiling.

Did you claim the COVID-19-inspired Employee Retention Credit (ERC) in 2020 and/or 2021? You likely qualified for the ERC under one of the tests that you will see in this article.

You have much to consider when starting a business. Newbies make mistakes, some more costly than others. One big part of the tax equation is when does the business start. Although this is often straightforward, it can also be unusual, as seen in this article.

The U.S. Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) has issued proposed regulations showing how it intends to implement the Corporate Transparency Act—a law enacted in 2021 that requires smaller businesses to disclose beneficial owner information to the federal government. FinCEN plans to start enforcing the law as soon as mid-2022, and it will affect as many as 30 million new and existing smaller businesses.

All taxpayers must answer a question on Form 1040 about cryptocurrency. Unfortunately, it’s a trick question. You can engage in many types of crypto transactions without having to answer “yes” to the question. If you answered the question wrong, you don’t have to amend your return unless you failed to report crypto income.

Pay attention to the rules on what makes a business mile and what makes a personal mile, so you can achieve the best possible vehicle deductions.

The IRS Classification Settlement Program (CSP) offers a chance to settle your employment tax debt due to worker misclassification if you do not qualify for Section 530 relief. CSP agreements typically result in a substantial reduction of assessed employment taxes, especially if you misclassified workers over several years.

Under tax law, your business vehicle is considered “listed property.” The IRS has a regulation that applies the $75 receipt rule to listed property.

During an audit, IRS examiners can use their judgment to allow or disallow pretty much whatever they want. In this first stage of the audit process, the burden of proof is on you.

If you need to file a document with the IRS by a specific deadline, don’t rely on regular U.S. mail. Instead, use certified or registered mail or an IRS-approved private delivery service. This way, your document will be deemed filed on the postmark date even if the IRS loses the document or claims that it never received the document.

The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act tax reform crushed a big chunk of business entertainment tax deductions. Fortunately, your business entertainment facility escaped the mayhem and continues as a 100 percent tax-deductible facility. If you own (or want to own) such a business facility, make sure to review the rules in this article.

If you do some work at home, you’re probably using your home internet connection. Are your monthly internet expenses deductible? Maybe. Home internet expenses can be deducted by business owners in the same way as home utility costs. But a lack of good records can booby-trap this deduction.

Stay with family and friends when traveling for business. And then create tax deductions by paying them for your business lodging. You have a choice: deduct the cost of staying at the big hotel downtown, or deduct the cost of staying with your friends or family. Either way, the choice of location does not change the fact that you are on a tax-deductible business trip. The side benefit is that doing this right creates tax-free income for your friends and relatives.

Use the following 10 tax-saving strategies on your S corporation tax return to generate big tax savings.

If you operate a sideline business that produces tax losses that you deduct on your Form 1040, beware. The IRS can attack that sideline business as a hobby. If the IRS wins, you lose—and you could lose big.

Your year-end tax planning doesn’t have to be hard. This article takes your daily business activities and identifies easy year-end tax-planning moves you can make today. Our six strategies will increase your tax deductions or reduce your taxable income so that Uncle Sam gets less of your 2021 cash.

When you travel out of town overnight, you need to know the tax-home rule. The IRS defines your tax home, and it’s not necessarily in the same town where you have your personal residence.

IRS Audit Technique Guides provide valuable insight as to how the IRS conducts audits. The guides also provide helpful guidance in developing financial best practices for your business.

How would you like a capital loss storage box that you could call on when you have capital gains that you want eliminated? Your cryptocurrency holdings can create that capital loss storage box without changing the nature of your holdings, as we explain in this article.

When the government allows your rental property losses to offset your other income, it subsidizes your rental property profits. If tax law passive-loss rules deny your current rental losses, your profits go down. Therefore, you need to know how the passive-loss rules work so you can maximize your rental profits and avoid unpleasant visits with the IRS.

The thought of an IRS audit is a worry—no question about it. But it’s worse when the IRS wants a lot of your money. And it’s even worse yet when the IRS wants your money because it interprets the law incorrectly and, at the time you see the IRS adjustment, you have no idea whether the IRS is right or wrong.

When is an SUV a car, and when is it a truck? How big is the difference in deductions? Does the SUV built on a car chassis get different treatment from the SUV built on a truck chassis?

On your rental properties, you need proof of your cost allocation to land and depreciable buildings. If you have no proof of that allocation, the IRS has started using the Internet to grab the tax assessor’s allocation and use that against your depreciation deductions.

COVID-19 is going away, perhaps by early summer. It’s time to start thinking business meals and partying with your employees. The chart in this article gives you a helicopter view of the latest business meal and entertainment rules.

Learn these four business mileage rules. With them, you have a roadmap to the best tax benefits. And if you ever suffer an IRS audit, these four rules will save your bacon.

Disasters can happen at any time. As far as your business records go, you’ll be most equipped for a disaster if you’ve backed up and stored your most critical data online. To the extent you fail to do this, you’ll have to get copies of vital records from the IRS and other government agencies, your bank, clients, customers, and others. You’ll have to re-create other data as best you can.

If you own your own business, hiring your spouse to work as your employee can be a great tax savings strategy. But the tax savings may be a mirage if you don’t pay your spouse the right way. And the arrangement is subject to attack by the IRS. Here are five things to know before you hire your spouse that will maximize your savings and minimize the audit risk.

As you likely know by now, the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loan and its forgiveness process have been an ever-changing (and often confusing) ride so far. With the new rules for PPP loans of $50,000 or less, you escape from the most difficult part of the loan forgiveness if you had to consider employees. And you may even obtain more loan forgiveness than you would have otherwise.

If you are the victim of a Ponzi scheme, you absolutely, positively must read this article to learn how the law gives you favored victim status. This includes a safe harbor election that gives you an upfront deduction of up to 95 percent, possible net operating loss treatment, and more.

Are you starting or buying a new business? If so, you have a decision to make regarding the best operating entity for this business. Choose wisely, and you will benefit in many ways, including possible huge tax savings. Choose the wrong entity, and you’ll feel the pain for years to come.

Do you have a mileage log that will survive an IRS audit? If so, good for you! If not, get ready to give up all (not some, but all) of your vehicle tax deductions for not just one year but three years, as you will see in this true story.

Three questions for you: (1) Can you use part of one room as a deductible home office? (2) How about a dozen full-sized rooms? (3) Can you deduct the portion of your home that you use for storage of your business records? Find the answers here.

Do you operate your business as a corporation but use a vehicle that you own in your personal name for the corporate business? If so, be aware that the TCJA changed the rules of the road for tax years 2018-2025. To avoid losing your rightful deductions, you need to have the corporation reimburse you for business use, as we describe here.

