Expect tax changes ahead as key provisions of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) approach their 2025 expiration. Some changes, such as the return of pre-TCJA individual rates and the loss of the qualified business income (QBI) deduction, could mean higher taxes. Other changes could mean lower taxes. For sure, changes are on the way.

2024 has been a banner year for cryptocurrency owners, but with profits come taxes. Fortunately, there are many things crypto owners can do before year-end to reduce the taxes they owe on their crypto profits, including harvesting losses (if any), selling and repurchasing crypto to step up their basis, donating crypto to charity, gifting crypto, or establishing a self-directed IRA or solo 401(k) for crypto.

How do the IRS safe-harbor prepaid expense rules apply to related parties? For example, can you use this prepaid safe-harbor rule if you own 100 percent of both the building and the business?

Tax credits for electric vehicles (EVs) were expanded and revamped starting in 2023. There are three separate tax credits available for EV purchasers. Both the clean vehicle credit and the previously owned clean vehicle credit can now be claimed at the point of sale, but the many restrictions on these credits have limited their appeal. Most people are leasing EVs and benefitting from the third option: having the dealer pass its commercial clean vehicle credit on to them.

The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) brought sweeping tax changes for individuals, but many favorable and unfavorable provisions are set to expire at the end of 2025. That means tax law changes—some good, some bad.

If you or your corporation or partnership applied for the 2021 Employee Retention Credit (ERC), it’s time to get your 2021 tax return(s) correct, whether or not you or your corporation received the ERC. Hopefully, you have already done so. But if not, here’s what you need to do.

The U.S. Supreme Court has struck a major blow against the IRS by overruling a 40-year-old decision that required courts generally to defer to federal agency regulations so long as they were reasonable. With the end of such “Chevron deference,” courts will now make their own decisions based on their own interpretations of the tax laws passed by Congress. This leaves IRS regulations much more vulnerable to legal attack.

Thinking about getting married? Love may be the main reason to say “I do,” but don’t overlook the tax and financial implications that come with it. This eye-opening article reveals when marriage might actually hurt your wallet—and what you need to know before making it official.

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, which will reduce your taxable income so the government gets less of your 2024 cash.

Here’s an easy question: Do you need more 2024 tax deductions and credits? If so, continue reading. Next easy question: Do you need a replacement business vehicle? If so, you can simultaneously solve or mitigate both the first problem (needing more deductions and credits) and the second problem (obtaining a replacement vehicle), but you must get your replacement vehicle in service on or before December 31, 2024. This article helps you find the right vehicle for the deduction or credit you desire.

Yes, December 31 is just around the corner. That’s your last day to find tax deductions available from your existing business and personal (yes, personal) vehicles that you can use to cut your 2024 taxes. In this article, you will learn how to find and release tax deductions that the tax code trapped inside your existing business cars, SUVs, trucks, and vans. And you will learn how the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act makes it possible for you to find a big deduction from your existing personal vehicle (note the terms “existing” and “personal”).

Are you thinking of getting married or divorced? If so, you need to consider December 31, 2024, in your tax planning. Here’s another question: Do you give money to family or friends (other than your children who are subject to the kiddie tax)? If so, you need to consider the zero-tax planning strategy. And now, consider your children who are under age 18. Have you paid them for work they’ve done for your business? Have you paid them the right way? You’ll find the answers here.

When you take advantage of the tax code’s offset game, your stock market portfolio can represent a little gold mine of opportunities to reduce your 2024 income taxes. The tax code contains the basic rules for this game, and once you know the rules, you can apply the correct strategies. In addition to saving taxes with the game of offset, you can avoid paying taxes on stock appreciation by gifting stock to charity, your parents, and your children who are not subject to the kiddie tax.

Does your business have a retirement plan for you and, if you have employees, your employees? It should. The tax code gives you good reasons to get your retirement plan in place and perhaps make changes in existing plans.

Are you eligible for COVID-19 tax credits for yourself and/or your employees? Have you reimbursed your employees (including your employee-spouse) as stipulated in your health reimbursement arrangements? And if you operate as an S corporation, do you have your health insurance set up correctly for your best tax deduction? In this article, we help with these matters and more.

Remember to consider your Section 199A deduction in your 2024 year-end tax planning. If you don’t, you could end up with a useless $0 for your deduction amount. We’ll review three year-end moves that simultaneously (a) reduce your income taxes and (b) boost your Section 199A deduction.

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.

If you got a bill from the IRS saying you owe a penalty, don’t pay it just yet. This guide can help you get those penalties removed—or even get a refund if you’ve already paid. The IRS can charge hefty penalties if you or your company files tax returns late, doesn’t pay taxes on time, or fails to deposit your employment taxes. We’ll show you how to get these penalties removed by using the right approach and keywords.

Tax treatment for renting equipment and other personal property depends on whether the activity qualifies as a business or a for-profit activity. Rental business income and expenses are reported on Schedule C and subject to self-employment tax. Rental for-profit activity income and expenses are reported on Schedule 1 and not subject to self-employment tax.

The IRS recently announced a significant update regarding employee retention credit (ERC) claims. You now have two years to appeal an IRS disallowance, as a webpage published on September 19, 2024, explains. This is great news compared with the typical 30-day deadline, but it’s important to understand the new risks.

As you likely know, vehicles with gross vehicle weight ratings (GVWRs) greater than 6,000 pounds get the best tax breaks. In this article, we give you a list of some of the popular vehicles that qualify for these breaks.

Taxpayers’ federal income tax refunds can be taken by the federal government to satisfy outstanding debts for child or spousal support, state income tax, school loan defaults, unemployment compensation debts, and other debts owed to federal agencies. The IRS can also deduct unpaid taxes from refunds

Most people must stop contributing to their health savings accounts when they turn age 65 and apply for Medicare. But if you have (or your spouse has) a large employer HSA-eligible health plan, you may be able to continue making contributions until you’re close to age 70. To do so, you must not collect Social Security or enroll in Medicare.

Learn how to make the most of the qualified business income (QBI) deduction before it expires in 2025. This article outlines the basics of the deduction, potential limitations, and practical strategies to help you maximize your benefits. If you’re a business owner or high earner, this is a timely opportunity to review your options and make informed tax planning decisions.

Congress is at it again, thinking of new ways to change the tax system. And since this is an election year, there’s lots of that talk. To provide some clarity, this article shows the average tax rates that high- and low-income earners pay for income, payroll, excise, and corporate taxes.

Here are the latest developments on the Employee Retention Credit (ERC). First, the IRS launched a new IRS payback scheme. Second, there is looming legislation that could change the ERC landscape. Third, learn what you need to know if you’re still waiting on your claim.

Independent contractors are not covered by the Fair Labor Standards Act, which establishes a national minimum wage and overtime standards for employees. In an effort to require more businesses to pay overtime to workers, the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) has adopted a new six-factor test that makes it more difficult for you to classify workers as independent contractors instead of employees.

If your buy-sell agreement uses company-owned life insurance to buy back your shares after you die, your estate may now have to pay more tax. A recent U.S. Supreme Court decision just increased your company’s estate tax value because of that company-owned life insurance.

One of the biggest hurdles to deducting losses from the business use of an aircraft is the passive activity loss limitation. Even with careful planning, you might find yourself stuck with passive losses that can’t offset income from other sources. This article details the tax strategies you need to effectively deduct your aircraft losses and navigate the complex passive loss rules.

Tax law favors and allows deductions for civic and public service clubs and even names some favored clubs. But tax law does not allow dues deductions for airline, hotel, country, golf, athletic, and business-meal clubs.

Discover the devastating consequences of misplaced trust in business partnerships, through James Maggard’s story. Learn how a lack of oversight and professional guidance can lead to tax and financial unfairness, even for the most well-intentioned business owners.

Increase your Social Security retirement income by reducing your Social Security taxes and investing the savings. Explore how investing your tax savings in a side fund can lead to a higher overall benefit, while preserving essential benefits such as Medicare and spousal support.

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.

You can protect yourself against the financial consequences of chronic illness or disability by purchasing long-term care insurance. The premiums for this insurance are not cheap, but tax law may let you write off some or all of the cost, thus subsidizing your purchase.

Rising federal employment taxes, including Social Security and Medicare, are a growing burden for employees, employers, and self-employed individuals. To mitigate these costs, consider operating as an S corporation or utilizing community property state rules for husband-wife businesses. Strategic tax planning can significantly reduce the impact of these increasing taxes.

Leasing out your aircraft can offer financial benefits, but it also brings tax challenges. Leasing brings into play the ugly hobby loss rule that can destroy all your deductions and also tax you on the gross income. This article explains how to navigate these rules and overcome common tax hurdles associated with aircraft leasing.

Are you considering owning an aircraft through your S corporation? Beware of tax pitfalls that could limit your savings. This article explores basis limitations, depreciation recapture, and cost-sharing issues, offering strategic tips to navigate these challenges and maximize your tax benefits.

What happens when you have a rental property inside an S corporation and you die? First, you have the step-up in basis question. Second, you have the value of the S corporation for your heirs. There’s good news here. Check it out.

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.

Want to convert your C corporation to an S corporation? You need a plan. No plan equals BIG (built-in gains) tax: 21 percent. Worse, you’ll continue to pay at your regular tax rates on the remaining 79 percent that flows from your S corporation to you. Make a plan to avoid as much of this torturous double taxation as possible, with the four strategies in this article.

Individuals and partners who were self-employed during 2021 were entitled to claim refundable tax credits for sick and family leave if they were unable to work for various COVID-19-related reasons, such as suffering from COVID itself, getting vaccinated, being under quarantine, or looking after family members impacted by the virus. Those who failed to claim the credits with their 2021 tax return need to read this article. The credits can be worth up to $32,220.

Curious about when you need to issue a Form 1099 to a corporation? Discover the surprising details and specific reporting requirements for incorporated legal, medical, and other professional services.

Use this essential Entity Comparison Chart to find the right business entity. It simplifies complex information and highlights key advantages and disadvantages to help you make an informed decision and optimize your business’s financial health!

Early IRA withdrawals—those that occur before age 59 1/2—are generally subject to a 10 percent penalty tax, but 15 exceptions exist to avoid this penalty. The exceptions include withdrawals for substantially equal periodic payments, certain medical expenses, higher education costs, first-time home purchases, and specific emergencies or life events such as disability or terminal illness.

You may have heard that options are the perfect way to increase profits on real estate investments and rentals. Well, perfect is probably an overstatement, but good profits are available when you know what you are doing. You also need to know the tax rules to avoid any clauses, charges, and events that can turn options into sales—and trigger taxes when you least expect them.

Purchasing raw land is a great way to get into real estate investing. But your tax deductions are more limited than for improved property. Some expenses are deductible as itemized personal deductions; many others aren’t deductible at all. If you don’t itemize, you get no immediate benefit from your deductions. But if you make the proper annual tax election, your taxable profit will be reduced when you ultimately sell the property.

When you qualify to deduct an entertainment facility as a business expense, how do you determine the amount to deduct?

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.

Shutting down your S corporation? Discover the tax implications of selling your stock versus liquidating assets, and learn key strategies to minimize your tax burden. Read this article to unlock expert strategies that help you navigate this complex process with complete confidence.

You can deduct the cost of Dutch-treat business meals in the same manner you deduct other business meals. But all business meals you consume can suffer from the Sutter rule. Learn more here.

Residential rental property is depreciated over 27.5 years, and non-residential real property over 39 years, providing a relatively small deduction each year. But property owners can use cost segregation to speed up the deductions by separately identifying, valuing, and depreciating the personal property and land improvements contained in their property. This can provide a substantial deduction in the first year, especially if bonus depreciation and/or Section 179 is used to deduct the full cost of these assets in one year.

When shutting down a sole proprietorship or a single-member LLC taxed as a sole proprietorship, there are myriad tax rules to consider because the tax code says you are not selling the business, but rather selling the assets of 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.

One common mistake the corporate owner makes is renting the corporate office in the personal home to the corporation. Learn why this is a mistake.

Find additional clarity on how you benefit when you take advantage of the relatively new IRS tangible property regulations that allow you to write off replaced components. In this article, we expand on the benefits of the two types of tax savings that we covered in last month’s article.

The tax code says that limited partners “as such” don’t have to pay self-employment tax on their share of partnership income—a substantial tax savings. For the first time, the U.S. Tax Court has held that this exception applies only to limited partners who are passive investors, not active participants in the partnership business.

Your timeshare can easily qualify as a second home for the mortgage interest deduction if you don’t rent or attempt to rent it. Once you introduce rent into your timeshare equation, you trigger two tough rules: (1) a special mortgage-interest-deduction rule for the personal part of the timeshare, and (2) the dreaded vacation-home rental rules for the rental part.

The taxpayer in this article did not file tax returns for 10 years. During this time, he overpaid his taxes by at least $100,000. The good news is that he does not owe any interest or penalties. But there’s some really bad news, too.

The time for individuals, including single-member LLCs taxed as sole proprietors, to get the 2020 Employee Retention Credit correct is here. And this is true even if you have applied for but not yet received the credit. For corporations and partnerships, the time may be past, but this article sheds light on what you need to know.

Who does your payroll? Could they embezzle the payroll taxes? What does the IRS do to you if someone embezzles your payroll? To find out, make sure you read this article.

Get ready to thank the IRS. With the relatively new tangible property regulations, you can write off replaced components and achieve two types of tax savings.

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.

If you want to convert your home to a rental property, don’t. Instead, sell your home to your S corporation and then have the S corporation make the property a rental property. We have written about this previously, and we received some questions that we address in this article.

If you have no taxable income, should you file a tax return and claim the office-in-the-home tax deduction? Answer: Yes. Even with no taxable income, you have two for-sure tax benefits from the home office, and you likely have a third benefit, as we explain.

There is much you need to know when you shut down a partnership. In this article, we walk you through the tax consequences using the three most common partnership shutdown scenarios.

If you establish a Section 529 college savings plan for a child or other family member and he or she doesn’t use all the money or decides not to go to college at all, starting in 2024 you can roll over up to $35,000 of the money into a Roth IRA for the beneficiary. But such rollovers are subject to complex rules and require long-term planning, as we explain in this article.

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.

What happens when you sell stock or other assets at a loss to a related party, such as your daughter? This is a tax law you need to know about.

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 you attend an expensive educational program, do you have to amortize the cost, or can you expense it? Further, would such a program trigger an IRS audit?

The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act tax reform gave you a new 20 percent deduction on pass-through income. For S corporation owners, your reasonable compensation plays a key role in determining your Section 199A deduction. Here, we’ll explain what the law says on reasonable compensation and how you can come out ahead.

The tax rules on free meals for employees have changed to create more revenue for the government and fewer fringe benefits for employees. The big change for meals is the drop in the employer deduction, from 100 percent before 2018 to 50 percent for years 2018-2025 to zero in 2026 and beyond.

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.

What happens if your certified public accountant (CPA) or other tax preparer fails to electronically file your return? You’re out of luck. The IRS and courts say you, the taxpayer, are responsible for filing your return. If your CPA fails to do so, the tax code treats you as the culprit and levies penalties against you.

If you are self-employed or operate your business as a small corporation, it’s possible that you have not yet claimed your COVID-19 family and sick leave tax credits. If that’s true, take a moment or two and answer the 12 easy questions in this article to see whether you could qualify for some or all of the possible tax credits.

Do you co-own your business with one person or multiple people? If so, you should have a properly funded buy-sell agreement in place, as explained in this article.

The IRS can’t take forever to audit you. Once the statute of limitations expires, the IRS can’t audit your return or assess any additional tax. Most returns must be audited within three years after they were due or filed, whichever is later. But the IRS has much longer to audit returns where taxpayers severely underpay their taxes, commit fraud, or file no return at all. Moreover, there is a longer statute of limitations for certain Employee Retention Credit audits.

When you rent a bedroom in your home and that rental unit creates a tax loss, can you deduct the loss?

Don’t let tax deadlines catch you off guard! Stay organized and save more with our 2024 Federal Tax Calendar for small businesses and self-employed taxpayers. Download your calendar now!

Generally, young adults who contribute to traditional or Roth IRAs enhance their retirement years with more retirement income. It doesn’t take much to make this work to your advantage.

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.”

Due to the rise in interest rates, the non-deductible interest penalty for underpaying estimated taxes is at a 16-year high of 8 percent. Both individual and corporate taxpayers can avoid this penalty by paying enough estimated tax during the year. If this isn’t done, individual taxpayers can obtain a penalty waiver from the IRS in limited circumstances. No such relief is available for corporations.

The IRS’s annual Dirty Dozen list may sound like a gimmick, but taxpayers should take it seriously. It’s a road map to current IRS audit priorities and a warning to taxpayers and tax professionals to avoid fraudulent and abusive tax schemes or strategies. Use of a strategy on the list can not only result in an audit, but make it impossible to avoid substantial tax penalties.

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.

Download this two-page guide so you have a handy desktop reference for the 2024 corporate and individual tax rates, estate tax rates, self-employed tax rates, Social Security and Medicare tax rates, capital gains rates, standard mileage rates, standard deductions, luxury auto depreciation limits, and select retirement and IRA limits.

As a subscriber, you likely know you are going to see some big tax changes this year. Some are already in place. To help you remember what they are, and to make them available for a quick look anytime you like, download this PDF.

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.