A special tax loophole exists for disaster-related payments. Such qualified payments are deductible by the payor and tax-free to the recipient. The COVID-19 pandemic qualifies as a disaster and activates this tax benefit. We’ll tell you how both you and your employees can benefit from this provision today.

Giving to your church, school, or other 501(c)(3) charity is a noble act no matter how you choose to give. But for the purposes of tax savings, some forms of giving are much more beneficial to you than others. As a business owner, you can use some business strategies to get the money to these institutions as business expenses. While this does not change anything from the institution’s perspective, it hugely increases your tax savings.

If you’re a business owner, should you take advantage of per diems when you travel? The short answer is yes and no—and perhaps surprisingly, keeping track of your actual expenses is often a better plan anyway. Here’s why.

Lawmakers have given you an easy strategy to avoid paying gift and estate taxes. The strategy involves tuition and medical expenses that, likely, are common issues for your loved ones. Sadly, this tax avoidance technique is often unknown or overlooked—but not for those who have this article.

If you have employees who travel for your business, would the IRS travel per diem method simplify your record keeping and reduce your risk of audit disallowance?

Millions of people are buying and selling cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin. The IRS just issued new guidance for the first time in over five years on how you’ll treat cryptocurrency for tax purposes. We’ll tell you what the IRS had to say, what you need to do, and what we still don’t know.

The ACA destroyed a lot of the advantages of the Section 105 medical reimbursement plan. While the QSEHRA was, and remains, a good option for small employers, something even better has arrived—for employers of all sizes—starting in 2020.

Failure to use an accountable plan for your employee expense reimbursements (including yourself if you operate as a corporation) turns those improperly reimbursed expenses into taxable wages. In other words, by failing to comply with the accountable plan rules, you turn the tax-free reimbursement into taxable W-2 wages. That’s about as ugly as it can get.

To operate successfully as a corporation, you need to be good at paperwork. Also, you may not treat the advance account on the corporate books as your personal slush fund.

What proof of mileage do I need if I’m using the IRS standard mileage method? Can the IRS require me to provide odometer readings as proof?

How much per hour do you collect in tax savings when you keep the right tax records? We don’t know for sure, but it’s a lot of money. We estimate that with the right records, the taxpayer in this court case would have earned about $2,333 an hour. And the thing is, the records this taxpayer needed in this case are very easy to keep.

You don’t want a 1099 that reports an amount that differs from what you report on your tax return, because the IRS computers will pick that up and start an inquiry. When you prepay rent, your accounting method for preparing your 1099 likely creates a mismatch between you and your landlord. Here’s the technical correction when you have a mismatch and how to implement it, and a bigger tip on how to avoid mismatched reporting to begin with.

Learn how your continuous learning employees probably suffer because of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. It’s likely good business for you as a business owner to ease that suffering to encourage this continuous learning. On the personal side, you’ll find the tax law subsidies for your individual education to your liking.

You are not going to do this very often, but thank the IRS for showing you the path to your client and prospect business meal tax deductions. Remember, the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act eliminated tax-deductible entertainment, so the IRS’s new client and prospect business meal rules are important.

To deduct your passive losses as a tax law–defined real estate professional, you or your spouse, or both, must prove time spent. Since you need proof of time spent to deduct rental property losses, use the tactics in this article to keep track of your time and also increase your overall profits on the rentals.

The law contains no reasonableness test for mileage. There are very specific rules for recording mileage. We recommend that you keep a mileage log for at least three consecutive months to prove your business-mile percentage.

You have three good reasons to get your qualified small-business health reimbursement account (QSEHRA) in place on or before October 2. First, this avoids penalties. Second, your employees will have the time they need to select health insurance. Third, you will have your plan in place on January 1.

You cannot expect IRS auditors and agents to know the tax code and regulations. If you can produce the code or regulations that authorize your deductions, you are miles ahead in your audit.

If you are thinking of a gym for your employees, this is the article for you. The article keeps you from using the wrong set of IRS regulations. Yep, there two different sets of regulations from two different code sections that could apply.

Should you deduct your client and business meals in spite of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act? This article explains why that is what you should do and gives you reasons for doing it.

Whether you operate your business as a corporation or as a proprietorship, you need to record your tax-deductible travel expenses in an IRS-approved manner. This means you need to know technically what a receipt is—and when you do or do not need one. By the way, the credit card statement is not a receipt.

We, you, and just about everyone else have been looking for a ray of sunshine that would allow tax deductions for business meals with clients and prospects. In this article, you learn that lawmakers may have intended to grant deductions for business meals with clients and prospects in spite of how they put together the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.

Tax reform has had a significant impact on the tax deductions you can now claim for business entertainment and meals. The chart in this article shows you how the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act treats 12 meal and/or entertainment events.

Imagine this. You pay $1,000 for your golf foursome to play golf in the annual charitable golf outing. You have been doing this for years, and you were always able to deduct the full $1,000. Now, because of the new tax reform, your deduction is $300. Disturbing?

Lawmakers finally did it. First, they reduced the directly related and associated entertainment deductions to 80 percent with the 1986 Tax Reform Act. Later, in 1993, they reduced that 80 percent to 50 percent. And now, with the newest tax reform, lawmakers simply killed business deductions for directly related and associated entertainment.

Traditional business entertainment such as business meals and ballgames with clients and prospects died with tax reform. That’s a sad deal, really. On the good news front, your parties with employees remain deductible, as do your employee entertainment facilities and selected other types of entertainment.

It’s true—you don’t need a receipt for an entertainment expense that is less than $75. But you may need to prove that you had the cash available to pay for your entertainment that cost less than $75.

The 1099-K gives the IRS another audit weapon. In this article, you see how an IRS revenue agent uses the 1099-K to catch taxpayers who underreported their gross income. You also learn why you are likely to receive a letter from the IRS auditing or asking about your 1099-K amounts.

What percentage of your business vehicles would you (or your business) like to deduct? To achieve your desired percentage, you need to know and apply the rules that the IRS applies to the mileage that you drive from your home to various business destinations.

The woman in this audit learned how tax knowledge can turn what appears as a nightmare (an IRS audit) into a positive happening—meaning cash refunds for the year of the audit and subsequent years. As the old saying goes, “knowledge is power.”

If you have not done so before, make sure to put your safe harbor de minimis expensing election in place now. The new de minimis rules make your tax record keeping easier. With this safe harbor expensing, unlike with Section 179 expensing, you don’t need to track the assets and keep them in a depreciation schedule.

Tax law does not like you if you are a casual gambler. If you are a casual gambler, you report your winnings above the line, where those winnings can increase your taxes, cause loss of deductions because of phaseouts, and increase your Medicare premiums. Your losses are itemized deductions that appear below the line, where you benefit only if you itemize. There’s no choice about where you report your winnings and losses, but there’s a way you can use the per-session rule to mitigate the damage this reporting causes.

How does the tax code define a temporary assignment that qualifies you for tax deductions during a full period of stay, such as nine full months? In this article, you learn how federal per diem rates interact with some actual expenses and what you need in place to achieve deductions for a temporary out-of-town work assignment.

If you’re like millions of taxpayers, just the thought of an IRS tax audit has you shaking in your boots. Luckily, you came across this article. In the next few moments, we will put those fears to rest as we show you how to keep all your rightful tax deductions.

If you operate your business as an S corporation and you take advantage of the benefits you receive by having an office in your home, you probably want an easy and audit-proof way to make the reimbursement request. You find that in this article.

If you win big at the casino, the government is going to ask for its share of the proceeds. Gambling income is taxable, and casinos must, by law, report big wins to the IRS. But the law provides you a way to offset your gambling income and thereby reduce your taxes. You just have to know the rules, including whether you are a professional or amateur gambler, and keep the right records.

If you don’t have tax records as you are reading this sentence, think of this: how would your tax records hold up in an IRS audit? Oops, we forgot. You don’t have them. See what generally happens when you create those records after you get the IRS audit notice.

One of our tax professional subscribers disagrees with the S corporation being able to reimburse the owner-employee for depreciation of the home office. She asked whether we can back up our claim that depreciation is reimbursable.

More businesses are accepting bitcoins as payment. To the IRS, bitcoin is not the same as cash. You should know the tax implications of accepting bitcoins in your business and the major pros and cons of doing so.

If you are new in business, your vehicle deductions can prove problematic because you likely do not know what tax records you need. And without the right records, you arrive at your tax preparer’s office hoping for a miracle that’s not going to happen.

How does tax law make your tax preparer part of the IRS tax compliance workforce, and what does that mean for your tax return? First, you should and can put yourself in a position to help your tax preparer avoid tax preparer penalties. For example, if your tax preparer is dubious about a deduction you want to claim, provide your preparer with the proof that the deduction is valid.

Do you operate your business as a corporation, a partnership, or a proprietorship, or as an LLC taxed as one of these three entities? Your choice of entity impacts whether you can create a no-hassle, tax-free fringe benefit for your and/or your employees’ smartphones. In this article, you learn the rules that apply and which ones give you the best benefits.

Do you operate your business as a corporation but own the vehicle you use for the corporate business in your personal name? If so, to avoid losing your rightful deductions, you need to have the corporation reimburse you for business use. The corporation can use one of two methods for the reimbursement.

Do you pay yourself on a 1099 for the work you do in your S corporation? Why wouldn’t you, right? It makes life so simple. No payroll taxes to deal with, no withholding deposits, and no payroll services to pay for. Stop right there! Your simple life is about to get very complicated unless you make a change right now.

If you have not done so before, make sure to put your safe harbor de minimis expensing election in place now. The new de minimis rules make your tax record keeping easier. With this safe harbor expensing, unlike Section 179 expensing, you don’t need to track the assets and keep them in a depreciation schedule.

This article takes your daily activity and identifies five easy year-end tax-planning strategies. Here are two examples from the article: prepaying your expenses under the IRS safe harbor and simply not billing customers and patients until 2016. These two strategies are certainly easy, as are the other three strategies in this article.

When you travel outside the 50 states and the District of Columbia, you can use a special seven-day travel rule to deduct your business transportation costs to and from that business destination even when you work only one day during that trip. The special rules that apply to this seven-day travel are clear and easy to understand.

When you have a side business that produces a net loss, you automatically get to use that loss to lower your taxable income, right? Not so fast! The IRS could destroy those losses (and more) with one of the nastiest tax laws out there—the hobby loss rule. With an activity that’s showing losses, you need strategies to ensure your loss deductions.

When you expand to a second or third business, you increase your chances of running afoul of the passive loss rules. That’s not a problem if all the businesses are producing a profit. But if one of the businesses is incurring losses, you won’t get an immediate tax deduction if you don’t materially participate. And if you try to hide that business inside another proprietorship so your loss offsets your other income, you and your tax preparer face even more trouble.

Whether you sell the assets of the business or your ownership interest, you can expect the buyer to check things out before signing off on the deal. This is called due diligence. And there are various aspects of due diligence, depending on the type of sale you are making and the buyer’s needs.

The IRS tax form for deducting the home office contains the gross-square-footage method and makes no mention of other permissible methods. But the instructions for that form and the IRS publication on the home-office deduction both mention other reasonable methods. This article shows you how one other reasonable method, the net-square-footage method, works—and why it is always superior to the gross-square-footage method found on the IRS form.

Special documentation rules apply to entertainment and vehicles. One rule requires you to document your vehicle mileage within one week. Another rule says you don’t need receipts if the vehicle or entertainment expenditure is less than $75. This no-receipt rule can be hazardous to your deductions. It also does not relieve you from using the right documentation to prove the expenses.

When you turn age 70 1/2, the IRS wants a piece of those IRA accounts that you built up all those years. You’re required to make mandatory withdrawals each year just so the IRS can tax you on those amounts. But what if you can limit, perhaps even eliminate, these required withdrawals? Not only that, what if you could benefit a local charity in the process as well? Find out how donating to charity directly from your IRA accounts can make a huge impact on your bottom line.

A precedent-setting court case establishes that one-on-one training can count as a business seminar for tax purposes. Where do you want your one-on-one seminar to take place? Disney World? St. Thomas?

Your business motor home is either a lodging facility, like a hotel, or a transportation vehicle. As a vehicle, it can qualify for Section 179 expensing, but you likely want to avoid that and take the easy road with MACRS depreciation.

Using an S corporation to avoid self-employment taxes is a terrific strategy. But things can go very wrong if you use it the wrong way. When you earn income as an individual and then assign that income to your corporation, the IRS will make you regret the day you implemented that strategy.

This article takes your daily activity and identifies five easy year-end tax-planning strategies. Here are two examples from the article: prepaying your expenses under the IRS safe harbor and simply not billing customers and patients until 2016. These two strategies are certainly easy, as are the other three strategies in this article.

You can make your tax life easier with a business credit card—but only if you use that business credit card correctly for tax purposes. For example, charging an expense to a credit card does not make it tax deductible. You need more proof. And you could create a type of double jeopardy if you operate your business as a corporation.

Pay less in taxes this year by donating clothing and household items. When you know what to do and how to do it, the noncash deductions available here can help you pocket some hefty after-tax cash that costs you nothing but a little time and effort.

One of your first tax steps in buying a rental property is to go through each line item in the closing statement and assign it to one of the following three categories: (1) basis, (2) loan acquisition, or (3) operations. With basis, you allocate costs to land, land improvements, buildings (including perhaps building components), and equipment. Loan acquisition falls into either costs of getting the loan or costs to reduce the interest rate. The assignments have a direct impact on how quickly you realize the deductions.