Would you like to have, at your fingertips, updated IRS key contact info and helpful links for information about amended returns, estate and gift taxes, tax transcripts, power of attorney, stimulus checks, tax help for businesses, and many other topics? If so, download the PDF linked in this article.

You need to think about the sale of your rental property when you claim depreciation on your qualified improvement property. Gains may be subject to higher-than-expected tax rates due to Section 1245 and 1250 ordinary income recapture and other factors. Planning your depreciation methods can significantly impact your current tax liabilities and long-term taxable gains when you sell.

Discover flexible solutions for your overfunded 529 College Savings Plan, including changing the beneficiaries, using the money for other than college, and rolling the money over to a Roth IRA.

The Corporate Transparency Act is now in effect. It requires most small defined corporations, LLCs, and some other business entities to file a beneficial owner report (BOI) with the Department of the Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN). Here are 13 answers to some common questions that tax pros and business owners have about the new law.

What can happen if you tell your tax pro you are engaging in tax evasion or fraud? The answer may not be what you hope for. The tax pro can report you to the IRS through the whistleblower program and receive a lucrative reward. Although the tax pro must consider his ethical and legal obligations, he would serve the public interest by turning you in.

When you enter the realm of health care sharing ministries, you join a community where like-minded individuals unite to share medical costs. It’s not your typical health insurance. You will discover why, for many, the lower monthly expenses make health care sharing ministries an attractive option, even without traditional tax benefits.

Dive into our “Real Estate Rentals: Recent Tax Insights” PDF to unlock key strategies for rental property success. This guide offers a comprehensive look at maximizing profitability, understanding investor and dealer roles, and effective tax-deduction tactics.

Fearing chaos, the IRS has acted on its own to delay implementation of new tax reporting requirements that were scheduled to apply to third-party settlement organizations such as PayPal beginning with the 2023 tax year. The old rules for filing Form 1099-K will continue to apply for 2023, and a new transition rule will go into effect in 2024. Full implementation of the new requirements won’t occur until 2025.

Unlike recreational gamblers, professional gamblers get to deduct all their gambling losses and expenses, up to their annual winnings, without itemizing. To qualify as a professional gambler, you must (1) gamble regularly and continuously throughout the year, and (2) gamble with a primary purpose of earning a profit.

Download your PDF copy of the 2024 retirement plans desktop reference for the one-person business operating as a sole proprietorship or corporation.

Although personal considerations come into play, the choice between buying and leasing a vehicle for your business ultimately boils down to cost. So it’s essential to understand how to compute and compare the costs and to have the right tools to make those computations easy. This article gives you what you need.

You are more likely to owe the net investment income tax (NIIT) this year. And the government has made sure that you will have an even better chance next year. It’s sad that this built-in tax increase has been going on every year since 2013. But here’s some good news: with good planning, you can beat or at least mitigate the NIIT.

The Corporate Transparency Act goes into effect on January 1, 2024. This law imposes a new requirement for federal filing on or before December 31, 2024, for most existing corporations, limited liability companies, and limited partnerships, and many other types of business entities. Failure to comply can result in hefty monetary penalties and up to two years in prison.

Learn how Revenue Ruling 74-175 can lead to improper application of the popular tax-planning statement “Don’t die with capital loss carryovers.” Learn how Revenue Ruling 74-175 can lead to improper application of the popular tax-planning statement “Don’t die with capital loss carryovers.”

SECURE 2.0 created a bevy of friendly catch-up contribution changes for employees ages 60-63. That’s the good news. The bad news is that SECURE 2.0 does not aim to treat employees with incomes greater than $145,000 in an equally friendly manner.

If you are on Medicare and you gamble, there’s a good chance that your gambling increases your cost of Medicare, even when you lose money.

If you purchase a rental property to begin a new rental business, many of the costs you will incur before the property is offered for rent are classified as start-up expenses for tax purposes. There are strict limits on how and when you can deduct these costs

You can open a business in the United States if you are a non-citizen. But beware: you travel a perilous tax and reporting path when you know little or nothing about the territory. Here’s a tip: follow this road map for successfully launching your U.S. business.

Do you have a bedroom rental in your home? If so, make sure to know the five possible federal income-tax outcomes from such a rental.

From its origins in the 2020 CARES Act to the 2023 IRS alerts and warnings, the Employee Retention Credit (ERC) has undergone significant shifts. Discover the pivotal changes, and see how this tax credit’s twists and turns could impact your business.

Here’s an easy question: Do you need more 2023 tax deductions and credits? If so, continue reading. Next easy question: Do you need a replacement business vehicle? If so, you can simultaneously solve or mitigate both the first problem (needing more deductions and credits) and the second problem (needing a replacement vehicle), but you need to get your replacement vehicle in service on or before December 31, 2023. This article helps you find the right vehicle for the deduction or credit you desire.

Yes, December 31 is just around the corner. That’s your last day to find tax deductions available from your existing business and personal (yes, personal) vehicles that you can use to cut your 2023 taxes. In this article, you will learn how to find and release tax deductions that the tax code trapped inside your existing business cars, SUVs, trucks, and vans. And you will learn how the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act makes it possible for you to find a big deduction from your existing personal vehicle (note the terms “existing” and “personal”).

Are you thinking of getting married or divorced? If so, you need to consider December 31, 2023, in your tax planning. Here’s another question: Do you give money to family or friends (other than your children who are subject to the kiddie tax)? If so, you need to consider the zero-tax planning strategy. And now, consider your children who are under age 18. Have you paid them for work they’ve done for your business? Have you paid them the right way? You’ll find the answers here.

If you are a citizen of both the U.S. and another country, you need to know about taxes in each of the two countries. In this article, you will learn how to take advantage of tax breaks to minimize the taxes you owe as a dual citizen.

Does your business have a retirement plan for you and, if you have employees, your employees? It should. You have more new reasons in 2023 to get your retirement plan in place and perhaps make changes in existing plans.

When you take advantage of the tax code’s offset game, your stock market portfolio can represent a little gold mine of opportunities to reduce your 2023 income taxes. The tax code contains the basic rules for this game, and once you know the rules, you can apply the correct strategies. In addition to saving taxes with the game of offset, you can avoid paying taxes on stock appreciation by gifting stock to charity, your parents, and your children who are not subject to the kiddie tax.

Are you eligible for COVID-19 tax credits for yourself and/or your employees? Have you reimbursed your employees (including your employee spouse) as stipulated in your health reimbursement arrangements? And if you operate as an S corporation, do you have your health insurance set up correctly for your best tax deduction? In this article, we help with these matters and more.

Remember to consider your Section 199A deduction in your 2023 year-end tax planning. If you don’t, you could end up with a useless $0 for your deduction amount. We’ll review three year-end moves that simultaneously (a) reduce your income taxes and (b) boost your Section 199A deduction.

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.

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

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 can convert a personal vehicle to business use, you likely can increase your tax benefits—and do that without spending any money or driving another business mile.

If you discriminate when you contribute to the health savings accounts (HSAs) of your employees, the IRS will make you pay a 35 percent penalty tax on the total amount of your contributions. This tax can add up quickly, and if you have to pay it, you’ll kick yourself when you discover you can escape the tax entirely by following the three 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.

Planning on leaving the U.S.? If so, you have two choices from a tax perspective, but neither is painless. The tax law that applies to foreign living and expatriation can be tricky, so it’s essential that you depart the country correctly.

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.

This article contains a short quiz that will help you understand when you can gain tax deductions by using more than one vehicle for business. You will see what the IRS has to say about driving more than one vehicle, how the mileage log works when you drive more than one vehicle, and what it takes to make this pay off for you.

Understanding when and how property depreciation starts is essential for maximizing asset value and ensuring compliance with tax regulations. This article offers clear insights and real-world examples, ensuring you’re well equipped to navigate this crucial financial concept efficiently.

Did you know your hobby or supposed business-loss activity could leave you with a hefty tax bill? Discover the implications of the hobby loss rule, and learn from the real-life case of Carl and Leila Gregory.

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.

As a business owner with fewer than 50 employees, you should consider the health savings account (HSA) as an option if you don’t want to provide health coverage to your employees. And of course, if you don’t have any employees, you should consider the HSA.

If you are moving to the United States from a foreign country, your income tax obligations will depend on your tax residency status. The U.S. tax system categorizes foreign individuals as resident aliens or non-resident aliens. Find out what this means and how to comply with U.S. tax laws.

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.

State pass-through entity taxes enable individual owners of partnerships, multi-member LLCs, and S corporations to get around the $10,000 limit on deducting state and local taxes, by having their pass-through entity pay state income tax due on its income and then claiming a federal deduction for the payment. Almost all states with income taxes have now enacted some form of owner-beneficial pass-through entity tax, including seven new states during 2023 alone.

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.

This real estate boot camp deduction is allowed to the taxpayer who is classified as being “in the business” of renting real estate, but not to the taxpayer classified as an “investor in real estate.”

If you are a U.S. citizen living and working abroad, you need to think about taxes, both those in the United States and those in the country where you are living and working. This article will steer you in the right direction.

The individual coverage HRA (ICHRA) has much to offer a small business (businesses with fewer than 50 employees). We addressed many of those in ICHRA: Game Changer for Small Business Health Benefits. Here we expand on the abilities of the ICHRA to get a smile from you, the small-business owner who wants to offer health benefits to his or her employees.

When it comes to your profits on a rental real estate property, the repair deduction can substantially outperform the capitalized improvement. The added cash comes from two sources: increased capital gains and (hopefully) the time value of money.

Don’t let tax deadlines catch you off guard! Stay organized and save more with our 2023 Federal Tax Calendar for small businesses and self-employed taxpayers. Download your calendar now!

When does a rental property qualify as a good investment? The answer lies in your specific investment objectives. For instance, if your goal is to achieve an after-tax profit significantly higher than your safe rate of return, a rental property might be a great choice. How can you know this? You can make an informed projection by reading this article and utilizing the calculator provided.

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.

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. Here are five things to know before you hire your spouse that will maximize your savings and minimize the audit risk.

Business owners who have established 105-HRAs, Qualified Small Employer Health Reimbursement Arrangements (QSEHRAs), and Individual Coverage Health Reimbursement Accounts (ICHRAs) to reimburse their employees for medical expenses need to pay an annual fee to help support the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI).

Thanks to the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, there is only one way for you, the corporate owner, to benefit from the home-office deduction. And before you can get to this one way, you need to first establish that your use of an office in your home is for the convenience of your corporation.

You have two good reasons to get your qualified small-employer health reimbursement arrangement (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 before your plan year begins on January 1.

If you have children under age 24, you likely need some knowledge about the kiddie tax, especially how to avoid it. In this article, you first get the nuts and bolts. Next, you get the planning strategies.

The COVID-19 employee retention credit (ERC) of up to $26,000 per eligible employee applied during calendar years 2020 and 2021. Assuming you can qualify for the ERC but did not apply, how do you get it now? It’s pretty easy. You amend your payroll and income tax returns. The harder part is finding the rules that allow you to qualify. We make that easier with this article.

During 2021, the COVID-19 pandemic forced many self-employed individuals and corporate owner-employees to miss work. To offset this trouble, the federal government provided up to four possible sick and family leave tax credits. If you failed to claim the credits, you still have time to do so.

The COVID-19 pandemic forced many self-employed individuals and small corporate owner-employees to miss work for personal reasons, such as staying home to care for children whose schools or childcare providers were unavailable due to the pandemic. To offset this trouble, the federal government provided sick and family leave tax credits. If you failed to claim the credits until now, you still have time to do so.

If you can qualify to put a Section 105-HRA plan in place for your business, you qualify for some great tax benefits and perhaps even create tax deductions where none existed before. Three types of small businesses can put this plan in place: (1) the Schedule C taxpayer with no employees other than his or her spouse; (2) the Schedule C taxpayer with a buddy Schedule C taxpayer, both of whom create Section 105-HRA plans; and (3) the solo employee-owner of a C corporation.

Do you have a tax-deductible office in your home? Do you have a cleaning lady who cleans not only your home but also your office? If so, is the cleaning lady an independent contractor or a W-2 employee?

Eight states offer tax rebates or credits to residents who purchase or lease electric vehicles. You collect the state rebates or credits in addition to the federal tax credit. In many cases, the state credits are available for electric vehicles that don’t qualify for the federal credit because of strict domestic sourcing rules for batteries.

In this article you’ll find the basic tax results that occur when you shut down your C corporation.

You have options when it comes to your choice of business entity, and your selection determines your tax filing forms. In this overview article, we give you the big picture on those options, filing forms, and also a handy desktop reference.

With the release of new IRS regulations, the many restrictions on the clean vehicle tax credit for electric vehicles (EVs) take full effect. As a result, only 22 EVs qualified for the clean vehicle tax credit as of April 18, 2023, although this number will likely grow during the year. But the tax rules give you some other ways to claim a federal tax credit for an EV, such as by leasing an EV, buying a used EV, or claiming the commercial clean vehicle credit for business-use EVs.

The IRS imposes a 20 percent penalty if you underpay your taxes by the greater of $5,000 or 10 percent. But you can avoid this penalty completely by filing IRS Form 8275 and adequately disclosing the item or tax position the IRS might later disallow. To obtain such relief, you need show only a reasonable basis for your position—not a high bar.

Is it possible for an S corporation to pick up, say, the $21,000 tab for the more-than-2-percent shareholder’s family health insurance—and put that in box 1 of the shareholder’s W-2 as wages—but for the shareholder to get a zero deduction on Form 1040, Schedule 1, line 17? Yes, this can happen when an ugly rule comes into play.

Discover an innovative continuing education opportunity that combines learning with a luxurious resort experience. This unique event, held at a five-star resort, allows participants to earn business-related education credits and potentially enjoy tax deductions for travel and meals.

Small and solo business owners face some tricky yet often rewarding rules when it comes to business tax deductions for health insurance and other medical expenses. In this article, you’ll find answers to six questions that will help you along the path to your rightful business deductions.

Estate planning is essential for everyone, regardless of wealth. With a will and a living trust, you can ensure your assets are distributed according to your wishes, avoid probate, and maintain your financial privacy. Remember to regularly review and update your estate plan to accommodate life changes and fluctuating tax rules.

Discover how family loans can help homebuyers secure better interest rates. Learn about the applicable federal rate (AFR), the tax implications, and the clever loopholes you can use to avoid complications. Dive into the essential steps for proper documentation, and secure your relative’s chance to claim valuable deductions on their home loan.

Understanding phaseouts helps you create more efficient tax planning strategies, as they provide crucial information on the income limits for various tax benefits based on your filing status. With this knowledge, you can make informed decisions on how to allocate your income and investments to minimize your tax liability and maximize your after-tax benefits.

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.

Owning your business has many advantages, including the possible ability to get some tax deductions when you have your business pay for your child’s education—in select circumstances, as we explain in this article.

The Section 105 medical reimbursement plan can be confusing, and you want to get it right. To help, we answer eight common questions in this article, including what documentation to use, where to file for the deduction, how many work hours are needed to justify the reimbursement, who needs to create the plan, whether it will work with an S corporation, and more.

Charitable contributions not only support great causes but can also reduce your taxes. Download this guide to read up on four often overlooked tax strategies for maximizing your tax savings with charitable contributions.

Looking to add a business gym? This should be straightforward, but not so. There are two different tax code sections that could apply. If you are thinking of a gym for your business, this article advises how to make your deduction possible by keeping you from using the wrong set of IRS regulations.

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.

When you make a loan and that loan goes bad, your tax deduction for that lost money could be either a capital loss subject to the dreaded $3,000 cap or an ordinary loss that’s fully deductible. You want to get this right, and this article puts you on the right path.

Health savings accounts (HSAs) are the best retirement account ever invented. You can help fund your HSA by making a once-in-a-lifetime rollover of money from your IRA. No tax need be paid on the rollover. Thus, if you later withdraw the funds from your HSA for medical expenses, you’ll never pay taxes on them. The only drawback is that the rollover amount is limited to your HSA contribution limit for the year. But hey, tax-free is free.

As with much of life today, tax rules keep changing. Accordingly, in this article, we have a new helicopter view of meals and entertainment for 2023.

If you engage in any interactions with foreign entities or conduct foreign transactions, it is highly probable that you will be required to file tax and other forms. Failure to do so can result in severe penalties. To obtain a comprehensive understanding of the necessary forms, download the Common Foreign Reporting Forms PDF.

If you own more than 2 percent of an S corporation, you have to follow special rules to deduct your health insurance premiums. These demanding health insurance rules can also apply to family members who work in the business and don’t own a single share of stock. Don’t let these rules be a surprise and cost your family money.

Money in IRAs and other retirement accounts is not supposed to be withdrawn until you reach age 59 1/2. Early withdrawals are subject to a 10 percent penalty tax in addition to regular income tax in the case of tax-deferred accounts. But if you need to get your hands on your retirement money sooner, there are several ways to do so without incurring the penalty.

The SECURE Act 2.0 adds several new exceptions to the 10 percent penalty on withdrawals from retirement accounts before age 59 1/2. These include emergencies, terminal illness, domestic abuse, and disasters.

Selling your rental property can result in a substantial tax bill. To assist you with this situation, we have developed a guide that presents a variety of tax strategies that can be employed to minimize, and in certain circumstances eliminate, these taxes. You can download this guide and explore the various strategies it contains.

Typically, it is not advisable for a corporation to possess real estate. The most favorable entities for real property ownership are the single-member LLC, the husband-and-wife LLC, and the grantor trust. But there is one exception to this rule, as we explain in this article.

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.

If you have to paper file a document with the IRS, what happens if that document never reaches the intended recipient? You have, as they say on the farm, stepped in it. Here’s how to make sure you don’t suffer that fate.

IRS Notice 2015-17 permits S corporations to escape the $100-a-day penalties on reimbursements they make to more-than-2-percent shareholder-employees for individually purchased health insurance.

You really should consider antiques when furnishing your offices or buying a unique second business vehicle. Unlike regular furnishings and vehicles, well-selected antiques increase in value. Also, you can depreciate or even Section 179 expense them. When you run the after-tax numbers, you can easily find that an antique will yield 36 times more after-tax cash than a non-antique.

If you have a traditional IRA or other tax-deferred retirement account, the federal government wants you to pay taxes on that money before you die. That why the feds created “required minimum distributions” (RMDs) that are based on your age and mortality tables. The recently enacted SECURE 2.0 Act allows taxpayers to wait longer to start taking their RMDs. And, the new law also reduces the penalties for failing to take RMDs.

When looking for tax law guidance from proposed regulations, be alert. If the regulations are not effective until finalized as is the case for health care sharing ministries, you could go down the wrong path and find yourself in trouble.

Lawmakers create tax penalties to help ensure compliance with the federal income tax system. You may want this handy two-page PDF on your desktop because it gives you a quick reference to the penalties, penalty amounts, and tax code sections that create the penalties.

The tax law’s passive-loss rules are pretty much the grim reaper of current-year tax benefits from your rental properties. Note the words “current year.” Those passive losses trapped this year are available down the road. With planning, you might be able to release those trapped tax benefits when you want.

Download this two-page guide so that you have a handy desktop reference for the 2023 corporate and individual tax rates, estate tax rates, self-employed tax rates, Social Security and Medicare tax rates, capital gains rates, standard mileage rates, standard deductions, luxury auto depreciation limits, and select retirement and IRA limits.

How many tractors does a farm need? Could it need 46 tractors? The IRS said no, but this taxpayer took the IRS to court and won on the tractor issue.

Of the dozens and dozens of tax-saving articles published by the Bradford Tax Institute in 2022, there were five that stuck out. Download this PDF to capture the five articles in one document.

As a subscriber, you likely know you are going to see some big tax changes this year. Some are already in place. To help you remember what they are, and to have them available for a quick look anytime you like, download this PDF.

You can grow your real estate portfolio and compound your tax savings by combining a 1031 exchange with a cost segregation study. When you use this combination, make sure to consider the election under IRS Reg. Section 1.168(i)-6(c)(5)(iv). Its proper use can save you thousands—and of course, failure to use it could cost you thousands.

Short sales provide a path for underwater homeowners to get out of their mortgages without going through foreclosure. But mortgage debt forgiven following a short sale can be taxable income for the homeowner unless tax law provides a specific exception.

If you qualify to use IRS mileage rates to deduct the use of your vehicle, you need to know whether you are cheating yourself with the method you select. The good news is, this article includes a tool that will give the one best method for your deduction and also tell you how much after-tax cash you pocket with that good method.

The savvy real estate investor uses Internal Revenue Code Section 1031 to build a real estate empire without paying federal income taxes. But what if that investor wants to get off the landlord merry-go-round—and avoid paying taxes? As you see in this article, the investor has choices.

The IRS said that your Airbnb or similar rental can produce self-employment income subject to self-employment taxes when you provide services to the tenants. This article gives you a road map to avoid that self-employment tax.

Would you like to have, at your fingertips, updated IRS key contact info and helpful links for information about amended returns, estate and gift taxes, tax transcripts, power of attorney, stimulus checks, tax help for businesses, and many other topics? If so, download the PDF linked in this article.

It’s been almost 15 years since cancellation of debt was a story above the fold. Should we dip into recession, you likely will see more stories about cancellation of debt. For federal income tax purposes, canceled debt is taxable—unless it meets one of the many possible exceptions, as explained in this article.

When you sell commercial or rental property, you can avoid paying capital gains tax by (1) completing a Section 1031 exchange for another replacement property, or (2) investing all or part of the gain in a qualified opportunity zone fund. Which is best for you depends on your specific goals.

Billions of dollars are raised each year through crowdfunding websites such as GoFundMe and Kickstarter. Whether this money is taxable income to the recipient depends on whether it is a gift, a payment made in return for a reward, a loan, or a payment made in return for equity ownership in a business.

Download your PDF copy of the 2023 retirement plans desktop reference for one-person businesses.

Learn how orthodontists and other professionals can have an office downtown and also qualify for a home-office deduction using tax law’s administration rules.

The Inflation Reduction Act gives the IRS an additional $80 billion over the next decade, enabling it to add thousands of new employees and upgrade its operations. Audits will increase over the next few years, but not for everybody. High-income taxpayers will be in the IRS’s crosshairs.

Should you buy equipment, vehicles, and other personal property in your personal name or an LLC name and then rent them to your corporation? There’s much to consider, as you learn in this Q&A.

If you need to make a required minimum distribution (RMD) from your IRA or other retirement account this year, doing an in-kind distribution enables you to avoid selling stocks or other securities in your account that have gone down in value over the past year. An in-kind RMD can also reduce taxes on future appreciation when you later sell the assets.

How do you treat a trip from your home to your rental property? Does the trip produce deductible mileage? Or is the trip a personal commute? If it’s a personal commute, what could you do about it?

During an IRS audit, this taxpayer and his CPA won their case by being persistent and using two articles from the Tax Reduction Letter.

You may want to amend your existing health reimbursement accounts, medical savings plans, and flexible spending accounts to allow non-prescription over-the-counter drugs and menstrual care products.

Here’s an easy question: Do you need more 2022 tax deductions and credits? If so, continue reading. Next easy question: Do you need a replacement business vehicle? If so, you can simultaneously solve or mitigate both the first problem (needing more deductions and credits) and the second problem (needing a replacement vehicle), but you need to get your replacement vehicle in service on or before December 31, 2022. This article helps you find the right vehicle for the deduction or credit you desire.

Yes, December 31 is just around the corner. That’s your last day to find tax deductions available from your existing business and personal (yes, personal) vehicles that you can use to cut your 2022 taxes. In this article, you will learn how to find and release tax deductions that the tax code trapped inside your existing business cars, SUVs, trucks, and vans. And you will learn how the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act makes it possible for you to find a big deduction from your existing personal vehicle (note the terms “existing” and “personal”).

Download this PDF to have at your fingertips for each of the 50 U.S. states: the income tax phone numbers for individual and business tax returns and the website URL for the taxing agencies or departments.

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 Uncle Sam gets less of your 2022 cash.

Remember to consider your Section 199A deduction in your 2022 year-end tax planning. If you don’t, you could end up with a useless $0 for your deduction amount. We’ll review three year-end moves that simultaneously (a) reduce your income taxes and (b) boost your Section 199A deduction.

If you are thinking of getting married or divorced, you need to consider December 31, 2022, in your tax planning. Here’s a question: Do you give money to family or friends (other than your children who are subject to the kiddie tax)? If so, you need to consider the zero-taxes planning strategy. And now, consider your children who are under age 18. Have you paid them for work they’ve done for your business? Have you paid them the right way? You’ll find the answers here.

Does your business have a retirement plan for you and, if you have employees, your employees? It should. You have more new reasons in 2022 to get your retirement plan in place and perhaps make changes in existing plans.

When you take advantage of the tax code’s offset game, your stock market portfolio can represent a little gold mine of opportunities to reduce your 2022 income taxes. The tax code contains the basic rules for this game, and once you know the rules, you can apply the correct strategies. In addition to saving taxes with the game of offset, you can avoid paying taxes on stock appreciation by gifting stock to charity, your parents, and your children who are not subject to the kiddie tax.

If you had W-2 employees in 2020 and/or 2021, you need to look at the Employee Retention Credit (ERC). This is true whether you already filed for it or are thinking of filing for it. See the 12 answers in this article for insights into the ERC.

If you purchase an all-electric vehicle or a plug-in hybrid electric vehicle, you can qualify for a tax credit of up to $7,500. But the newly enacted Inflation Reduction Act has thoroughly revamped the credit beginning August 17, 2022, with additional changes taking place in 2023 and 2024. If you are planning to take advantage of this credit, there’s much to know, as you will learn here.

The newly enacted Inflation Reduction Act expands and extends tax credits for installing solar panels, electric vehicle chargers, or other renewable energy systems in commercial buildings and residential rental property. It also increases the tax deduction for making commercial buildings more energy-efficient.

The proper tax deduction treatment for decorating a business office with a baseball card and memorabilia collection comes from the courts in their decisions on depreciating antiques.

Are you thinking of converting your business to an S corporation? The IRS will be watching you closely. Learn how to avoid the common mistakes that many business owners make.

One hundred percent bonus depreciation ends on December 31, 2022. Does this mean you should rush out and purchase business property before 2022 ends to take advantage of the 100 percent bonus? Not necessarily. For many businesses there is an alternative that is not going away, and this alternative can be as good as bonus depreciation: IRC Section 179 expensing.

Does the pool table located in the room you use for a home office destroy the home-office deduction, or can you exclude the square footage occupied by the pool table from the business square footage?

Some of the tax benefits of the federal qualified opportunity zone program have expired, but investing in qualified opportunity funds can still provide significant tax deferral and tax reduction for all types of capital gains.

At a meeting of landlords, the guest lawyer stated that the S corporation terminates with too much passive income. Many attendees heard this comment incorrectly. The too-much-passive-income termination problem applies only to certain S corporations.

Inflation is seldom a good thing. But when it comes to investing, the U.S. Treasury Department has an inflation opportunity that’s downright amazing. You can buy bonds that pay 9.62 percent—tax-deferred—with no downside risk, and with no state or local income taxes when you cash them in.

If you purchase an electric car or a plug-in hybrid electric vehicle to use in your business, you can qualify for a brand-new commercial clean vehicle tax credit worth up to a whopping $40,000. But that’s not all.

If you have not claimed the employee retention credit (ERC), you can amend your 2020 and 2021 payroll tax returns to claim it. In this article, you will learn what’s needed and what happens when you have to combine business entities for purposes of the ERC.

Already, 29 states have enacted pass-through entity taxes as a workaround to the $10,000 cap on deducting state and local taxes, but each has different requirements that business owners must comply with to take advantage of the deduction.

The home-office deduction continues to be misunderstood in a variety of ways. In this article, the taxpayer’s CPA tells her that there’s no tax benefit to the home-office deduction for an S corporation and that the home-office deduction applies only to the self-employed.

Do you like the phrase “tax-free”? If so, spend some time with this article because it shows you 11 tax-free income breaks.

The Inflation Reduction Act extends and expands tax credits for making your home more energy efficient. These include a healthy 30 percent credit for installing home solar panels; credits for installing energy-efficient windows, doors, and insulation; and even a credit for installing a home electric vehicle charger.

The IRS examiner can make a mistake. But the question is: Will you know it’s a mistake? In the situation described in this article, the tax code contains the answer. The taxpayer simply had to be familiar with it.

You can convert a partnership into an S corporation tax-free (or mostly tax-free) in a variety of ways, as explained in this article. So, if you want to convert your partnership to an S corporation, spend time with this article.

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.

Series I bonds can make a great risk-free investment during these troubling inflationary times. If you don’t know about them, read this article for how they work (and they work really well).

The IRS says that owners of pass-through entities can get around the $10,000 federal cap on deducting state and local taxes by electing to have their entity pay state income tax and then having the entity deduct the taxes as a federal tax deduction.

When you have suspended passive rental losses, you have a tax-loss savings bond that matures (grants your deductions) when you qualify as a tax-law-defined real estate professional and have passive income.

What happens when you sell your personal residence but your name is not on the deed? Does this rob you of the $250,000 exclusion? And who gets the 1099-S? Not you, for sure.

Inflation can make you think of inflation hedges such as Treasury Inflation-Protected Securities (TIPS), discussed in this article. With this investment, you could receive inflation adjustments in your favor without the risk of losing your original investment.

Seller-financed installment sales offer many benefits for the seller, including deferring taxes on the sales gain while allowing for top sales price and flexible terms. But this is tax law, and as you would expect, the IRS imposes a number of rules and restrictions on the installment method.

If you have self-employment income, you pay self-employment taxes (Social Security and Medicare taxes) on your net self-employment earnings. Not all income is self-employment income and some surprising types of income are considered self-employment income, as explained in this article.

Are you loving the 21 percent corporate tax rate and now keeping more money inside the corporation? If so, beware of the accumulated earnings tax. You can easily overlook it. You likely don’t have the proper documentation to avoid it. And it’s expensive.

If you’re a partner in a partnership or an LLC member, do you have to pay self-employment tax on your business profits? It depends. Some partners and members can avoid paying such taxes, but the rules are not always clear. You can generally avoid self-employment tax only if you’re not actively involved in the partnership or LLC business.

If you’re thinking of becoming self-employed or recently took the plunge, this article is for you. One of the first things you need to consider is the self-employment tax, which starts almost immediately. And the second thing you need to consider is how to reduce your taxes. You will find good ideas in this article.

Okay, nice, the IRS increased the standard mileage rates for the second half of the year. If you use the three-month sample method for tracking your business mileage, how do you apply that mileage to the different rates? This article will help you with that and offer additional insights.

There’s much to see in this short question and answer, such as the single-member LLC, sole proprietorship, corporation, payroll taxes, self-employment taxes, and tax-free income.

Many solo owners of C corporations have their corporations reimburse them for health insurance. That’s nice, but as we explain in this article, those solo owner-employees likely can do better.

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.

If you own a second home and have both personal and rental use of that home, the tax code treats it as a tax-defined vacation home regardless of its location in the city or at the beach. Of course, you could use it solely or partly for business lodging and avoid the vacation home rules. With a second home, you have many tax strategies to consider.

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 rewards business owners who are proactive in fixing their worker classification mistakes using the Voluntary Classification Settlement Program (VCSP). With this program, you can correctly classify your workers at a minimal cost and without the risk of an employment tax audit.

Holding real estate in a self-directed IRA can help diversify your retirement investments, but it can come at a hefty price, including crippling prohibited transaction rules and the loss of valuable real estate tax deductions.

You may not have thought of this, but taking a cruise ship to Mexico for a business meeting is acceptable as a deductible form of transportation.

Buying real estate with a self-directed IRA may sound great, but it can be hard to get financing—and if you do finance the property, your IRA could be subject to unrelated business income taxes during its operations and at the time of sale. You also need cash reserves for operations and to pay out minimum distributions when you hit retirement age.

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.

If you give money to your church and/or other 501(c)(3) organizations, you should consider establishing an account with a donor-advised fund to increase your tax benefit possibilities. It’s easy to do and gives you an immediate charitable deduction—even when you have the fund distribute the money years later.

If you earn profits from rental property and your income is high enough, you pay the 3.8 percent net investment income tax (think surtax on high income) unless you can qualify for one of three exemptions, as we explain in this article.

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

With today’s home prices and the crazy real estate market, it’s likely difficult for your children to buy a home. And it’s conceivable that you are ready to move on from your existing home. If this is true, this might be the right time to transfer your home to your child, as we explain in this article.

This taxpayer embezzled money from his employer, got caught, and died in jail. Before he died, the embezzler sent the embezzled money to the IRS as an estimated tax payment. Read why the company can’t get their stolen money back once the thief paid the money to the IRS in taxes.

If you sell a home that you used for both personal and rental purposes, you are selling a tax-code-defined vacation home. Special rules apply to any gain or loss, as you will see in this article.

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.

The IRS audit manual states: “If you rent all or part of your residence to your employer and use the rented portion when performing services for the employer, you cannot deduct home-office expenses attributable to the rental.” Thus, forget the rental to the corporation, and instead use the corporate-reimbursement-to-the-employee strategy for maximum benefits.

A Health Savings Account (HSA) can be the best retirement account of all because it offers triple tax benefits: (1) deductible contributions, (2) tax-free growth, and (3) tax-free withdrawals for medical expenses. No other tax-advantaged account gives you all three.

If you are going to operate a business with multiple owners, you need to consider the partnership in addition to considering the S and C corporations. The partnership generates both advantages and disadvantages. This article guides you through the many things you need to consider.

College is expensive. Luckily, tax law has provisions to help you cover the costs, including Coverdell, Section 529 savings, and Section 529 tuition plans. Of course, there’s more, including tax strategies that benefit both you and your child, as you will learn in this guide.

If you are involved in a financial sense with a taxpayer and that taxpayer has a payroll tax problem, be aware that the situation could become your problem, as it did for Mr. Kazmi in this instance.

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.

Revenue Procedure 2010-13 requires disclosure of the business and rental groups you form to avoid the disallowance of losses under the passive-loss rules. At first glance, you might say, “Oh, no, not more disclosures.” But further examination shows an audit-proofing aspect to this disclosure that is most appealing.

What happens if you live in a house and make mortgage payments, but someone else owns the property? Can you still get a tax benefit? Absolutely! By proving that you have legal or equitable title to the property, you can deduct up to 100 percent of the mortgage interest you pay. For Sue Davis, this generated an extra $18,000 per year of deductions she did not know she could claim.

How you operate your rental property is important. For example, with services, you can create a Schedule C rental property. That can be good or bad. Learn why.

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.