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 taxes. 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.

The IRS recently created a rule to make your life simpler and better. How is that for a change? It’s true. Now when you buy almost any tangible asset for $500 or less, you can immediately deduct the purchase if you follow the two easy steps laid out by the IRS. That means tax savings for you and fewer headaches for you and your tax preparer.

Where can you hold your tax-deductible board meetings if you operate your business as a corporation? Could you go to a nice resort? What if you and your spouse are the only board members? This article answers these common questions. It’s sure to make you smile.

If you reimburse your employees for business expenses, or if you operate your business as an S or a C corporation, it’s crucial that you know and follow the IRS accountable plan rules—this will save money not only for you but also for your employees. We’ll give you two easy-to-use tools that will help you seamlessly incorporate these rules into your business routine.

The next time you plan a vacation, stop and think about how you could make it deductible. If you find a good business reason to visit that destination and you throw in enough business hours on the trip, you suddenly convert a nondeductible personal trip into a deductible business expense.

The IRS is more than happy to take away your deductions for your vehicle’s operating expenses if you do not follow their perfectionistic standard of record keeping. But you can beat them at their own game. This article shows you the easy way to satisfy even the most demanding of IRS agents when it comes to proving the usage of your business vehicle.

When you take a trip and spend some of your time on business and some time on personal activities, how much of your expenses can you deduct? What happens to your expenses on holidays? Knowing the answers to questions such as these puts money in your pocket and safeguards you from IRS attack on your travel deductions.

It’s not hard to qualify for the home-office deduction when you take advantage of the administrative and management activities safe harbor. This approach gives you all the nice benefits of the home-office deduction but allows you to spend the majority of your time in your office outside the home. However, you have to know how the rules work—namely, you have to know which business activities you can and can’t do in each location.

There is one part of tax law that you should ignore. It will get you into trouble. If you read the literal language of the tax code, you might get the impression that receipts are not always necessary. Don’t fall into this trap. Make it a general habit to keep your receipts and you will make your tax life much, much easier.

The thought of an IRS audit is a worry, no question. But it’s worse when the IRS wants a lot of your money. And it’s even worse yet when the IRS wants your money because it interprets the law incorrectly and at the time you see the IRS adjustment, you have no idea whether the IRS is right or wrong.

You are right to worry about the hobby loss rules when a business fails, because those rules would give you no tax deductions for the failed business. But if you worked at the business, kept decent records, and tried to make money, you had a business, and that business failure would produce tax deductions as explained in this article.

If you have ever had a tough day on the golf course, you might not think of golf as “entertainment,” but that’s how the IRS classifies the activity. This is good news for you because it means that in the right circumstances, your golf expenses are deductible. Read this article and discover the unique rules you need to follow to ensure your deduction for golf (and other associated entertainment activities too).

You need basic books and records to avoid trouble with the IRS. If you have inadequate books and records and also make a large cash deposit in the bank, you might visit with the IRS every two weeks for about a year as the taxpayers in this case did. That’s a lot of unpleasant face time with an IRS agent.

Tax law allows you to have fun at work—in fact, your fun can earn you new deductions. Your can deduct your fun “entertainment” expenses ranging from fishing, hunting, and dancing to fashion shows or whatever you find enjoyable. What’s the catch? You have to mix just the right amount of business into your fun. Fortunately, the law tells you exactly how. This article passes along the information you need to deduct fishing trips and similar activities.

Lost records are not a death warrant when it comes to audits. But if your tax advisor tells you that you can replace your missing records with an affidavit, you need to change tax advisors. This type of affidavit is a bad idea. It will not help you. Find out what you should do instead.

Do you know for what period of time you have to keep your tax records? You may have heard three years, four years, six years, and seven years. All of these can be correct, but also 17 years can be correct with a depreciable building that you sold in year 14. Because you need to keep the records for the required periods, you need to know what those required periods are.

Making tax-deductible charitable contributions has become more difficult with each passing year. Two culprits make things messier than in years past. First, lawmakers have enacted more rules that you need to follow. Second, the Internet offers you opportunities to make donations that don’t qualify for tax deductions. That’s the bad news, but there is plenty of good news when you do this right.

Are you a recreational gambler? If so, you likely know that you are required to keep income tax records that prove your gambling winnings and losses. If you don’t have the records, your winnings are taxable and your losses nondeductible. Holy smokes! That’s terrible. Don’t let that happen. See why you need the records. Learn what the IRS and the courts say your records must show. Spend a little time with this article so that you can avoid overpaying your taxes on your gambling activity.

Have you considered the possibilities of turning the monies you send to charities into business expenses? You should. It can save you tax dollars. Sure, you might already be deducting the money now as charitable deductions. But wouldn’t you really rather achieve the tax deductions as tax-favored business expenses?

Tax law grants relief, if you want to call it that, when you lose your tax records through no fault of your own. For example, say a flood, theft, hurricane, or earthquake caused the loss of your tax records. Your relief is the right to substantiate your deductions using a reasonable reconstruction of those records. Yikes, how long will that take?

If you drive 36 miles to your parents’ home but spend time that day doing business research in the library around the corner from your parents’ home, are those 36 miles business or personal miles? They could be business miles. You need two types of proof: (1) library proof and (2) vehicle proof. How would you prove that you used the library? How would you prove that you drove the miles?

Learn how today’s restaurant and other receipts printed on thermal paper can create big trouble for your tax deductions. Over time, the images on thermal paper can totally disappear. And of those that have not yet totally disappeared, you have many that you can’t read. This means you need to create a plan that includes scanning or photocopying thermal receipts.

If you have to show that your rental property activity rises to the level of your being in a tax-law-defined real property business, be sure to involve yourself in the day-to-day management in order to avoid the investor time trap that can cost you your current-year tax deductions for your rental property losses.

You provide your employees with an automobile for business use. You know that their personal use of the vehicle must be included in their wages, but how do you calculate that amount? What valuation rules are available? This article tells you what your choices are and how to apply them.

Say the IRS sent you one of those lovely letters that says: “Come on down and bring your tax records with you.” How would your tax records hold up in an IRS audit? That’s a scary question. You need to make sure that you have this one tax record in good shape when you appear for an audit. Mr. Dunford, the subject of this article, failed that one record and it cost him plenty.

Does stopping at the bank create business miles and eliminate personal miles? Is the bank a business stop for purposes of the temporary stop rules? This article explains the mileage rules that apply when you drive to the bank.

The IRS created a new optional method that you can use to calculate the tax deduction for an office in your home. Obviously, this brings up a question: Does the IRS like you, or does the IRS hate you? The IRS reveals itself in this new optional method.