Tax law gives you the opportunity to legally shelter up to $250,000 of gains ($500,000, if married) when you sell your home. You may know the basic rule on this, but there’s so much more as you find in this PDF download.

Qualify for a special election that allows you to treat your rental and your business as one activity for federal tax purposes. This can give you the best of both worlds: (1) legal protection and (2) a tax shelter.

At first blush, our beloved Internal Revenue Code appears to throw cold water on the idea of holding physical precious metal assets in an IRA. But as you will learn in this article, the tax code contains exceptions and alternatives that allow you to invest your IRA money in precious metals, both directly and indirectly.

If you suffered from the repeal of the Employee Retention Credit (ERC) for the fourth quarter of 2021 and/or suffered from IRS Notice 2021-49 and its disallowance of the ERC on wages paid to the corporate owner-employee, you now have hope that one or both of these problems can be solved in your favor.

Download this two-page guide so that you have a handy desktop reference with the 2022 corporate and individual tax rates, estate tax rates, self-employed tax rates, Social Security and Medicare tax rates, capital gain rates, standard mileage rates, standard deductions, luxury auto depreciation limits, and select retirement and IRA limits.

Does your child receive a W-2? If so, he or she should contribute to an IRA (preferably a Roth IRA), as we explain in this article.

For decades, you have been able to provide employers with free meals as a tax-free fringe benefit. But with on-demand meal delivery available to most workplaces today, is this about to change?

The Section 530 safe-harbor provisions allow employers to avoid penalties, if certain tests are met, on workers improperly classified as independent contractors. The employer must have filed all appropriate federal tax returns, treated similar employees consistently, and had a reasonable basis for classifying the individuals as independent contractors.

If you own or lease non-residential real property you use in your business, interior improvements you make to the property may be fully deductible in a single year instead of multiple years. But to be deducted so quickly, the improvements must meet the tax law definition of “qualified improvement property.”

Let’s say you have your business pay your college student $23,255 for a one-time project. As you know from Paying for College—a Handy-Dandy Strategy, the payment is not self-employment income for the student. But what Form 1099 do you use to report the income? Why does tax preparation software try to apply the kiddie tax to this payment? Does the one-time payment mean the student can contribute to an IRA?

When you think of the reverse mortgage, you may not think of using it as a tax planning tool. But as you learn in this article, the reverse mortgage can save you a boatload of taxes when used in the right circumstances.

This article answers two questions: First, if a married couple sells their home to their S corporation to be a rental property, can the owners be the renters? Second, where does the S corporation obtain S corporation basis in this transaction?

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.

Taxable income has consequences. It causes income taxes. And it causes you to pay either more or less for Medicare. It boils down to this: there’s always a need to reduce your taxable income.

As a business owner, you need to decide which of the many retirement plans provide you with the most benefit. Our guide explains each of the plans so you can make an informed decision as to which retirement plan fits best for you.

When it comes to depreciation, not all real property is the same. You depreciate residential rental real property, such as an apartment building, over a much shorter time than non-residential rental property, such as an office building. If you have mixed-use rentals, you classify them as residential rentals when a specified percentage of the rent comes from dwelling units.

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.

Here’s a handy-dandy strategy for getting some money to your college student to help him or her pay for school. Have your child engage in an activity that’s not subject to self-employment taxes. If you operate your business as a corporation or your child is age 18 or older, this is a great college funding tool that you need to consider.

When you open a traditional IRA, your custodian usually limits you to plain-vanilla investments such as stocks, bonds, and mutual funds. By establishing a self-directed IRA, you can invest in almost anything. But you need to avoid self-dealing and other prohibited transactions, or your IRA could lose its tax-advantaged status.

When you use a home for both rental and personal use, regardless of that home’s location at the beach or in the city, you run into the tax code’s vacation home rules which make that home either a residence or a rental property. There’s much to know here. In this article, we deal with the vacation home-defined residence classification and make that journey easier.

Download your PDF copy of the 2022 retirement plans desktop reference for one-person businesses.

Lawmakers enacted a special employee retention credit for start-up businesses. The credit is up to $50,000 for the third and fourth calendar quarters of 2021. Does your new start-up business qualify for this credit?

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.

In this article, you will learn when a partner can deduct unreimbursed partner expenses (UPE) and when the partnership can treat certain activity as if the partner were a 1099 independent contractor.

The incredibly valuable employee retention credit is over except for new start-up businesses, but there are several other credits you can claim when you hire an employee to work in your Schedule C business. And you may be able to claim more than one credit.

If you are in the age category that allows the extra contribution (known as the “catch-up contribution”) to your retirement account, make sure to examine the financial benefits as explained in this article.

Okay, those rascals in Congress retroactively eliminated the employee retention credit (ERC) for the fourth quarter of 2021, but don’t let that deter you from claiming your credits from the other three quarters of 2021 and one quarter of 2020. There’s plenty of time to make your claims.

Learn how to use the S corporation to cut your taxes when you have appreciated land that you will develop and sell.

Use these 10 strategies on your Schedule C business to generate tax savings.

Is the husband-and-wife LLC taxed as a partnership a good entity to create tax-deductible Section 105 medical plan reimbursements?

The tax code has rules that have changed over the years and that can affect how much you pay in taxes when you sell your principal residence. In this article, we focus on helping you with the least-known of these rules.

Would you like to have at your fingertips updated IRS key contact info and helpful links for information about amended returns, estate and gift taxes, tax transcripts, power of attorney, stimulus checks, tax help for businesses, and many other topics? If so, download the PDF linked in this article.

There are dozens of tax credits for businesses. Most of the tax credits are highly specialized or are only for businesses with employees. This makes it hard to find those credits for small businesses, particularly Schedule C businesses. But in this article, you will find six credits that Schedule C businesses without employees can claim.

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.

Here’s an easy question: Do you need more 2021 tax deductions? If yes, continue reading. Next easy question: Do you need a replacement business vehicle? If yes, you can simultaneously solve or mitigate both the first problem (needing more deductions) and the second problem (needing a replacement vehicle), but you need to get your replacement vehicle in service on or before December 31, 2021. This article helps you find the right vehicle for the deduction you desire.

Are you eligible for COVID-19 tax credits for yourself and/or your employees? Have you reimbursed your employees (including your employee spouse) as stipulated in your health reimbursement arrangements? And if you operate as an S corporation, do you have your health insurance set up correctly for your best tax deduction? In this article, we help with these matters and more.

If you are thinking of getting married or divorced, you need to consider December 31, 2021, in your tax planning. Here’s another planning question: Do you give money to family or friends (other than your children who are subject to the kiddie tax)? If so, you need to consider the zero-taxes planning strategy. And now, consider your children who are under age 18. Have you paid them for work they’ve done for your business? Have you paid them the right way? You’ll find the answers here.

Yes, December 31 is just around the corner. That’s your last day to find tax deductions available from your existing business and personal (yes, personal) vehicles that you can use to cut your 2021 taxes. In this article, you will learn how to find and release tax deductions that the tax code trapped inside your existing business cars, SUVs, trucks, and vans. And you will learn how the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act makes it possible for you to find a big deduction from your existing personal vehicle (note the terms “personal” and “existing”).

Remember to consider your Section 199A deduction in your 2021 year-end tax planning. If you don’t, you could end up with a useless $0 for your deduction amount. We’ll review three year-end moves that (a) reduce your income taxes and (b) boost your Section 199A deduction at the same time.

Does your business have a retirement plan for you and if you have employees, your employees? It should. You have more new reasons in 2021 to get your retirement plan in place and perhaps make changes in existing plans.

When you take advantage of the tax code’s offset game, your stock market portfolio can represent a little gold mine of opportunities to reduce your 2021 income taxes. The tax code contains the basic rules for this game, and once you know the rules, you can apply the correct strategies. In addition to saving taxes with the game of offset, you can also avoid paying taxes on stock appreciation by gifting stock to charity, your parents, and your children who are not subject to the kiddie tax.

Businesses can save big by hiring independent contractors. But the rules of the road for this worker classification require that you pay attention. Both the feds and the states want the workers classified as employees. Recently, California’s AB 5 tried to make it significantly harder for businesses to hire independent contractors, but lawmakers have since watered down AB 5 in response to widespread complaints by both independent contractors and businesses. Other states started to follow the California example, but then decided not to do so.

As a business taxpayer, you can write off the cost of business buildings, machines, and other assets. The write-off comes in one of three forms, and for the most part you can select the form that gives you the deduction you desire. But you need to follow certain rules to trigger the write-offs, as we explain in this article.

Whether you travel out of town for business by car, airplane, or boat, you need tax knowledge to create some tax-deductible personal fun days. (Yep, you read that right.) This free guide clarifies the tax law so you can not only ensure your travel deductions, but also turn some personal days into deductible business travel days.

Part 3 of our three-part refresher course on the principal residence gain exclusion break shows you what happens to the $250,000 ($500,000, if married) exclusion in the case of a divorce or marriage. In a divorce, good tax planning can be necessary if you’re going to retain the exclusion. You will also see what hurdles the government has put in place when you convert a vacation home or rental into your personal residence.

When you are under an IRS audit and you need a citation that helps you, where do you find that citation? See what the tax professional in this article found that helped his client win the deduction.

Not all Roth IRA withdrawals are federal-income-tax-free. Some withdrawals are taxable. Even worse, some can be socked with a 10 percent early withdrawal penalty tax, and this can happen even when there’s no income tax hit.

In this IRS audit, both the IRS and the CPA held the incorrect position that the taxpayer had to materially participate in a rental property for more than 500 hours in order to deduct any losses or cost segregation.

The big advantage of 529 plans is that qualified withdrawals are always federal-income-tax-free—and usually state-income-tax-free too. What you may not know is that not all 529 withdrawals are tax-free qualified withdrawals, even in years when you have heavy college costs.

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 Notice 2021-49 disallowing the employee retention credit to more than 50 percent owners who have certain living relatives has to be a mistake. It’s too illogical to stand. In fact, you have to question whether the notice is technically correct.

If you encourage your employees to get the COVID-19 vaccination by giving them paid time off through September 30, 2021, you can collect refundable sick and family leave tax credits of up to $17,511 per employee. The credit is also available if an employee takes time off to help family or household members get vaccinated or recover from side effects of the vaccination. Similar credits are available if you are self-employed and have no employees.

If you buy a property, fix it up, and then sell it, is that property a dealer or an investor property? The classification boils down to your facts and circumstances. That makes it a tough call for both you and your tax preparer. And if investor status produces long-term capital gains, you want to avoid dealer status, because that causes ordinary income and self-employment taxes.

Download this newly updated two-page guide so that you have a handy desktop reference with the 2021 corporate and individual tax rates, estate tax rates, self-employed tax rates, Social Security and Medicare tax rates, capital gain rates, standard mileage rates, standard deductions, luxury auto depreciation limits, and select retirement and IRA limits.

Part 2 of our three-part refresher course offers more good news about the principal residence gain exclusion of up to $250,000 ($500,000, if married). In this article, you will find liberal rules that give you a prorated exclusion when you or other qualified individuals experience a change in place of employment, health issues, or unforeseen circumstances. You also will learn how business or rental use affects the exclusion and how to treat vacant land that is part of your personal residence.

Here’s a sad story of a dentist who did not file his tax returns. Of course, as you know, the failure to file tax returns often gets the IRS’s attention. In this case, it did, and this dentist suffered accordingly.

If you are an employee with company stock in your retirement plan, you can use the net unrealized appreciation tax treatment to save money on your taxes.

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.

The IRS issues private letter rulings (PLRs) to answer taxpayers’ questions about how to apply the tax law to a set of facts or how to obtain relief for late filings and other errors. A PLR is binding on the IRS as to the taxpayer who receives it, but no others. PLRs are expensive, require a detailed application, and can take months to get. You can often find much cheaper and easier alternatives, especially if you need the IRS to waive a missed deadline.

You likely qualify for the employee retention credit. It has the potential to really help you. The credit is up to $5,000 per employee during 2020 and up to $28,000 per employee in 2021. That’s $33,000 per employee. With 10 employees, that could total $330,000.

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.

As a business owner, your expenses for business meals and entertainment for most of 2020 were likely little to zero due to COVID-19. But that will probably change for the remainder of 2021 and 2022. And with the new tax law changes, you need to make sure you know the rules so you can maximize your tax savings and deduct up to 100 percent of these expenses.

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 $250,000 ($500,000, if married) home sale gain exclusion break is one of the great tax-saving opportunities. Although the tax code contains many rules on this tax break, most of them are easily understood, especially as we explain them in this article.

Do you own a business that withholds taxes from employees? If so, you need 100 percent assurance that the withheld payroll tax monies are going to the IRS and not into the pockets of an embezzler. This article explains how you can obtain such certainty.

What one mistake can you make with your taxes that will cause you to pay penalties of up to 47.5 percent? And when might that not even be the worst part? What could be worse than a 47.5 percent tax penalty? How about both the penalty and a full-blown IRS audit? That’s far worse.

If you are married, you need to consider your spouse’s W-2 and other income sources in your Section 179 expensing eligibility. The inclusion of your spouse often enhances the amount you can deduct using Section 179 expensing, as we explain in this article.

The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) limited your ability to get immediate value from your net operating loss (NOL). While Congress gave you a break in the CARES Act—the

ugly TCJA NOL rules are back in tax year 2021. We’ll tell you the limits and how you can maneuver other tax positions to gain immediate value for your NOL.

It’s easy to make a mistake on your tax return. The tax law is complicated and always changing. If you did make an error, it’s not the end of the world. The tax law gives you two ways to undo your mistake at little to no cost to you. We’ll go over the two ways and how you can use them to your best advantage.

What happens if the IRS makes a mistake in its publication or instructions? Is this your problem? How would you know if the IRS made a mistake? This article explains a mistake on the gross-income limit in the IRS home-office publication. Make sure this mistake is not costing you money.

If you are suffering or about to suffer an IRS audit, you should know how your tax positions stack up against the IRS examiners’ positions. In most cases, you are discussing the facts, not the law, and you prove your facts with receipts, canceled checks, and logbooks. Once you get into the law, however, you need to know the rules that trump other rules. This article explains how you use the tax law, rulings, and other IRS documents to prove the legal side of your case in an audit. And this article helps you understand what the courts are looking for, should your case advance beyond the IRS audit to the courts.

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.

Do you claim a home-office deduction? Do you have a garage (attached or detached) at your home? If so, you need to spend a few minutes with this article. You will learn when to include and exclude the garage when calculating your home-office space.

If you took the coronavirus-related IRA distribution of up to $100,000 during 2020, here are your options for avoiding taxes on that money.

To get a tax deduction for your yacht, use it for business travel and avoid the entertainment facility rules. If you run afoul of the entertainment facility rules, you have one small hope. To maximize your deductions, you want more than 50 percent business use and knowledge of the luxury water transportation tax deduction limits.

Inside this article, you’ll find the 14 tax reduction strategies for the self-employed that we identified for you last month. But here you find more—links to the articles so that you have the nuts and bolts of implementing the strategies.

If you travel out of town overnight on business, you need knowledge of the tax rules that allow and disallow such travel. This article clarifies the days that tax law deems to be business and the days that tax law deems to be personal.

The Work Opportunity Tax Credit rewards your good deeds. And now, because of new legislation, the rules are in place for longer than usual. If you need to hire workers in your business, this dollar-for-dollar reducer of your taxes is one to know about.

The PayPal loophole is going away seven months from now. You may remember the strategy where you can avoid giving 1099s to contractors and vendors when you use PayPal or a similar service as your payment platform. In the past, PayPal often did not have to provide those contractors and vendors with a 1099. According to lawmakers, this created a situation where those people who use PayPal have an easy ability to cheat (i.e., not report the income on their tax returns).

In 1935, the self-employment tax topped out at $60. In 2021, the first part of the self-employment tax tops out at $21,848, but the 2.9 percent Medicare part continues after that without limits. Good tax planning for the self-employment tax is like an annuity: it gives you monetary returns—year after year—every year you are in business. So, plan now and consider everything from choice of entity to hiring your children.

Download your PDF copy of the 2021 retirement plans desktop reference for one-person businesses.

If you are looking for a wild ride, examine cryptocurrency. Not only can it rise to $55,000 and then drop to $30,000 in a matter of weeks, but it can also trigger significant tax consequences. And now, the IRS wants to know about you and your cryptocurrency activities.

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.

The tax law can jump up and bite you in unexpected places. One example of that is the nanny tax.

The self-employed normally get the short end of the stick when it comes to government aid in times of economic disruption. But the COVID-19 pandemic is different. Congress has provided the self-employed with aid never seen before, including forgivable PPP loans, tax credits for sick leave and family leave, increased Affordable Care Act subsidies, and even unemployment benefits. But the benefits are temporary, so take advantage of them now.

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.

Section 1031 exchanges are a great way to acquire new property without paying tax on the gains from selling old property. But the rules have changed. The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act limits so-called exchanges (they are actually sales and purchases) to real property. Personal property is now boot. New IRS regulations define real property broadly for Section 1031 purposes and allow a certain amount of personal property to be included in an exchange. They also make it clear that the real property owners can use cost segregation and still benefit from Section 1031 exchanges.

The federal Rehabilitation Tax Credit provides a 20 percent tax credit for owners or leaseholders to renovate certified historic buildings. Most states offer similar tax credits, with different percentages, providing additional cost savings. But this is tax law, and as you would expect, there are some tricky rules that you need to follow to qualify for these huge subsidies.