Your business entertainment tax deductions fall into one of two business categories for deduction. The first category requires that the entertainment take place in a business setting. The second category triggers a piggyback entertainment deduction for the non-business setting, such as golf or scuba diving. Once you know the two rules, you have clarity in knowing how to claim your tax deductions for business entertainment.

Are you treating your business entertainment correctly? For example, do you cut your deductions if the entertainment rubs against the lavish or extravagant rule? Are you cutting your entertainment expenses for the 50 percent rule? Learn why it’s easy to misunderstand the lavish or extravagant and 50 percent rules and how that could be hurting your business entertainment tax deductions.

Whether you operate your business as a corporation or as a proprietorship, you need to record your tax-deductible travel expenses in an IRS-approved manner. This means you need to know technically what a receipt is and when you do and do not need one. By the way, the credit card statement is not a receipt. This report explains how to keep your tax records, gives you an easy record-keeping resource to use, and helps you build audit-proof records that prove your travel expenses.

If you take a nine-day trip to Jamaica, how many days devoted to business do you need to make the trip tax-deductible? What happens when you spend one of those days doing no business and simply playing on the beach? The critical elements in this article give you a crystal-clear explanation of when and why you can deduct certain days, even those days when you do no work.

Are you looking for more business tax deductions this year? It’s not too late. Learn five last-minute tax-planning strategies that you can implement now so you lower your taxes this year.

Do you invest in real estate? Are you an investor or a dealer? Make sure you put the nine factors to work for you in your proof of investor or dealer status.

Have you ever wondered what you can do to eliminate commuting mileage? Perhaps you received some advice on how to do this. Was the advice correct? In this article, a tax preparer told a physician that she could deduct her mileage to her regular office if she simply stopped at the bank every day. Unfortunately, this advice is wrong.

Your mileage log may not be an estimate of mileage. Further, you need a mileage log that proves mileage. With a weak, suspicious, or error-filled mileage log, by law, neither the IRS nor the courts may give you any vehicle deductions—and we mean none, not a penny.

Your tax deductions for the transportation component of your overnight business travel face a set of rules separate from the business-day rules we examined last month. When in the 50 United States and the District of Columbia, you deduct your transportation cost under the 51/49 test. When you travel outside the 50 United States and the District of Columbia, you are subject to the 76/24 test for deducting your business transportation. And, as mentioned, the calculation for deducting the cost of transportation is separate and apart from calculations for deducting meals and lodging.

Here are four answers to questions you might have regarding your business mileage, such as how to treat mileage from an administrative office in the home to yoga and then to your downtown office. Or how would you treat mileage to a Lions, Rotary, or Shriners meeting or activity? This article gives you both ideas and answers.

Whether you use the IRS mileage method or actual expense method, you need to know business and personal miles. Business miles either increase your deduction directly or increase your percentage for the actual expense method. Regardless of your choice of entity, incorporated or not, this article gives you one sure way to increase business miles and reduce personal miles.

Protect yourself and your receipts by digitizing them. You will like the results. Digitized receipts make the IRS smile and, of course, that makes you smile too. Without digitization, some of your receipts will disappear.

Do you operate your business as a corporation, an LLC, or a proprietorship? Your choice of entity impacts a variety of tax deductions, and now the cell phone creates a win for the corporate owner and a loss for the proprietorship and the single-member LLC.

This article has 16 tax-deduction targets that you can use to increase your business car, SUV, truck, and van deductions. You don’t need to buy any new vehicles to get the benefits. You simply need the knowledge as laid out here.

The appeals court remanded the Shellito case back to the Tax Court along with its road map for establishing the Section 105 plan. In the right circumstances, the 105 medical plan creates tax deductions where none existed before, and its tax-free fringe benefits can operate as the sole remuneration to the employee-spouse.

To prove and keep your home-office deduction, you must know what the courts accept as regular use, and then you must take the steps necessary to prove your regular use. The biggest failure of the home-office deduction is failure to prove regular use.

Stay with your mom and dad on a business trip, and create tax deductions by paying them for business lodging. You have a choice: deduct the cost of staying at the big hotel downtown or deduct the cost of staying with your parents. Either way, the choice of location does not change the fact that you are on a tax-deductible business trip.

The IRS mileage rate can produce misleading results. Often the new person in business wrongfully thinks that the IRS standard mileage rate overcomes the need for a mileage log. This article contains a magic calculator and gives you the ins and outs of what you need to know to ensure that you are picking the best after-tax cash result for your business vehicle.

Learn what is 1099 income and why that often causes an incorrect 1099, which in turn can lead to an IRS audit. Often, correcting an incorrect 1099 on Schedule C compounds the problem. In this article, you learn how to 1099 correctly and what is 1099 income. The definition of “what is 1099 income” may surprise you.

Giving money to and taking it from your corporation needs an audit trail and paperwork to ensure proper treatment. If you operate without the formal paperwork and without the proper logging of entries, you can have unexpected and unwelcome experiences with the IRS and the courts.

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.

The new tax law contains some real surprises when it comes to deducting vehicles. In some cases, you can deduct the full cost in the year you place the vehicle in service. In other cases, the luxury auto limits might stretch your depreciation deductions over 30 or more years.

You learn valuable business and documentation strategies from IRS audit manuals. We spend time reading these. In this article, we reviewed the IRS audit manual on self-employed lawyers and carved out selected business and documentation strategies you can use to audit-proof your deductible business entertainment.

How do you lose deductions to the IRS in an audit? Worse, how do you compound that loss of deductions by taking your case to court? In this article, see how one proprietor managed to do both.

To operate successfully as a corporation, you need to be good at paperwork. Also, you may not treat the advance account on the corporate books as your personal slush fund.

Here are your only two tax-saving choices when you operate your business as a corporation but personally own the car you use for business.

If you operate your business as a corporation but own the business car personally, your best result comes about when you have your corporation use an accountable plan to reimburse you for actual expenses, including depreciation and Section 179 expensing.

It’s true, you don’t need a receipt for an entertainment expense that costs less than $75. But you may need to prove that you had the cash available for the entertainment.

Should you or your corporation be unlucky enough to face an IRS audit, there is one record that stands out as critical to your audit health. If you are missing this one record, the IRS audit can quickly expand to other areas of your tax return.

You can be a lawyer, CPA, MD, or business owner and qualify as a real estate professional if you or your spouse materially participate in the rentals or in the rental group.

To deduct your passive losses as a real estate professional, you must prove time spent. Since you need this proof, use these tactics to keep track of your time and also increase your overall profits on the rentals.

If you are thinking of hiring your workers as 1099 independent contractors, this article is for you. The article shows you how the rules work and helps you understand what you need to properly classify your workers as independent contractors.

The business gift basket runs into the $25 limit on business gifts. If you want to deduct more than $25, you need to know the rules in this article that produce bigger deductions.

Making gifts to promote your business is complicated by time, inflation, and poor tax legislation. Make sure you know the rules so that you keep your tax deductions on your tax return.

Tracking and proving deductible expenses for three businesses requires good planning, but this planning can pay you for the effort.

Do you own a business that withholds taxes from employees? If so, you need 100 percent certainty that the withheld payroll tax monies are going to the IRS. You can achieve 100 percent certainty with the IRS EFTPS registration..

The no-receipt-under-$75 tax rule applies only to certain travel, entertainment and listed property.

You can keep records that reduce the chances of an IRS physical inspection of your office in the home.

You can use the transportation fringe benefit in lieu of wages. In fact, you can ask the employee to take a pay cut equal to the transportation fringe benefit. Amazingly, this swap of a pay cut for the transportation fringe benefit works out to give the employee an after-tax cash raise in pay and it puts cash in your pocket too.

You need a mileage log on your business vehicle. With no mileage log, you can try the alternate-proof method, but the odds are better than 9 to 1 that you will lose. This article gives you a perfect mileage-log system free.

Credit cards are valuable time-saving assets when used correctly by the business taxpayer. Incorrect use damages both your wallet and your time management.

Computers and programs like Quicken make it easier to track business and personal activities. Even so, there are rules of the road that you should follow to ensure the best results.

The woman in this audit learned how knowledge can turn what appears as a nightmare (an IRS audit) into a positive happening—meaning cash refunds for the year of the audit and subsequent years. As the old sayings goes, “knowledge is power.”

Learn the federal income tax rules on business mileage to increase vehicle deductions. The four questions and answers in this article give you a clear roadmap of the rules along with the strategies you need to pocket more cash from your business.

When you claim a Section 179 expensing deduction, you make a deal with the government. You agree to give back your early tax benefits if, during the recapture period, your business use drops to 50 percent or less.

The Heineman case gives a roadmap to how a husband and wife might deduct the cost of attending a board of directors meeting where they are the only participants. Using the principles enunciated in Heineman, husband-and-wife corporate owners will find deducting the out-of-town board meeting easier than deducting board meetings that occur in town.

The most recent hot entity for real estate ownership is the LLC. The fact that it’s hot does not necessarily make it the best option for you. When considering your choice of entity, examine qualification for single-member LLC status, extra state income taxes, and how this compares with the S or C corporation possibilities.

The law gives you no choice but to keep the proper tax records on a timely basis. This is pretty easy when you know what to do. One easy rule to follow is to never commingle your activities in your bank accounts. Both the rule that requires a mileage log and the rule that requires a time log are more difficult, but absolutely essential to proving your deductions.

Holiday parties trigger a variety of tax rules. Some parties, or parts of parties, are 100 percent deductible. Make sure that your chart of accounts has a place for 100 percent entertainment and a place for 50 percent entertainment deductions.

To deduct a birthday party as a business expense, you must convincingly demonstrate a direct association with business activity.

The Langers owe almost $70,000 in taxes and penalties after claiming their swimming pool and other household items as incentive program deductions for Mrs. Langers’ piano teaching business. Mr. Langer is a former IRS agent.

Just as it has standard mileage rates, the IRS has standard per diem rates for daily travel costs. There are situations where you might benefit from the mileage rates and the travel per diems. This article explains how the per diem rules work for you as a self-employed taxpayer, and gives you the ability to make an informed decision on whether or not to use the per diem rates.

Learn about Gary Larson’s legal fight to deduct his business gas mileage. His logs ended up satisfying the court, but you can do better to avoid what he went through – by keeping good records! Also, take a look at Tax Diary System. This training tutorial gives excellent tax record-keeping tips, whether or not you use this system.

There are two types of bad debts: business and nonbusiness. Nonbusiness bad debts are deductible in the year the loan is worthless. A business bad debt is deductible either in the year it becomes worthless or to the extent you can prove its decline in value. This is far easier. But, you need to prove your writeoff to get the deduction. We’ll show you how.

In court, David Choe succeeded proving that his laptop was business use, but a bad mileage log took away all his automobile deductions. Ouch! Learn how to avoid this egregious error.

Gone are the days of estimating deductions for expenses. Today, you need better tax records than ever. We give you a chart to help you avoid common mistakes, and to see what you need and why you need it.

Learn from Michael Birdsill’s mistakes: keep good records of your business vehicle use, and report it on your taxes. Birdsill’s court case proves that you must do this to receive deductions for mileage. Follow our four rules for claiming Section 179 expensing to make sure you do it right.

You may deduct your business golf when you do it right. In fact, golf that qualifies for the special sporting event deduction produces double the tax benefit of regular business golf.

Pay attention to the rules on what makes a business mile and what makes a personal mile so that you can achieve the best possible vehicle deductions.

The IRS standard mileage rates might save you more money in lieu of actual expenses. Note, though, that there are important details regarding who qualifies, what the mileage rate includes. Also, there are a number of common pitfalls to avoid.

The Section 105 Medical Plan is filled with important details that you can’t afford to miss. Learn from the Knowles’ problems in court to see what you can do better.

Learn from this taxi driver’s mistakes: keep good records. His court case shows you why.

Learn from one couple’s court case: keep good records! It’s easy, but important. Follow our strategy to make sure you don’t miss a critical element.

One taxpayer is in big trouble: he owes $61,000 in overdue taxes. Why? Bad records. We give him recommendations on what to do, but he is not in good shape.

In an ISP, the IRS asserted that the Section 105 medical reimbursement plan may not reimburse the employee-spouse for the cost of health insurance purchased in the employee-owner’s name. This court case held that this IRS position is wrong and that the owner may deduct the cost of medical insurance purchased in his name when that insurance is covered by the Section 105 medical reimbursement plan.

Answering “yes” to the 11 puts you on the road to audit-proof status for your Section 105 medical reimbursement plan.

New tax rules have pretty much killed the once-common tool and car allowances as expense reimbursement methods.

Carolyn Federson lost all of her rental property loss deductions when the court rejected some of the details of her rental property time records and made its own estimate of the time she spent on her rentals.

This taxpayer lost $5,503 in meal expenses because she could not produce receipts or other records to prove the meal deductions.

Purchase of a safe or file cabinet to protect business tax records is deductible, but only to the extent of business use.

Under the “objective test,” entertainment does not mean only the entertainment of others. The objective test sanctions Dutch-treat entertainment.

Technically, cash basis taxpayers deduct checks when they are delivered and negotiable. For the most part, the courts and the IRS employ practical applications to make this rule easy for you.

Robert Walters’ auto deductions sank from $10,878 to $966 because of poor record keeping. Do the best thing you can do for yourself. Keep a good mileage log next to your appointments. This can be easy, and it will save your bacon if you get audited.