Congress wanted to help restaurants due to the COVID-19 pandemic, so they created a special rule that allows you to deduct 100 percent of most of your restaurant business meals for tax years 2021 and 2022. You can take proactive steps now to ensure all your business meals going forward qualify for this 100 percent deduction. Here’s a hint: if you are deducting per diem amounts for your business travel meals, you’ll lose out.

Here’s good news: Partying with and entertaining your employees remains 100 percent deductible after the many tax changes that have taken place during the past three-plus years. Further, your employee parties are not subject to the new restaurant rules.

Does creation of a single-member limited liability company move rental losses to Form 1040, Schedule C? Answer: no. Changing the type of entity does not move the rental to Schedule C, but changing the attributes of the rental can qualify the rental for Schedule C.

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.

This is likely it—your last chance to obtain first- and second-draw Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) monies. A new law, the PPP Extension Act of 2021, extends the expiration date to the later of May 31 or when the money runs out. Note the phrase “when the money runs out,” and be forewarned that this can happen within weeks. So, don’t procrastinate—not even for one day.

Can your corporation claim the employee retention credit on the W-2 wages it pays to a shareholder-employee who owns more than 50 percent of the corporation? There’s disagreement about this within the tax community. What should you do? Read this article.

When Congress passed the CARES Act, it gave small-business owners like you two choices: get tax-free Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) monies or take the employee retention credit (ERC). Fast-forward to the new law enacted on December, 27, 2020, and you will find that you can now benefit from both programs, retroactive to March 13, 2020, as you see in this article.

Congress created the employee retention credit (ERC) to help your business that continued to pay employees even though it was impacted by COVID-19. Fast-forward to the new American Rescue Plan Act of 2021, and now you can potentially take an ERC of up to $100,000 during the last six months of 2021 if you start a new business during the pandemic. In this article, we’ll explain how this valuable provision works and the net amount it can put in your pocket.

Congress created the COVID-19 employee retention credit to help employers continue to pay employees while affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. The Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2021, and the American Rescue Plan Act expanded access to this tax credit in both tax years 2020 and 2021. In this article, you see how a small-business owner calculates and claims this most beneficial tax credit.

With the passage of the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021, Congress has temporarily abolished the health insurance premium tax credit “subsidy cliff.” For 2021 and 2022, self-employed and small-business owners and other individuals who must purchase individual health insurance may qualify for premium tax credit health insurance subsidies even if their income far exceeds the old limit of 400 percent of the federal poverty level.

In most circumstances, you save federal tax when you’re married by filing a joint return versus two separate returns. But for tax year 2020, due to how Congress wrote some of the temporary COVID-19 tax benefit provisions, you may end up pocketing more money by filing separate returns. We’ll show you why this is the case and how to determine which filing status you should use.

In the newly enacted American Rescue Plan Act of 2021, lawmakers enhanced the child tax credit with additional monies, some of which are refundable beginning in July 2021. The newly enhanced tax credits are available for the 2021 tax year only.

The new American Rescue Plan Act makes major—but temporary, for tax year 2021 only—changes to the federal income tax child and dependent care credit. This is the tax credit you can earn if you spend money taking care of your children and other qualifying dependents.

The American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 provided billions of dollars in new expanded tax credits for individuals like you for tax years 2021 and/or 2022. The three main tax credits Congress increased are the child tax credit, the dependent care credit, and the premium tax credit for health insurance. Learn how you can get thousands more in your pocket for tax year 2021 due to these changes.

The newly enacted American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 liberalizes the earned income tax credit, making it more valuable for some of those who claim it. In this article, we walk you through the credit as it currently exists and explain how it’s more available and enhanced for 2021.

If you have fewer than 20 employees (including none because you are self-employed), the SBA is in the process of trying to help you. Two things are going on. First, you have an exclusive window to obtain your Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) money without competition from the big guys. Second, if you are self-employed, the SBA is creating a mechanism for more PPP money for you.

If personal non-business property such as your home, personal belongings, or personal car is damaged or destroyed in a disaster, you may qualify for a tax deduction for casualty losses. But during 2018-2025, you may deduct only personal casualty losses caused by federal disasters. And your deduction is whittled down by insurance recoveries and particular casualty loss limitations.

The CARES Act made many temporary changes in the tax law. The new Consolidated Appropriations Act adjusted some of these and left others to die on December 31, 2020. With all the changes that took place in 2020, you need to know what’s left, enhanced, and over with, as we explain in this article.

When you operate a business, you have a variety of tax breaks available. The recently enacted Consolidated Appropriations Act extends and expands some of the breaks. We bring them to your attention as a tax-strategy buffet. You will find tax breaks you can use right away and others that can be used perhaps retroactively.

There’s much to know when it comes to business disaster losses. If business property such as an office building or rental property, a business vehicle, or business furniture or equipment is damaged or destroyed, you may qualify for a casualty loss deduction. And unlike personal casualty loss deductions, you don’t need a federally declared disaster for a business deduction. You may even be able to deduct the casualty loss on the prior year’s tax return and get a quick tax refund. But your deduction is limited to the property’s adjusted basis and is reduced by insurance recoveries

Do you operate your business as an S corporation? It’s a popular choice due to the tax savings you benefit from. But if you don’t avoid the pitfalls, you risk losing those valuable tax benefits. Download this guide to maximize your S corporation tax savings and avoid common missteps.

As you likely know, the Section 199A 20 percent QBI deduction is a delightful tax benefit. But it is not without its nuances. For example, if you have multiple business and/or rental properties, you need to consider the aggregation issues—both forced by the law and optionally incurred by you.

With all that’s been going on, it’s easy to forget that it’s Section 199A season again. Yes, we’re talking about that lovely 20 percent deduction. Here’s a planning article that can help partners in partnerships and members in LLCs find a larger tax benefit.

Today, you can form an LLC or a corporation in most states without revealing your identity to any government agency. But this pro-secrecy era is coming to an end because Congress passed the Corporate Transparency Act. Starting in 2022, the names and addresses of many LLCs’ and corporations’ beneficial owners will have to be provided to the U.S. Department of the Treasury. The information won’t be made public, but law enforcement will use it. The law impacts both new and existing LLCs and corporations which will have a new federal filing requirement.

Two things to know about the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) first draw: (1) The first draw is for those who missed getting in on the original PPP, which expired on August 8, 2020. (2) Don’t think of a PPP draw as a loan. It’s not a loan. It’s a cash infusion. You have to repay a loan. You don’t have to repay the PPP funds.

As part of the March 2020 CARES Act, Congress created a COVID-19 employee retention credit to provide financial support to businesses to maintain payroll. But this credit was not available if you took a PPP loan. Now, thanks to the new COVID-19 relief law enacted December 27, 2020, a business with a PPP loan can retroactively claim employee retention tax credits.

The CARES Act, as modified by the new December 27 law, requires the SBA to make anywhere from six to 14 months’ worth of payments for non-disaster loans, including 7(a) loans, 504 loans, and microloans. If the SBA made or is making these payments on your loans, do you have to pay tax on these payments?

Lawmakers passed significant COVID-19 relief legislation in December 2020. As part of this relief package, there are many tax changes that impact tax years 2020 and 2021. The changes put cash in your pocket. You will want to learn about them so you can use them to your advantage.

The Taxpayer Certainty and Disaster Tax Relief Act of 2020 deals with the annual tax extenders. Congress made some of them permanent, while others got short- or long-term extensions. We’ll go through each and tell you how it fared in the legislation.

The reasonable cause defense offers an opportunity to waive tax penalties, but only if you supply sufficient explanations and documentation. To assert a successful reasonable cause defense, you must demonstrate that you used ordinary business care and prudence regarding your tax obligations and that despite your best efforts, you were unable to comply with the law.

In this part 3 of this three-part series, learn how to handle key non-tax issues when a loved one passes away. There is much to know and to consider, from a simple matter such as how many “original” death certificates you should obtain to how you deal with the revocable trust that’s now irrevocable because of the death.

A small business retirement plan can be a great way to defer income taxes and build net worth. But knowing the right plan for your small business and which plan will allow you to save the most requires some understanding of the tax laws. Choosing the wrong plan can cost you more than just taxes—it can cost you an opportunity to retire early.

Do you own your own business? Do you have close relatives? If you responded yes to both, you have a golden opportunity to slash your business taxes. With the help of family members, you can utilize several tax-saving strategies to reap some nice financial benefits for both you and your relatives.

The new COVID-19 stimulus adds new money to the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) for those who missed out on the first round. If you missed out, don’t do that again. The PPP money is a tax-free gift with no downside and all upside.

A new law makes the already terrific Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) better for everyone. It clarifies that the PPP money is tax-free and that expenses paid with the money are deductible. This applies retroactively to the inception of the CARES Act on March 27, 2020, so it benefits past PPP loans, current PPP loans that are outstanding, and new loans.

If you have or had a Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loan, you might qualify for a new, second round of PPP monies. To get a second-draw PPP infusion of money, you have to have 300 or fewer employees; suffered a 25 percent or greater loss in revenue during at least one quarter of 2020 when compared to 2019; and already used or plan to use your original PPP monies.

“Show me the proof!” Have you ever wanted proof that you can have an office in your home when you also have an office downtown? This article gives you the law, legislative history, and IRS authorization for the office-in-the-home deduction.

Download this two-page guide so that you have a handy desktop reference with the 2021 corporate and individual tax rates, estate tax rates, self-employed tax rates, Social Security and Medicare tax rates, capital gain rates, standard mileage rates, standard deductions, luxury auto depreciation limits, and select retirement and IRA limits.

ABLE accounts allow disabled individuals and their family members to save a substantial amount of money without losing government benefits. The money grows tax-free and can be withdrawn tax-free to use for a wide variety of expenses. But only people who became disabled or blind before age 26 qualify for these tax-advantaged accounts.

If you become an executor of your loved one’s estate, you may have some important tax decisions to make, as we describe in this article. For example, on the decedent’s final Form 1040, should you elect to deduct medical expenses that are unpaid at the date of death? Should you file Form 706 when not required by law to do so?

The massive new stimulus law contains eight new tax breaks that help the average non-business taxpayer. These include something for everyone, both rich and poor. Wealthy taxpayers can contribute more to charity and still get a deduction; average people get an extension of the universal charitable deduction; and low-income taxpayers can get a larger earned income tax credit. Popular programs such as the lifetime learning credit are expanded to help more people. The bill also extends some favorable tax rules, such as the 7.5 percent adjusted gross income floor for the medical deduction.

Lawmakers and the IRS disagree on whether you are permitted to deduct the expenses you pay with your Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loans. The problem started with poor drafting of the original forgiveness wording by the lawmakers. The IRS says it has to follow that bad drafting and disallow deductions for expenses paid with PPP loans. There’s much to this story, as you will learn in this article.

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.

Would you like to have at your fingertips IRS key contact information and helpful links for information about amended returns, estate and gift taxes, tax transcripts, power of attorney, stimulus checks, tax help for businesses, and many other topics? If so, simply download the PDF linked in this article.

Over 11 million taxpayers owe back taxes to the IRS. Following a brief suspension of most collection efforts, the IRS is again starting to go after delinquent accounts. But the IRS has promulgated a Taxpayer Relief Initiative that gives taxpayers more time to pay what they owe, obtain and modify installment agreements, and avoid tax liens.

Download your PDF copy of the 2020 retirement plans desktop reference for one-person businesses.

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 a loved one passes away and you serve as the executor or inherit assets, you need to consider your duties and/or tax planning. This is Part 1 in a three-part series where we consider your duties should you be the executor, along with planning to avoid the exorbitant tax rates that could apply to a living trust, special filing rules for the widow or widower, required minimum distributions, and more.

College is expensive. Data for the 2019-2020 academic year indicates that the average cost of tuition, fees, room, and board was $30,500. Tax law has provisions to help you cover the costs, including Coverdell, Section 529 savings, and Section 529 tuition plans. There’s more, of course, as you will learn in this article.

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.

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 seven strategies will increase your tax deductions or reduce your taxable income so that Uncle Sam gets less of your 2020 cash.

The CARES Act requires the SBA to make six months’ worth of payments for non-disaster SBA loans, including 7(a) loans, 504 loans, and microloans. If you have such a loan, do you have to pay tax on these payments? The IRS has said yes in the past, but it could change its mind this time.

If you are thinking of getting married or divorced, you need to consider December 31, 2020, in your tax planning. Here’s another planning question: Do you give money to family or friends (other than your children who are subject to the kiddie tax)? If so, you need to consider the zero-taxes planning strategy. And now, consider your children who are under age 18. Have you paid them for work they’ve done for your business? Have you paid them the right way? You’ll find the answers here.

Here’s an easy question: Do you need more 2020 tax deductions? If yes, continue on. Next easy question: Do you need a replacement business vehicle? If yes, you can simultaneously solve or mitigate both the first problem (needing more deductions) and the second problem (needing a replacement vehicle), but you need to get your vehicle in service on or before December 31, 2020. This article helps you find the right vehicle for the deduction you desire.

Yes, December 31 is just around the corner. That’s your last day to find tax deductions available from your existing business and personal (yes, personal) vehicles that you can use to cut your 2020 taxes. In this article, you will learn how to find and release tax deductions that the tax code trapped inside your existing business cars, SUVs, trucks, and vans. And you will learn how the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act makes it possible for you to find a big deduction from your existing personal vehicle.

Remember to consider your Section 199A deduction in your 2020 year-end tax planning. If you don’t, you could end up with a big fat $0 for your deduction amount. We’ll review three year-end moves that (a) reduce your income taxes and (b) boost your Section 199A deduction at the same time.

Are you eligible for COVID-19 tax credits for yourself and/or your employees? Have you reimbursed your employees (including your employee spouse) as stipulated in your health reimbursement arrangements? And if you operate as an S corporation, do you have your health insurance set up correctly for your best tax deduction? In this article, we help with these matters and more.

When you take advantage of the tax code’s offset game, your stock market portfolio can represent a little gold mine of opportunities to reduce your 2020 income taxes. The tax code contains the basic rules for this game, and once you know the rules, you can apply the correct strategies. In addition to saving taxes with the game of offset, you can also avoid paying taxes on stock appreciation by gifting stock to charity, your parents, and your children who are not subject to the kiddie tax.

Does your business have a retirement plan for you and your employees, if any? It should. You have more new reasons in 2020 to get your retirement plan in place and perhaps make changes in existing plans.

Business owners who have established 105-HRAs, Qualified Small Employer Health Reimbursement Arrangements (QSEHRAs), and Individual Coverage Health Reimbursement Accounts (ICHRAs) to reimburse their employees for medical expenses need to pay an annual fee to help support the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI).

An unprecedented nationwide moratorium on evictions for non-payment of rent is in place through the end of 2020 (and for even longer in some states). But landlords may still be able to evict some problem tenants, and even sue for overdue rent. Other options include entering into payment plans with struggling tenants, seeking forbearance from lenders, and obtaining low-interest SBA loans. That’s the practical problem—and then you have the tax issues. Rental losses may or may not be deductible against non-rental income, subject to complex passive loss rules, as we explain here.

Following a presidential executive order, the IRS says employers can stop withholding and paying employee Social Security taxes for the rest of 2020. But employers who do so face potential risks. Do employers have to accept the offer?

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.

Have you set your S corporation salary so you can save on payroll taxes? If so, are you using one of the three approaches to establishing that salary that are contained in the “Reasonable Compensation Job Aid for IRS Valuation Professionals”? You should be.

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.

The Setting Every Community Up for Retirement Enhancement Act (SECURE Act) passed last December makes a big change in the stretch IRA—an estate planning device favored by well-off IRA holders. To cope with the downside of this new law, you need to do some planning, as we explain.

Self-employed? Your Payroll Protection Program (PPP) payroll is your 2019 Schedule C net profit. Partnership? Your PPP payroll is the adjusted self-employment income of the partners. S or C corporation owner, your W-2 is your income. Why know this? So you can apply for your PPP cash infusion as we explain in this article.

When it comes to the Payroll Protection Program monies, there are some flies in the ointment when it comes to forgiveness. The first fly is that when the loan is forgiven, the business expenses paid with the forgiven money are not deductible. The second fly is that the unforgiven expense rule discriminates against S and C corporations. So it’s time for you to kill flies, as you learn in this article.

With the COVID-19 experience, you and your partners may be doing a lot of work from home or even working from home primarily. Is the home-office deduction in the mix? If so, because you are a partner, your options for getting a tax benefit for your home-office deductions are tricky. But no worries, we’ll tell you about the two options to use and two options to avoid.

Do you work from home? Whether or not you have a deductible office in the home, the assets such as desks and chairs that you use for business are deductible—and are often overlooked as business deductions. For example, what happens when you convert a personal asset to a business asset? Does the personal taint last forever? You will like the answers you find in this article.

Tax law definitions do not apply to much of the Payroll Protection Program, making it new ground for owners of S corporations. Here are answers to four questions of concern to many S corporation owners.

When you choose the LLC as an operating entity, you encounter special rules. Let’s start with the fact that the LLC does not exist as a taxable entity but instead falls into one of the traditional categories such as a proprietorship, a partnership, an S corporation, or a C corporation depending on what you elect or don’t elect.

If you report your business income and expenses on Schedule C of your Form 1040, your PPP loan forgiveness is straightforward, as you see in the five answers in this article.

Learn how renting out your home while you take a two-month vacation interacts with your ability to use the $500,000 home-sale exclusion ($250,000 if single). Remember, you have to use the home as a home for two of the five years before sale to qualify for the home-sale exclusion.

In this article, we offer insights into (1) how good faith at the time of the PPP application works; (2) the differences in the PPP, EIDL advance, and EIDL; (3) the possibility of automatic loan forgiveness without applying for it; and (4) the four categories of owner-employees.

The expression “I’m from the government, and I’m here to help you” is often counted as one of the three great lies. Toss that thinking out the window when you consider the PPP loan forgiveness rules that apply to the self-employed with no employees. For sure, this process is a government help to Schedule C taxpayers who took the time to obtain their PPP cash infusions.

The COVID-19 pandemic may create tax benefit opportunities for you and your family members. For example, you could hire your under-age-18 children, pay them, say, $10,000 each, and they could pay zero federal income taxes. And you or your corporation, the employer, would deduct the $10,000 you paid to each of the children. The child wins. You win. There’s more, as you will see in this article.

New IRS guidance expands the possibilities for what is an adverse COVID-19 impact on you for purposes of taking money out of your retirement accounts and repaying it without penalties. We’ll explain whether you qualify, what your repayment options are, and how you can structure it for the best tax outcome.

COVID-19 has changed our nation’s economics. One big hit has been to the federal deficit. What does this mean to the future of taxes? Will the estate and gift taxes increase? If so, what can you do today? You will find a strong idea in this article.

Most of the personal interest you pay in your financial life is non-deductible. One often overlooked exception is interest you pay to buy investment property, such as stocks. We’ll tell you what to look for, when you can deduct this interest, and how to maximize the deductions.

In the CARES Act, Congress decided to waive all 2020 required minimum distributions (RMDs). What if you already took out your annual RMD before Congress changed the law? The IRS just granted you brand-new mercy to fix the issue, but you need to take action before August 31, 2020.

he IRS delayed most tax payments this year until July 15, 2020. Since many payments are now due on one date, you may face writing a daunting check. We’ll tell you what you need to pay, how to pay it, and how much to pay—and you might be paying too much if you don’t read this article.

The CARES Act provided tax payment relief for employers and self-employed taxpayers. You can defer payment of a portion of your self-employment tax—but do you have to, or can you pay if you have the cash? We’ll give you the answer plus some things to consider when making your decision.

When you are self-employed with no employees, the PPP program is a COVID-19 gift. If you now have your PPP funds, you need to review this article for insights on how to handle the money. After all, the idea is to have the loan forgiven.

The PPP free-cash program to assist businesses during the COVID-19 pandemic is gaining traction and clarity. If you operate your business as a partnership, you have several recent developments that make the free-cash program more to your benefit, as we explain in this article.

If you are going to start a new business, you need to know the difference between the expenses you incur before you start the business and the expenses you incur once you have the business started. With proper planning, you can deduct all the expenses, but improper planning can cost you big money.

The properly used business vacation home or condo does not run up against the oppressive vacation-home, passive-loss, or entertainment-facility rules. That’s a huge plus. And with the COVID-19 pandemic, use of the vacation home for business lodging makes good sense.

The partnership choice of entity allows special allocations of income and expenses to individual partners, which can give the partnership a leg up as your possible choice of business entity. In this article, we explore the allocation rules and give you the ins and outs.

The CARES Act changed several retirement account–related rules. The changes opened up some time-limited windows for tax year 2020 strategies that can save you tax dollars. In this article, we discuss (a) how you might be able to undo an RMD you already took and (b) how to get a special tax benefit for a Roth IRA conversion.

If you live in a foreign country, you may have had to come back to the U.S. due to COVID-19. If you are a non-resident alien, you might not have been able to leave the U.S. due to COVID-19. In either situation, you could have big tax costs—but the IRS has provided you possible relief in either situation.

The IRS issued guidance that business expenses used to create PPP loan forgiveness are non-deductible. If you received an EIDL emergency advance, you might wonder if that advance is taxable to you or reduces your deductible business expenses. The IRS hasn’t given specific guidance, but we’ll give you our opinion on how this money will be treated.

Don’t overlook the COVID-19 Payroll Protection Program (PPP) if you are self-employed with no employees. For this program, you (as a self-employed taxpayer) count as an employee, and with only yourself, you qualify for the COVID-19 cash.

Congress passed many tax benefits for small-business owners due to the COVID-19 pandemic. But if you are an S corporation owner, you likely know that the tax law sometimes treats you, as a more-than-2-percent shareholder, differently from other employees. In this article, we explain how the most common COVID-19 tax provisions impact the S corporation owner specifically.

Millions of small-business owners like you are getting PPP loans and looking forward to non-taxable loan forgiveness. But how does this impact your tax deductions for the expense payments you use to qualify for that forgiveness? The IRS just gave us its opinion, as you will find in this article.

The COVID-19 pandemic has a possible silver lining for converting some or all of your traditional taxable IRA into a Roth IRA. For example, if your IRA declined in value, using the Roth for the recovery of value avoids future taxation. That’s just one example from this article.

The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act took away your ability to get an immediate cash benefit from your net operating loss (NOL). Now, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Congress temporarily brought back the favorable tax treatment for 2018, 2019, and 2020 NOLs. We’ll tell you how you can cash in on this change right now.

Congress made an error in the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act that limited your ability to fully expense your qualified improvement property. The CARES Act fixed the issue retroactively to tax year 2018. If you have such property in your prior filed 2018 or 2019 tax returns, you likely have no choice but to correct those returns. But the bright side is that the corrected law gives you options that enable you to pick the best tax result.

The IRS postponed to July 15, 2020, most of the tax-related actions you need to take care of during the COVID-19 pandemic. This relief affects tax return filing deadlines, tax payment deadlines, and deadlines for hundreds of time-sensitive acts. We’ll let you know what you need to do and when you have to meet your federal tax obligations.

The federal government has given you many ways to find relief from the effect of COVID-19 on your business. You have to like the rescue. But it does require you to make choices as to which assistance to accept, because the selection of one type may preclude benefiting from a second type.

COVID-19 has hit American businesses hard, to say the least. You may be eligible for up to $10 million to help pay workers and keep your doors open under a brand-new SBA program. And with this program, you may qualify to obtain some loan relief.

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the IRS postponed certain federal tax returns and payments due on April 15, 2020. The scope of the original relief was narrow, but IRS Notice 2020-23 significantly expanded the postponement. So you need to ask yourself: “Do I qualify?” And if you do, do you still want to file and pay now, or wait?

When you operate a husband-wife partnership, you likely are paying far more than you need to pay in self-employment taxes. This article gives you three strategies you can use to save some serious money on the payment of self-employment taxes.

COVID-19 has created many tax breaks for you and your business to mitigate the financial difficulties caused by the coronavirus. In this article, we explain how you may be able to take money from your IRA and other retirement accounts, avoid early withdrawal penalties, and have generous options on repayment (or not). We also explain when you don’t have to take the required minimum distribution from your IRA.

Congress just passed the CARES Act in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. In it, there are a lot of important tax benefits for you and your business. We’ll tell you about a collection of important ones you need to know.

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.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the last thing you need is the IRS doing bad things, like auditing you or levying your bank account or wages. But don’t worry—the IRS is pausing most of its collection and audit enforcement actions. When you read the article, we’ll tell you what it is stopping and for how long.

If you are in business for yourself—say, as a corporation or self-employed—payroll taxes and self-employment taxes are likely two of your biggest tax burdens. Here’s some possible good news: Congress decided to give you significant relief from these taxes due to the COVID-19 pandemic. We’ll tell you what relief options are available and whether or not you qualify.

In these topsy-turvy times, don’t overlook planning for your free 20 percent tax deduction under Section 199A. Here, you find the rules you need to know to find your QBI, Section 199A wages, and Section 199A property along with an easy-to-use calculator that you can use to figure into your 2020 Section 199A deduction possibilities.

California’s new AB 5 law turns many 1099 independent contractors into W-2 employees under California law. Does this new AB 5 law apply to your business? What if you are out of state? What are states other than California doing? Can you keep your workers as independent contractors? In this article, we answer these questions.

Most favorable tax elections require you to elect the beneficial treatment. But 100 percent bonus depreciation works in reverse. Here, you have to elect out of 100 percent bonus depreciation in the manner the IRS specifies; otherwise, you claimed it, whether or not it shows on your tax return. In this article, we give you not only the strategies for dealing with bonus depreciation but also the formal election you must make to elect out.

When you employ your children to work in your business, make sure that you are ready to answer questions from both the IRS and the Department of Labor. The answer to the question in this article may come as a surprise as to what triggered the problem.

Download this two-page guide so that you have a handy desktop reference with the 2020 corporate and individual tax rates, estate tax rates, self-employed tax rates, Social Security and Medicare tax rates, capital gain rates, standard mileage rates, standard deductions, luxury auto depreciation limits, and select retirement and IRA limits.

If you and your spouse work together in a business that you do not operate as a corporation, you can run into the partnership rules—and they are not usually friendly to a spouse partnership. In Part 1 of this article, you will see how the partnership rules work. You will also see how spouses can elect joint venture tax return treatment.

As you likely know, the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act made a big change in how C corporations are taxed—one flat, 21 percent rate. The new, lower rate makes the C corporation far more appealing than in prior years. But you also need to look at the dark side of this possible opportunity.

When you receive restricted stock awards, you need to decide whether you want to make a Section 83(b) tax election. In this article, we explain the nuances to the Section 83(b) election.

The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act’s $10,000 cap on your state and local tax deductions probably took cash out of your wallet—especially if you have a profitable S corporation. A C corporation can make your state income taxes on your net business income 100 percent deductible. When should you make the move to a C corporation?

The SECURE Act changed many tax law provisions related to retirement and savings. We wrote about the new law last month and have since received many questions. In this article, we give you the answers to eight questions.

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.

With incentive stock options (ISOs), you could be on your way to a very nice payout. But you must consider both the regular federal income tax results and the alternative minimum tax results. In addition, you must pay attention to special rules that apply to so-called disqualifying dispositions of shares acquired by exercising ISOs. This sounds complicated, and it is a little, but we help you find clarity in this article.

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.

You or your spouse may have the opportunity to obtain non-qualified stock options. Or you may have your corporation issue non-qualified stock options to its employees. In all cases, you will want to know both how these options work and what happened to Sheedy.

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?

Our lawmakers did it again. They made more last-minute tax law changes, which the president signed into law on December 20, 2019. One such new law is called the SECURE Act. This new law made a lot of changes to how you save for retirement and spend money in retirement. Don’t worry, though. We’ll give you the most important provisions you need to know, and how they impact you regardless of age.

Home-office deductions aren’t just for Schedule C businesses. You can have a rental property home office and deduct those expenses on a Schedule E. Besides the usual tax benefits of a home-office deduction, you will gain time that can qualify you as having tax code–defined real estate professional status, and thus unlock 100 percent of your current-year rental losses for immediate deduction against all income.

Every year, we wonder whether Congress will renew various expiring tax breaks, many of which are known as “extenders.” Many extenders died on December 31, 2017, and Congress let them remain dead for all of 2018. Now Congress has brought them back from the dead—and retroactively to January 1, 2018, meaning an amended return may be in your future.

Download your PDF copy of the retirement plans desktop reference for one-person businesses.

In December 2017, Congress enacted the TCJA and changed how your children calculate their tax on their investment-type income. The TCJA changes led to much higher tax bills for many children. On December 19, 2019, Congress passed a bill that the president signed into law on December 20, 2019 (Pub. L. 116-94). The new law repeals the kiddie tax changes from the TCJA and takes you back to the old kiddie tax rules, even retroactively if you so desire.

When looking at your taxable entity choices, consider the partnership, especially the multi-member LLC taxed as a partnership. Often the LLC taxed as a partnership gives you the same liability protection as a corporation as it produces superior tax results. Your situation will determine the best entity, but here in this article you find what you need to help with your decision.

The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act altered the rules of the road in divorce planning. The significant change is that alimony is no longer tax-deductible; therefore, you want to avoid paying alimony. You may be able to sidestep alimony by transferring assets to your ex—and also have your ex carry the tax burden associated with those assets.

If you operate as a sole proprietor or are the sole owner of an S or C corporation, the solo 401(k) can create the ideal retirement plan if you don’t have employees who work more than 1,000 hours a year for your business. This article provides you with great insights into the solo 401(k).

Talk to a business owner who has been in business for a while, and he or she will tell you to make sure that you put a retirement plan in place. When you are starting out and have modest income, the SIMPLE-IRA can be the perfect plan, as explained in this article.

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 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) likely requires that you rethink the tax strategies you were using on your vacant land investments. And the TCJA changes may be such that you have to rethink vacant land as an investment, at least for the years impacted by the TCJA.

As with all financial transactions, divorce comes with tax consequences. And those consequences have changed for tax years 2018 and later thanks to the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA). If you are thinking of divorce or are currently in the process, make sure to read this article.

Many workers across the U.S. are going to suffer improper reclassifications because of the California Supreme Court’s decision in Dynamex and the resulting new California law. As you will see in this article, the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) compounds the tax problems for the workers who are reclassified.

You didn’t issue Form 1099s to your contractors. Now, the IRS is auditing your tax return, and the auditor claims you lose your deductions because you didn’t issue the Form 1099s. Is this correct?

If you plan to buy a building that you are going to rent to your business, you need to know the tax rules to obtain the best benefits. Here, you will learn about an income tax election that you can make on your IRS Form 1040 to avoid the passive loss rules that deny current-year rental losses.

The tax code has a carve-out that creates statutory employees out of certain independent contractors. These contractors receive a W-2 with the “statutory employee” box checked, which means that the contractor reports the W-2 income and associated business expenses (including a Section 105 plan) on his or her Schedule C.

If you are self-employed, you have much to think about as you enter your senior years, and that includes retirement savings, Medicare, and grandchildren, as explained in this article.

When your taxable income is in the phaseout range, your Section 199A deduction calculation is more complicated. With an out-of-favor specified service trade or business, you add more complications. Now, let’s add to the equation a business that shows a business loss. In this article, you will see how to do the calculations when you have all three issues.

In January, an IRS Notice gave you a Section 199A safe-harbor option for your rental properties, possibly making it easier for you to qualify for this new tax deduction. Now, the IRS has made a number of changes to its original notice and finalized the safe harbor in a Revenue Procedure. We’ll tell you all you need to know about the final version. Then you can decide if you want to use the safe harbor or find other ways to qualify your rentals for the Section 199A deduction.

The new individual coverage HRA (ICHRA) has much to offer a small business (businesses with fewer than 50 employees). Last month we introduced the ICHRA. In this article, we expand on the abilities of the ICHRA to get a smile from the small-business owner who wants to offer health benefits to his or her employees.

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 five strategies will increase your tax deductions or reduce your taxable income so that Uncle Sam gets less of your 2019 cash.

Remember to consider your Section 199A deduction in your year-end tax planning. If you don’t, you could end up with a big fat $0 for your deduction amount. We’ll review three year-end moves that (a) reduce your income taxes and (b) boost your Section 199A deduction at the same time.

Yes, December 31 is just around the corner. That’s your last day to find tax deductions available from your existing business and personal (yes, personal) vehicles that you can use to cut your 2019 taxes. In this article, you will learn how to find and release tax deductions that the tax code trapped inside your existing business cars, SUVs, trucks, and vans. And you will learn how the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act makes it possible for you to find a big deduction from your existing personal vehicle.

Here’s an easy question: Do you need more 2019 tax deductions? If yes, continue on. Next easy question: Do you need a replacement business vehicle? If yes, you can simultaneously solve or mitigate both the first problem (needing more deductions) and the second problem (needing a replacement vehicle), but you need to get your vehicle in service on or before December 31, 2019. This article helps you find the right vehicle for the deduction you desire.

When you take advantage of the tax code’s offset game, your stock market portfolio can represent a little gold mine of opportunities to reduce your 2019 income taxes. The tax code contains the basic rules for this game, and once you know the rules, you can apply the correct strategies. In addition to saving taxes with the game of offset, you can also avoid paying taxes on stock appreciation by gifting stock to charity, your parents, and your children who are not subject to the kiddie tax.

If you are thinking of getting married or divorced, you need to consider December 31, 2019, in your tax planning. Here’s another planning question: Do you give money to family or friends (other than your children who are subject to the kiddie tax)? If so, you need to consider the zero-taxes planning strategy. And now, consider your children who are under age 18. Have you paid them for work they’ve done for your business? Have you paid them the right way? You’ll find the answers here.

When you get busy with your business, it’s easy to forget about your retirement accounts and medical coverages and plans. But year-end is approaching, and now’s the time to take action. This article gives you six action steps for 2019 that can help you reduce your taxes and pocket extra money.

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.

The simple maneuver of converting your personal residence to a rental property brings with it myriad tax rules, mostly good when you know how they work. For example, your rental net income can create the Section 199A deduction if the rental rises to the level of a trade or business (most do).

The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act brought sweeping changes to the tax laws―some good and some bad. But the one change that can potentially provide you the biggest tax benefit is the Section 199A deduction.

Both you and your spouse have your own businesses. Your spouse’s business provides paid services to your business. Could this arrangement cause you problems when claiming a Section 199A deduction?