If you claim business deductions, you better have the proof to back up your expenses. Gary Colvin provided insufficient evidence for his $1,750 deduction for tax preparation, and the court denied his entire deduction. Keep good records!

Again, Colvin fails to provide sufficient evidence for his deductions. This time, it’s a $6,000 auto deduction, for which he was denied all but $780.

Andrew D’Avanzo had one very bad day in court. He did not group his rental properties, and had an insufficient time log that did not satisfy the court. He lost a lot of money. Learn from his mistakes: know the details about tax law!

The IRS has very specific rules regarding record-keeping for deductions. One husband-and-wife team lost over $31,000 because of bad records. Know the law!

The IRS is not a forgiving entity. Even if a fraudulent payroll service is charged criminally, as in this case, you are still responsible for the taxes you owe. We give you a sound strategy to avoid payroll fraud.

If you do not have a home office, you may not deduct things related to the home, like gas bills or homeowners’ insurance. However, the law allows you to deduct office assets that could produce tax benefits because they would not be considered part of a dwelling.

You can deduct items in your house, like a desk in the den. The tax rules are specific, though, and you must log the usage meticulously. The IRS does not like approximations.

If your spouse is working for your company, you need proof that s/he is a legitimate employee. It is not hard, but you need to have good, solid proof to ensure that your deductions and medical reimbursements will be honored by the IRS.

Learn about one couple’s problems with Section 105 medical reimbursement. You must document all payments. The reimbursement of the employee-spouse for every medical bill is easily done and a audit-proofing tactic. Make this an absolute requirement.

Save yourself time and trouble. Reimburse employees for actual expenses. Forget those two troublemakers: per diems and allowances.

Vincent Allen hired a tax preparer to file his tax returns. The preparer was charged with fraud. Although the IRS did not bring the fraud charge against Allen, users of fraudulent preparers could easily be charged and convicted of fraud themselves.

4% of Americans are audited each year. Do you know what two line-item expenses are most vulnerable to a Schedule C audit? Take our quiz and find out!

The IRS puts out its audit manual every year. It not only contains information on how to audit, but also gives information on disallowing deductions. We dissected the audit manual and give you 11 audit-proofing tactics to ensure you get the deductions you deserve.

You have probably read that the home office increases your chances of IRS audit. We’ve read that, too, but we don’t believe it. Regardless, there are a few things you can do to make your home-office audit-proof.

If you operate your business as a corporation and claim the home-office deduction, you need to prove that you use the home office for the convenience of the employer, your corporation. You must pass the convenience-of-the-employer test whether or not you are having the corporation reimburse you for home-office expenses.

Dr. Rinker lost over $60,000 of deductions when her tax preparer lost her records. Don’t lose your tax records, and don’t give your original records to anyone, not even your tax preparer!

Yung Chong worked a full-time regular job, and had a Section C side business. His records, while present were not enough to satisfy the court, which disallowed all of his nearly $10,000 in deductions for his side business. This case makes it clear: even if you have some records, if you do not have all the required records, you get no deductions.

Many people, through keen knowledge of the tax law, have been able to use the law to their advantage and buy personal aircraft. Unfortunately, lawmakers changed the rules for deducting personal aircraft. We summarized the new rules for you.

You are entitled to tax refunds for the excise tax you paid on your business long-distance phone services from March 2003 through July 2006. To calculate your tax credit for these 41 months, you may use the actual excise tax from the phone bills, or use the newly released formula.

To calculate the deductions for a business vehicle when you sell it, you must divide the car into business and personal parts, find your adjusted basis for business purposes, and find your loss deduction.

Mr. Lam, a financial planner, lost every penny of his claimed $240,985 in deductions either because he had no proof or because both the IRS and the court declared his proof inadequate. Know the rules! Keep good records!

Answer this question: Could you prove that you filed last year’s tax return? Is your proof credible enough that it will stand the scrutiny of the IRS?

William Lenihan, a well-educated tax lawyer, lost every deduction he claimed on both his Schedule C consulting business and his Schedule E rental businesses because he did not keep good records. Know the law! Keep good records!

The law contains no reasonableness test for mileage. There are very specific rules for recording mileage. We recommend that you keep a mileage log for three consecutive months to prove your business-mile percentage.

You cannot qualify for the home office deduction if you have two administrative offices, one at home and one at your other office. Also, the rules only apply to you, not your staff.

Ask yourself two questions: First, would you like to take a cruise? Second, would you like to get a tax deduction for the cost of your cruise? If you answered “yes” to both questions, this article is for you.

If you make repairs to your home for the purpose of making the home a rental property, you may deduct them, if you do it right. You cannot, for example, deduct repairs made to your home (not rental property). You might also consider filing the improvements as capital expenditures.

When you combine business and personal travel, tax law contains specific rules on what you can and cannot count as a business day. These rules determine if your transportation, lodging, and meal costs are deductible in full, partially deductible, or not deductible at all.

You need to know the rules to protect yourself not only from the IRS, but also from the courts. If you don’t take the proper position on your home-office deduction, neither the IRS nor the courts give consideration to the arguments you should have raised that would have won your deductions.

Section 274 is merciless. You need a mileage log and the required elements that prove your overnight stays. Having your CPA prepare these records after the fact fails.

As an individual (not as a corporation), you may use IRS mileage rates in lieu of actual expenses to deduct vehicles you own or lease. The IRS rate has two components: one for operating expenses and the other for depreciation.

You need a tax plan for the sale or trade-in of the business vehicle you are driving today. You also need a tax plan for the business vehicle that will replace your current business vehicle. You need this tax plan if you use IRS mileage rates, actual expenses, Section 179 expensing, MACRS depreciation, or bonus depreciation.

Advertising your business on your vehicle does not change either your business or personal use of the car.

New rules increase the tenant’s ability to first use shorter depreciation periods during the life of the lease and then write off the undepreciated balance of leasehold improvements at the end of the lease. The proper application and intertwining of the new rules enable both landlords and tenants to put cash in their pockets.

Meals served to your employees and independent contractors at training sessions and incentive award trips are subject to the 50 percent cut that applies to entertainment and meals. To qualify for a 100 percent deduction, you need to include the meal as compensation to the employee or independent contractor. That’s what many Fortune 500 companies do.

If your tax records are destroyed in a fire, the IRS allows you to reconstruct the records. Reconstruction takes a big effort. Protect your records so that you don’t have to reconstruct them.

Public Law 109-280 makes tax deductions for donations to charity far more difficult. Here is one example of the changes: dropping $5 in the collection basket at Church on Sunday is no longer deductible. Now you need a cancelled check or a receipt to claim that deduction.

Good tax planning for a trip to the medical doctor includes making a properly-targeted business stop the primary purpose of the trip.