This taxpayer’s checking account shows a negative cash balance. He writes checks on December 31 when he has a negative balance. Can he deduct the expenses on his tax return?

Congress changed the IRS procedures for auditing partnerships, and they apply beginning with your 2018 partnership tax return. Under the new rules, an audit can lead to a partnership-level tax at a 37 percent rate. We’ll explain the new rules and how your partnership can potentially avoid paying this new audit tax.

Assisted living and nursing home expenses can quickly deplete your income and savings. One way to minimize their financial hit is being able to deduct them as medical expenses on your tax return. We’ll explain when you can do this.

You booked a short personal trip. Now you find that an important vendor is going to the same location where you are taking your personal trip. Does dinner with the vendor convert this trip from personal to a tax-deductible business trip?

When planning your Section 199A tax deduction, avoid difficult calculations and save time by using the new 2019 Section 199A Deduction Calculator. Inside this article, you find the rules you need to know to find your QBI, Section 199A wages, and Section 199A property that can figure into your Section 199A deduction possibilities.

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.

You can use a Section 127 education plan to obtain tax benefits for yourself (or your corporation) while you help your employee-grandchild through college or other training.

Many people just like you are self-employed and living and working abroad. Does your business income still qualify for the Section 199A deduction? This article tells you the answer to that question and describes other big-dollar tax breaks you might be entitled to receive.

You have probably read that the home-office deduction 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 less likely to ever appear in an audit.

You’re eligible for a generous 30 percent residential tax credit when you install solar equipment on a residence and have it in use before midnight on December 31, 2019. The IRS instructions for claiming the credit are not as clear as you would like. But nicely, the tax code reveals the answer.

Once you turn age 70 1/2, the tax code mandates that you withdraw a tax code–defined required minimum distribution (RMD) from your traditional IRA. But by using the RMD or other IRA distribution with a qualified charitable distribution (QCD), you can eliminate the RMD tax bite, possibly reduce your Medicare premiums and income taxes on your Social Security benefits, and more.

There’s no excuse for it, but how to treat the payroll taxes (Social Security, Medicare, and federal unemployment taxes (FUTA) when the S corporation pays for or reimburses health insurance for the more-than-2-percent shareholder-employee sits in muddy waters—but perhaps only until you read this article.

If you have been looking for some good news on tax-deductible business meals, you will find it in this article. And along with the good news, you will find clarity as to what post-Tax Cuts and Jobs Act rules currently apply to your tax-deductible business meals.

Section 1202 allows you to sell a qualified small business corporation on a tax-free basis. Now, add to this no-tax-on-sale benefit from the 21 percent corporate tax rate from the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, and you have a significant tax planning opportunity.

When you have both personal and rental use of a dwelling, you trigger some tricky tax code rules you need to know. With both personal and rental use, you create the possibility of tax-free rent, rental property deductions, and additional personal residence deductions.

Surprise! You have an agreement in place that says your retirement account goes to person 1. But you have a beneficiary designation that says the account goes to person 2. Read this article to see which wins and why the winner is likely a big surprise.

The IRS publication on rental properties contains an error. It states that you may not deduct mortgage insurance on your rental property. That’s wrong, as we explain in this article.

Inside this 22-page medical deduction guide, you will find business and personal tax deductions that you would likely overlook. For example, is your dog or cat a tax-deductible emotional support animal? How would you deduct special needs education as a business expense? Can a health savings account turbocharge your retirement plan?

Traditional IRAs and Roth IRAs both offer tax advantages when saving for retirement. But is one universally better than the other? If not, how can you decide which is right for you?

What rules apply for purposes of the new 20 percent deduction under Section 199A when you rent an office or other building to your personally owned C corporation?

Why is it wrong for the sole proprietor to pay himself or herself a W-2 wage? Also, why is it wrong for a partner to be paid by the partnership as a W-2 employee?

If you want to rent one, two, or 20 bedrooms in your home, you need to know five sections of the tax law to obtain your rightful tax benefits. This is an area where tax knowledge is power. Without the knowledge, you could create a very unsatisfactory tax result.

You find much beauty and little beast in using a single-member LLC for your real estate ownership. Of course, the big beauty is corporate-style liability protection without tax complexity, as you see in this article.

Have you purchased vehicles for use in your business? Did you claim Section 179 deductions on them? What happens to your Section 179 deductions if you retire or become disabled before the end of the vehicle’s useful life? What if you die? This article tells you what you need to know.

An auto dealer sent its customer a bogus 1099 because the customer refused to return to the dealership and redo the “no interest” loan to an interest-bearing loan. The dealer made a mistake originally and then wanted the customer to help fix the problem—at the customer’s expense. The customer said no. Later, when the bogus 1099 showing interest income from the no-interest loan showed up in this customer’s mailbox, the customer took this dealership problem to the IRS.

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.

If you own a condominium, cottage, cabin, lake or beach home, ski lodge, or similar property that you rent for an “average” rental period of seven days or less for the year, you have a property with unique tax attributes. For example, it’s not a rental property under the tax law, but it does produce either taxable income or a tax-deductible loss.

It’s common to consider making your S corporation (versus yourself) a partner in your partnership: it saves you self-employment taxes. Does this affect your Section 199A deduction? We’ll explain how it does, what that means, and strategies for you to make things better.

You don’t often get the opportunity to even consider making a tax-saving double play. But your personal residence combined with a desire for a rental property can provide just such an opportunity, as you learn in this article.

In this IRS examination, the examiner mistakenly applied the first-and-last-stop business commuting rule. We explain what the IRS got wrong and what documents can be used to overturn the IRS’s decision.

Is your last payment of payroll taxes in the hands of the IRS or in the hands of an embezzler? How would you know? There’s one easy way to know: simply use the IRS’s online service to check. But that’s a bit of trouble, so why bother? Because if the money has been stolen, you (1) are out the original money and (2) now have to pay a duplicate amount to the IRS. If you have to pay twice, you are going to be furious. Don’t let this happen.

If you own more than 2 percent of an S corporation, you have to follow special rules to deduct your health insurance premiums. The health insurance rules can also apply to family members who work in the business and don’t own a single share of stock. Don’t let the zero stock be a surprise and cost your family money.

You’ll find much to love about the new Section 199A tax deduction when you qualify for it. One area where you can find mass confusion is with rental properties. To avoid much of this rental property muddle, download the special report you find in this article.

The Tax Court gave you a brand-new penalty relief strategy back in December 2017. Since then, both the Tax Court and the IRS have told us more about how they view tax code Section 6751(b). In this article, we update you on the most recent tax cases relating to your use of Section 6751(b)—and one of them is a big help to you in your battle against IRS penalties.

On April 11, likely after you filed your tax return, the IRS updated its Section 199A frequently asked questions (FAQs) by increasing the number of questions and answers from 12 to 33. We noted three of the FAQs that will cause problems for many taxpayers. In fact, there will be taxpayers who will need to file amended tax returns because of the FAQs.

Applying the Section 199A deduction to your rental activity isn’t easy. If you’ve got multiple rental activities, it’s more complex with additional complications. Don’t worry, though—we’ll go step by step through the considerations so that you know you’ve got all your bases covered.

In this article, you see three easy ways to find the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) articles that we have written: (1) use the resource guide to find the articles by topic with short summaries of the prior and new laws; (2) use the Browse by Topic function; or (3) use the search engine.

What does it take to deduct the costs of sponsoring a sports team? What if you play on the team? Could you pay for the team travel expenses? This article answers the sports team sponsorship tax deduction questions for you.

Tax reform gave you hundreds of new tax law provisions and, in some cases, only basic guidance. What if you see a provision where you can benefit, but you are not certain you fit the profile for the deduction? You don’t want to claim the deduction, lose it to the IRS, and then pay big penalties. As we explain in this article, you have two options for handling the situation.

Good news, bad news! Bad news: as in prior years, buying the vehicle you lease destroys any opportunity to claim Section 179 expensing. Good news: the TCJA added two new provisions that now allow you to claim bonus depreciation on the purchase of a vehicle that you lease.

In this precedent-setting case, the Tax Court had to decide for the first time whether a tax preparer’s fraud extends the statute of limitations for the IRS audit of the client’s return even when there is no charge of fraud against the client. Because this court ruled against the taxpaying client, according to precedent, a tax preparer’s fraud now extends a client’s allowable audit period from three years to forever.

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.

The Roth IRA is an excellent way to grow your retirement savings, but the ability to make contributions to a Roth is phased out beyond certain income limits. A backdoor Roth allows you to make an end run around the limits.

Your 199A deduction requires W-2 wages and/or property when your taxable income is greater than $415,000 married, filing jointly, or $207,500, filing as single or head of household. When you are above these amounts and want to calculate your 20 percent deduction, make sure to enter separate businesses separately in the Section 199A calculator if you do not formally elect aggregation of your Section 199A businesses.

How does the tax law treat the classic or antique car when you use it for business? Can you deduct it just as you would any car you use in business? Learn how some tax law changes enabled the classic or antique car as a business asset and why that can work to your advantage.

The IRS safe harbor that you find in Notice 2019-7 may well represent a red herring for you because your rental properties likely already qualify as a business for the Section 199A deduction. If so, you can avoid the complexities of the safe harbor.

If you have no taxable income, should you claim the office-in-the-home tax deduction? Answer: yes. Even with no taxable income, you have two for-sure tax benefits from the home office, and you likely have a third benefit, as we explain.

Do you have an inside buildup of cash value in your life insurance policy? Are you taking loans from the policy or letting the policy ride with premiums being paid from the cash value? If yes, make sure you know the tax consequences of your actions.

Tax reform’s Section 199A deduction often confuses small-business owners and tax professionals alike. It’s quite possible you’ll get a Schedule K-1 from a business that omits the information you need to calculate your deduction. What do you do?

Tax reform may have you thinking of changing your S corporation to a C corporation, partnership, or sole proprietorship. To do this, you’ll have to terminate your S corporation election and possibly make other tax elections. We’ll explain how you do this and the tax consequences of doing so.

Congress wanted qualified improvement property to have tax-favored status under tax reform. But Congress made an error in writing the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act and made improvement property treatment worse than before. Did Congress fix its goof?

Tax law limits depreciation deductions on what it considers luxury vehicles. The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act created 100 percent bonus depreciation, and that means you can totally deduct the cost of qualifying assets. One major exception is the $8,000 bonus depreciation cap that applies to a tax law-defined luxury automobile, crossover vehicle, pickup truck, or sport utility vehicle (SUV).

If you have an office downtown where you spend 40 hours a week, can you claim that you have an office in your home that qualifies as a principal office if you spend only 12 hours a week working in the home office? If you said no, you are not alone. But you would also be wrong, as we explain in this article.

You could qualify to use your swimming pool as a medical expense deduction just as Herbert Cherry did. Cherry deducted the cost of the pool to the extent it exceeded the increase in the value of his home. He also deducted the yearly cost of heating and insuring the pool, electricity for the pool room, and repairs for the pool room walls that suffered mildew damage.

When you are in business for yourself, you have options when it comes to creating tax deductions for your health insurance. The tax rules treat Medicare as health insurance, and that means you have options for how to create your tax deductions for Medicare.

You operate your professional practice as a C corporation. Your spouse rents your office to your C corporation on a triple net lease. Does your spouse qualify for the Section 199A deduction on the rental income, and if not, what can be done about it?

When you know the rules, you can party with your employees and deduct 100 percent of the cost. Interestingly, if you feed your employees during a training program, your deduction is only 50 percent. Make sure you know the rules that give you the 100 percent deduction for employee entertainment.

It’s tough to calculate the Section 199A deduction. Under the final regulations, it’s even more difficult, with more adjustments than we expected. We’ll walk through an example of a partner in an LLC to show you how the calculation works. And then we’ll discuss some planning opportunities to increase the deduction.

Making loans to your corporation became more hazardous 33 years ago with the Tax Reform Act of 1986. That was pretty awful. But the new Tax Cuts and Jobs Act tax reform made things worse for tax years 2018 through 2025. If you operate your business as a corporation, you need to know how the rules apply when you loan money to your corporation.

Your ownership of a pass-through trade or business can generate a tax deduction of up to 20 percent of your qualified business income (QBI). The C corporation does not generate this deduction, but the proprietorship, partnership, S corporation, and certain trusts, estates, and rental properties do. In this article, you learn how to find your QBI.

New tax code Section 199A can give you a tax deduction of up to 20 percent of your taxable income reduced by net capital gains. Last August, the IRS issued Section 199A proposed regulations that gave you some guidance on what net capital gains are. And now the new final regulations give you clarifying guidance on what the IRS deems are net capital gains for purposes of Section 199A.

The answer in this article explains how the S corporation can pay the solo owner-employee’s individually purchased health insurance without worrying about the $100-a-day penalty.

Your Section 199A tax deduction disregards W-2 wages when your Form 1040 taxable income is equal to or less than $315,000 (married, filing jointly) or $157,500 (filing as single or head of household). Also, you don’t have to think about wages for your out-of-favor business if you have taxable income above $415,000 (married, filing jointly) or $207,500 (filing as single or head of household). But if you are in a group that needs to consider the wages your business paid you and your employees, you have to follow the rules set out by the IRS, as we explain in this article.

The Section 199A 20 percent tax deduction is a possible gift from lawmakers. Literally, you don’t earn this deduction; it’s simply there for you if you qualify. Under the trade or business rule, your rental property profits can create the deduction. And now, under an alternative rule, you can use the newly created IRS safe harbor to make your rentals qualify for the deduction.

The IRS issued final Section 199A regulations that contain some new and very favorable provisions that are important to out-of-favor specified service trades and businesses. Of particular note are the de minimis rules discussed in this article that show you how to break your business into two or more businesses for purposes of the Section 199A tax deduction.

Get ready. You may be about to experience another encounter with the law of unintended consequences. The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act gives you a possible 20 percent tax deduction on your rental property income. But that’s only if your rental property is a trade or business, and that comes with its own burdens.

What do you need to know about the new 20 percent tax deduction that’s available to you if you have ownership in a pass-through business such as a proprietorship, a partnership, an S corporation, a trust, an estate, and certain rental properties? Find the information you are looking for with this downloadable PDF.

Is your lease a lease? Are you sure? There are lots of funny rules that make what looks like a lease a purchase—and make what looks like a conditional sales agreement a lease. This article shows you what happened to Arthur Boyce and gives you a number of tips to help you avoid his plight.

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.

Qualified opportunity funds are a new tax-planning strategy created by the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act tax reform. The new funds have the ability to defer current-year capital gains, eliminate some of them later, and then on the new investment make capital gains tax-free. To put the benefits in place, you need to navigate some new rules and time frames.

Your new (enhanced on May 16, 2019) 2019 desktop reference containing the 2019 capital gains and federal income tax rates for individuals, corporations, and estates and trusts, plus other desirable quick references you want at your fingertips, is now available with the download link in this article.

The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) 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 want such a business facility, make sure to review the rules in this article.

For most business owners, the home office not only produces business deductions for a percentage of personal home expenses but also can create a substantial increase in business vehicle deductions.

The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act tax reform added an amazing limit on larger business losses that can attack you where it hurts—right in your cash flow. And it works in some unusual ways that can tax you even when you have no real income for the year. When you know how this ugly new rule works, you have some planning opportunities to dodge the problem.

The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act tax reform added new tax code Section 199A that gives owners of pass-through businesses a possible 20 percent tax deduction on business income. Inside the rules for qualification, you find some complications that give rise to many questions. In this article, we answer seven of those questions.

If your family has trouble with the kiddie tax, you face some new wrinkles for tax years 2018 through 2025 thanks to the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act tax reform. This is one of the many areas where tax planning can pay off, as you will see in this article.

Here’s an easy question: Do you need more 2018 tax deductions? If yes, continue on. Next easy question: Do you need a replacement business vehicle? If yes, you can simultaneously solve or mitigate both the first problem of needing more deductions and the second problem of needing a replacement vehicle, but you need to get your deduction in place on or before December 31, 2018. This article helps you find the right vehicle for the deduction you desire.

Yes, December 31 is just around the corner. That’s your last day to find tax deductions for your existing business vehicles that will cut your 2018 taxes. In this article, you will learn how to find and release tax deductions that the tax code trapped inside your existing business cars, SUVs, trucks, and vans.

Your year-end tax planning doesn’t have to be hard. This article takes your daily activities and identifies easy year-end tax-planning moves you can make today. Our five strategies will increase your tax deductions or reduce your taxable income so that Uncle Sam gets less of your 2018 cash.

When you get busy with your business, it’s easy to forget about your retirement accounts and medical coverages and plans. But year-end is approaching, and now’s the time to take action. This article gives you six action steps for 2018 that can help you reduce your taxes and pocket extra money.

Your stock market portfolio can represent a little gold mine of opportunities to reduce your 2018 income taxes when you take advantage of the tax code’s offset game. The tax code contains the basic rules for this game, and once you know the rules, you can apply the correct strategies. In addition to saving taxes with the game of offset, you can also avoid paying taxes on stock appreciation by gifting stock to charity, your parents, and your children who are not subject to the kiddie tax.

If you are thinking of getting married or divorced, you need to consider December 31, 2018, in your tax planning. Here’s a planning question: Do you give money to family or friends (other than your children who are subject to the kiddie tax)? If so, you need to consider the zero-tax-bracket planning strategy. And now, consider your children who are under age 18. Have you paid them for work they’ve done for your business? Have you paid them the right way? You’ll find the answers here.