The expansion of the kiddie tax to children under the age of 18 has zero negative effect on the hire-your-child strategy.

You apply the new trade-in adjustment rule to find your new depreciable basis. When you have the combination of an expensed asset and an upside down loan balance, you can generally ignore your personal use and follow the cash outlay to your new basis.

Nothing explains how to deduct “associated entertainment” better than the deduction of scuba diving. Why? Associated entertainment is strictly fun—no business discussions take place in this non-business entertainment setting. Scuba diving fits this definition perfectly. Tax law allows the deduction for scuba diving as associated entertainment when you connect the scuba diving to either directly related entertainment or a business meeting in a business setting.

Follow this golden rule: Do not make charitable contributions to individuals. Make your donations directly to the qualifying charitable organizations.

The difference between a deductible repair and a capital expenditure in today’s tax law is huge. The time value of money is one part of the added benefit for the repair. But the biggest deal is that you have no recapture tax with a repair. Thus, when removing mold from a building, you want the tax law to treat that removal as a repair. There are specific steps you can follow that help ensure mold removal classification as a tax-favored repair.

Today’s computer and Internet technology give you a variety of new safeguards that you can use to protect your tax records. When thinking about your records, keep this one overriding rule in mind: no records, no deductions.

Tax benefits for the bed and breakfast require adherence to the transient, vacation home, and hotel rules. Under these rules, personal use can destroy deductions. Further, the length of transient stays determines the types of services you need to provide, if any, to qualify the bed and breakfast for tax-favored hotel benefits.

Bad records can cost you just about every tax deduction. You can testify as to your deductions, but without the records that turns out worthless. When it comes to your taxes, paper talks.

If you don’t have the tax records or if you are just not cooperative, you could enable the IRS to use the bank deposits method to determine your taxable income. This is a bad thing. When the IRS uses the bank deposits method to determine your tax liability, you generally pay a whole lot more tax.

Not filing your tax returns on time because you lost or misplaced your tax records is going to make your tax life miserable. The trouble is so bad that you need to consider an “offer in compromise.”

Tax law classifies the business airplane in the listed property category. This means the law requires a log of business and personal use. You deduct your business percentage. To obtain and then retain maximum benefits, you need your business use at greater than 50 percent. Further, the airplane is personal property and that makes it eligible for Section 179 expensing.

This taxpayer won his deduction for going to the library located 36 miles away from his home and next to his parent’s home. The IRS lost its argument that the taxpayer should have used the library near his home rather than drive 36 miles to the library where he also could visit with his parents.

The IRS fulfilled its promise and audited twice as many Form 1040-Schedule C taxpayers and S corporation returns. Your odds of audit vary by both choice of entity and gross receipts in that entity.

When you operate your business as a corporation, you need to reimburse the business use of the personal car as a reimbursed employee expense. The corporation may use either the IRS mileage method or the actual expense method for the corporate reimbursement to the employee-owner.

Many sporting events qualify for a 100 percent entertainment deduction rather than the traditional 50 percent. This is true for both participants and spectators. To qualify for the 100 percent entertainment deduction, the net proceeds of the event must go to charity—as they do in a PGA Tour golf tournament.

Golf does not qualify as a deductible expense just because you talk about business on the golf course. Golf does qualify for a deduction as associated entertainment when you have the right business discussion in a valid business setting before or after the golf, generally the same day.

This court case provides a great roadmap to the Section 105 medical reimbursement plan. The taxpayer hired her husband as a part-time employee. The husband had another job as a full-time employee where he elected a payroll deduction for a medical plan that covered himself and his family. In her proprietorship, the wife put a Section 105 medical plan in place that covered the employee-husband. He elected family coverage, and presto, the monies he paid to his full-time employer for medical coverage became a Section 105 medical reimbursement, deductible by the wife’s proprietorship.

When you start a new business activity or you do a business activity on the side, you must establish a profit motive. One easy way to demonstrate the profit motive is to show the time you spend on the activity. This taxpayer had no proof of time worked, so he looked suspicious to the court.

The one-person corporation is a separate legal entity from the owner. This means separate books for the corporation and expense reports from the owner-employee to prove business expenses. When you fail to document your golf or other expenses, two bad things happen.

The trade of a car on a lease is not a like-kind exchange. This is a sale of the old car and a lease of the new car. The sale part gives you a gain or a loss. In addition, the sale part generates a prepayment on the lease where you benefit with an amortization deduction.

The properly used business condo does not run up against the vacation-home, passive-loss, or entertainment-facility rules.

Making a lot of money is no excuse for keeping bad records. Top off the bad records with failing to give adequate documentation to your CPA and you add to your misery index with negligence penalties. The taxpayer in this court case had to shell out about $5 million in taxes and over $1 million in penalties.

The law requires the taxpayer to maintain records sufficient to establish his income and deductions. In select circumstances, estimates provide a rational basis for deductions. With respect to vehicle, entertainment, meals, travel, and gifts; estimates are out and neither the court nor the IRS may grant your deductions without the prescribed records.

The discussion on the golf course does not make the golf deductible. What makes the golf deductible is the connection of the golf to the business discussion in a business setting.

Both the IRS and the courts have approved pencil as adequate for tax entries.

The taxpayer’s tax preparer told him to create an “Affidavit of Facts” to support his tax deductions. This was a useless exercise. This tax preparer, the one who recommended the useless affidavit, lost his enrolled agent status, and the time of this trial was forbidden by the United States government to prepare tax returns.

Interest paid on a life insurance loan to buy a home does not count as deductible mortgage interest.

You probably should hate the IRS for the mileage rate. First, the mileage rate creates the illusion that you don’t need a mileage log (wrong!). Second, individuals who start in business think that the mileage rate makes their tax life easy and that it doesn’t make much difference financially (generally, wrong). Third, mileage-rate addicts think that the mileage rate takes care of everything—then they cost themselves money by failing to deduct a loss on the sale of a business vehicle and overlook the business person’s tax deduction for interest on a car loan.

The IRS told lawmakers that a number of people were cheating on vehicle donations and that some changes in the rules could put a quick stop to that. This court case explains why lawmakers went along with the IRS and enacted the changes that are in effect today.

When you win more than $1,200 at the slots, the casino must report your winnings to the IRS. In this court case, the taxpayers mistakenly reported gambling income of $21,100 and the IRS received 1099s showing income of $44,464. This difference in reported income did not look good in court. But these taxpayers fared far better in court than anyone in their right mind could expect because they had proof that this court liked.

During an audit, the IRS can pretty much allow or disallow whatever it wants. In this first stage of the audit process, the burden of proof is on you.

Under tax law, your vehicle is considered “listed property.” The IRS has a regulation that applies the $75 receipt rule to listed property.