Starting now, this year (2018), you have to consider your Section 199A deduction in your year-end tax planning. If you don’t, you could end up with a big fat $0 for your deduction amount. We’ll review four year-end moves that (a) reduce your income taxes and (b) boost your Section 199A deduction at the same time.

You’ve closed your S corporation and then paid expenses for it afterward. Can either you or the corporation deduct those expenses? We’ll explain what the law says, along with one thing to consider for taking deductions for your leftover expenses.

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.

Your S corporation has to pay you reasonable compensation for the services you provide to the corporation. If your corporation pays your health insurance premiums, does that change the salary amount you need to pay yourself? We’ll tell you the answer and how doing it wrong would cost you money.

The first good news is that you can be both real estate investor and real estate dealer with respect to your real estate portfolio. The next 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.

Obtain access to this new, handy 28-page guide to creating the home-office tax deduction. Inside the guide you’ll learn how the administrative office gives you the tax-favored principal office. This is the same tax code–defined “principal office” that you get when you make the cash register ring from your home office (Soliman case).

You closed your S corporation and then paid expenses for it afterward. Can either you or the corporation deduct those expenses? We’ll explain what the law says, along with that one thing you need to consider for taking deductions for your leftover expenses.

The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act makes claiming a tax deduction for a personal casualty loss more difficult. And when you do qualify to deduct a personal casualty loss, you face a number of rules that add to your misery by making the loss deduction difficult. In select circumstances, you can use a safe harbor, which makes things a little easier.

Tax reform made a lot of changes that impact your choice of entity for your business. And if your business is in the cannabis industry, this is especially true. We’ll explain how Section 199A and other Tax Cuts and Jobs Act provisions impact your entity choice for a cannabis business.

In many business environments, you compete for employee talent in a variety of ways, including perhaps by implementing a medical and family leave policy. The good news on this front is that your federal government may have given you a tax credit (yes, that lovely dollar-for-dollar offset to your taxes) for what you wanted to do anyway.

The life insurance sales professional who receives a W-2 with the statutory employee box checked is in a special tax category for income and employment tax purposes and also sits in a favored category under the new Section 199A deduction rules. But he or she may not be favored for 1099 income.

The proposed Section 199A regulations give us guidance on whether rental activities qualify for the 20 percent deduction. If you use triple-net leases for your rental properties, you may wonder if you’ll get your deduction. We’ll discuss what we know and whether triple-net leases qualify for the deduction.

Your rental properties provide tax shelter when you can deduct your losses against your other income. One step to deducting the losses is to pass the tax code’s 750-hour test. One step to finding the hours you need may be your drive time.

Tax reform eliminated your ability to get immediate cash in your pocket from a net operating loss. Don’t sit back and let the IRS keep that cash! Examine five strategies you can use right now to get an immediate tax benefit from your business loss.

Are you confused by the tax deductions you can claim for your small-business health care? We can help you with our bird’s-eye view. It takes less than two minutes.

The taxpayer in this question-and-answer bought a boat. Tax reform did him considerable damage on two of his tax deductions. Learn what the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) tax reform did to this boat.

You could be like most taxpayers and think your IRA accounts have locked away your money until age 59 1/2 unless you are willing to pay a 10 percent penalty to access the monies. But that’s not correct: we’ll show you three ways you can take your money out of your IRAs tax-free or penalty-free, or both, regardless of age or reason.

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.

Say you operate your business as an S corporation and the S corporation reimburses you for your business use of your personal vehicle. If you have a loan on the personal vehicle, can your S corporation reimburse the business portion of the interest tax-free to you as it can with other reimbursed employee expenses? Find the answer in this article.

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.

Section 199A gives you up to a 20 percent tax deduction for your pass-through business income. Do your rental activities count? We’ll go over what the proposed Section 199A regulations say about your rental activities and whether those activities qualify you as an individual for this possible 20 percent tax deduction.

If you have high income and operate an out-of-favor specified service business, you may think your Section 199A deduction is gone for good. But there is hope: we’ll explain how a conservation easement may be the solution to your problem. And if the numbers work out, you could get a large tax windfall in the process.

Here’s a link to a resource that gives you 10 proven strategies to lower S corporation taxes.

Section 199A provides a valuable 20 percent tax deduction but denies it to certain “out-of-favor specified service businesses” when individuals have taxable income greater than $207,500 (single) or $415,000 (married). New IRS regulations are a welcome sight because they give more clarity and add leniency as to which businesses are out of favor (and which are not).

Calculating your Section 199A deduction with one business is complicated. When you have multiple businesses, including businesses with losses, it gets even worse. We’ll clearly explain the rules related to multiple businesses along with how the new proposed regulations may allow you to aggregate certain businesses.

Here’s a resource guide that gives you the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act tax reform articles published at the Bradford Tax Institute from January 1 through July 31, 2018, including for each article the (a) topic, (b) code section, (c) prior law, (d) new law, and (e) link.

As you likely already know, your Section 199A deduction depends on where you fall in the qualification process. For example, one qualification process is income below the thresholds that qualify you for the Section 199A deduction on your pass-through income regardless of business type. Another process is income in the phase-in range that qualifies you for a phase-in deduction. Here we explain what that income is and how it impacts your new tax reform Section 199A deduction.

In early August, the IRS released its proposed regulations on new tax code Section 199A—the tax code section that created the 20 percent tax deduction that applies to S corporations and other pass-through entities. The good news in the new IRS regulations for S corporation owners is increased clarity on how to treat reasonable compensation for the Section 199A tax deduction.

Tax reform under the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act gives you bonus depreciation and favorable rules for converting your personal vehicle and other assets to business use. On the conversion, you can immediately qualify to deduct up to 100 percent of today’s fair market value on your existing personal vehicle.

Cost segregation has always been a valuable strategy in your tax strategy toolkit. And now, thanks to tax reform’s recent changes to bonus depreciation, cost segregation is even better. We’ll show you the value of a cost segregation study post–tax reform, strategies you can use that involve cost segregation, and potential problems to avoid.

As you likely know, you now have two methods for finding the home-office deduction: the actual expense method and the IRS optional safe-harbor method. To make the deduction work at the corporate level, your corporation must reimburse you, the employee, for the deduction. Can the corporation use the IRS method?

The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) has changed the way you can look at the S corporation as a tax planning entity. With the new Section199A deduction in play, the S corporation can help increase or decrease that deduction. To make this easier for you, simply download our new guide and get up to speed on how the S corporation works with the TCJA.

When moving your retirement money to an IRA, you should follow this one rule of thumb. If you fail to follow it, you can face two big problems. First, your check will be shorted by 20 percent. Second, you will be on the search for replacement money.

Tax reform changed the tax treatment of certain self-created intangible property. Does this affect goodwill? We’ll review the tax treatment of goodwill in light of tax reform.

Congress created the qualified improvement property category in the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act with the idea that you could fully expense such qualified property with bonus depreciation. But Congress made an error in the law, and now you can’t use bonus depreciation for qualified improvement property. Don’t worry—we’ll explain how you might be able to fully expense it anyway.

Passive foreign investment companies, or PFICs, are subject to some of the most complex provisions of the tax law. You may own one and not even know it. In this article, we give you the basic rules so that you know what PFICs are and the different ways you can pay tax on them (yes, you have options!).

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.

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, both short and long term. But the deduction continues in place, albeit damaged, for tax years 2018 through 2025.

The TCJA eliminates your ability to unwind a traditional IRA or other retirement plan transfer to a Roth IRA. This requires a change in your decision making for such transfers.

The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act made several beneficial changes that affect partnerships and their partners and LLCs and their members that are treated as partnerships for tax purposes.

One of our members found an error in our 199A calculator. We thanked the member, fixed the calculator, and made technical corrections to the two articles affected (which we identify in this Q&A).

The days when you could convert your rental property or vacation home to a principal residence and then use the full $250,000/$500,000 home-sale exclusion to avoid taxes are gone. Today’s law requires an allocation that keeps part of your rental as a rental so you have to pay taxes on that rental part.

Twenty years after the Tax Court approved a strategy that grants you extra deductions for your second home, the IRS would like you to forget it ever happened. Even though the case remains current law, you won’t find any mention of this strategy in IRS guidance to taxpayers. Unless you just happened to know old cases—or read this article—you might never have known how you could save thousands in taxes on your second home.

Because of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, more businesses are looking at the S corporation election. But you have to make a timely election to get the tax benefits. This article helps you with both a “timely” and a “late” election.

Tax reform gave you a new 20 percent deduction on pass-through income. For S corporation owners, your reasonable compensation plays a key role in determining your Section 199A deduction. Here, we’ll explain what the law says on reasonable compensation and how you can come out ahead.

As a small-business owner, you have good odds of someday facing a penalty for late filing and/or late payment of your or your corporation’s taxes. It’s likely you will think that you have to pay the penalties. But as you’ll learn here, when you know the rules of the road, you can travel the IRS mercy path and have those penalties forgiven.

Tax reform changed the rules of the game when choosing your best tax structure. A properly structured spousal partnership could now be your best choice, even over the S corporation in some circumstances. But beware, you need to navigate nuances in the law to do this correctly.

The new and improved Section 179 deduction gives you more ways to take advantage of immediate tax deductions. It’s somewhat like having a flexible tax shelter in your back pocket for when you need it (and also need the property, of course).

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 has no physical home.

If you are married, operate as a sole proprietor or as a single-member LLC taxed on Schedule C of your Form 1040, and have no employees, you absolutely, positively must consider hiring your spouse and creating the 105-HRA medical reimbursement plan. In this situation, the 105-HRA can cut your taxes without you spending one penny.

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.

When it comes to the new 20 percent Section 199A tax deduction, does a spouse in an out-of-favor business taint the Section 199A for you? The good news is no. But because of the multiple businesses, you may have a problem on the taxable income front.

Tax reform went hard after your state and local tax deductions. The reduced deduction for your state income taxes has some states pretty riled up. The IRS is about to issue regulations that conflict with what the states are attempting to do. From your standpoint, count on the IRS winning for the moment, and use the clear planning opportunities you have available to you that will create more deductions for your property taxes.

If you can qualify to move your W-2 income to Schedule C so as to enable those legitimate business expense deductions that you are losing to tax reform, should you do it? Maybe. You need to run the numbers to see if the new Schedule C taxes outweigh the monies you lost by not being able to deduct employee business expenses.

How will you fare with the new Section 199A tax deduction? This article can help you make sure that you realize the 20 percent deduction. It’s simply a tax gift if you qualify. And you can do some planning to help you qualify, but you may have to start now.

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.

The tax law has always treated your hobby activities unfairly. Tax reform under the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act made that unfair treatment even worse by preventing you from deducting any business expenses against hobby income. In this article, you see a strategy that can save your bacon on your hobby activity.

Learn how the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act changes the alimony rules and what you need to do at this moment if you are in the process of getting a divorce and paying alimony. If you don’t act quickly, your cost of alimony could double.

Depending on how you operate your business and where it’s located, the federal income tax terms “personal home” and “tax home” can have a big impact on your business vehicle deductions. And then there’s the difference between the federal income tax terms “business travel” and “business transportation” and how one very beneficial rule applies when you are inside the area of your tax home.

If you operate your business as a sole proprietorship, the government takes a big chunk of your profits in the form of self-employment taxes. But there’s good news. With the help of your spouse, you can reduce your self-employment tax bill by using a simple rental strategy.

If you own rental property in your name or in the name of a single-member LLC, you report your rental property income and expenses on Schedule E of your IRS Form 1040. But what happens when you have an expense for which the IRS has not created a line item on the form? No problem—simply insert it as we explain in this article.

Tax reform made it more difficult for you to deduct your legal fees. But don’t worry: the tax law still allows for a full deduction of your legal fees in certain circumstances. We’ll review four ways you can continue to deduct your legal fees after tax reform.

More than 2 percent shareholder-employees of S corporations don’t catch a lot of breaks when it comes to the taxation of fringe benefits. But arming yourself with the correct information will help you maximize your deductions and avoid costly penalties.

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.

If you or you and your spouse own your business and you have children, you need to consider the financial benefits of hiring those children to work in your business. Some businesses benefit more than others, but almost all businesses likely come out ahead with this strategy. And every business needs to thank tax reform for the new increased standard deduction that a business owner’s child can use to pay zero in taxes.

Tax reform killed the ability for you to deduct expenses for your hobby activity. But if you sell items in your hobby activity, the IRS allows you to deduct the cost of those items—if you do this the right way. Not knowing this rule can cost you thousands of dollars in extra taxes.

If you’re a professional gambler, tax law did you no tax favors before tax reform. But now, because of tax reform, tax law has you between a rock and a hard place for tax years 2018 through 2025. The recent tax reform gives you one choice only for those years.

You likely have to worry about alternative minimum tax (AMT) in addition to the regular federal income tax. Tax reform made changes to the tax law that significantly impact AMT. The changes could mean more money in your pocket and less going to the government.

The new Section 199A deduction created by tax reform is a source of excitement and confusion for tax professionals and small-business owners alike. Download our new guide and get all the details.

Hobbies have been mistreated by the tax law for a long time. But the most recent tax reform brings the grim reaper to the party and it’s not pleasant. This means you need to focus on making your activity a business and not a hobby.

The recent tax reform, known as the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA), added some good benefits to your real estate rentals, both commercial rentals and residential rentals. Notably, your qualified business income from your real estate rentals creates a possible 20 percent tax deduction with no effort on your part. And if you want less taxable income, the TCJA gives you enhanced bonus depreciation and new avenues for Section 179 expensing.

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.

The recent tax reform created both winners and losers. One big loser is the W-2 employee who incurs out-of-pocket business expenses to earn his or her W-2 income. Tax reform simplified those W-2 employee business expense deductions by simply making them not tax deductible.

The home mortgage interest deduction rules did not fare well in the recent tax reform. First, a chunk of your home equity mortgage interest is no longer deductible. Second, you now face a new lower ceiling on mortgages that can qualify for the home mortgage interest deduction.

You hate IRS penalties, right? Everyone does! There are a lot of strategies you can use to potentially defeat an IRS penalty. Thanks to the courts, though, you now have a brand-new way to beat an IRS penalty.

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.

The new 20 percent tax deduction under new tax code Section 199A has many nuances based on your type of business, taxable income, qualified business income, wages, and depreciable property. Here you have an easy-to-use Section 199A calculator that takes away the pains of manually computing your possible benefits.

The old saying that “no good deed goes unpunished” could certainly apply to the transportation fringe benefits that lawmakers penalized with the recent tax reform.

You asked us to elaborate on how tax reform did away with client and prospect business meals. It starts with the Tax Reform Act of 1986, when business meals were by law placed in the entertainment category. As you know, so-called business-friendly tax reform killed deductions for business entertainment and, along with it, client and prospect meals.

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?

Has tax reform created a need for you to switch your S corporation to a C corporation? You will find the answer here. Also, you will find it interesting to see how we make the comparison easy with the chart in this article.

We had many compliments on our 2017 desktop reference and requests to create a 2018 desktop reference so that you can quickly look up the new (after tax reform) 2018 tax rates. You can download the new 2018 reference with the link that’s in this article.

Tax reform did not destroy business meal presentation expenses. Read this article to see how business meal presentations work in the real world and also learn the basic rules that apply to them.

Finally, lawmakers did the right thing by increasing the luxury auto depreciation limits on business cars. The old luxury limits were unrealistic, punitive, unfair, and discriminatory against any car that cost more than about $15,000. The new limits don’t create parity in all respects, but they are a big improvement.

Download your free resource guide titled Beating IRS Penalties, Your Guide to Reducing or Avoiding IRS Penalties.

Here’s a troubling thought. Did lawmakers put you in the out-of-favor tax group that denies you the 20 percent Section 199A deduction (a) because your business makes too much money and (b) it does so because of the reputation or skill of one or more of the business’ owners or employees?

The new 2018 Section 199A tax deduction that you can claim on your IRS Form 1040 is a big deal. There are many rules (all new, of course), but your odds as a business owner of benefiting from this new deduction are excellent.

The new Section 199A deduction is a very nice tax break for business owners, except for owners with high income who also fall into the out-of-favor group. In general, the out-of-favor group includes lawyers, doctors, accountants, tax professionals, consultants, athletes, authors, security traders, actors, singers, musicians, entertainers, and others.

Tax reform no longer allows Section 1031 exchanges on personal property such as your business vehicle. The trade-in was the most common 1031 exchange of a business vehicle. Now, because of tax reform, the vehicle trade-in is simply the sale of the old vehicle to the dealer and the purchase of a new vehicle. The sale to the dealer creates gain or loss on the sale just as it would on an outright sale.

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.

Lawmakers do not like businesses that feed their employees on the business premises. The new tax reform takes what last year was a 100 percent deduction for a meal served for the convenience of the employer, reduces it to 50 percent this year (2018), and then throws it into the compost pile with a zero deduction in 2026 and later years.

Will your business operation create the 20 percent tax deduction for you? If not, and if that is due to too much income and a lack of (a) wages and/or (b) depreciable property, a switch to the S corporation as your choice of business entity may produce the tax savings you are looking for.

You could (and can) deduct your costs for reimbursing employees for their qualified bicycle transportation costs. But tax reform now makes this bicycle transportation benefit a taxable event for your employees. As you will see in this article, even though the reimbursements are now taxable to the employees, you likely should continue the benefits.

If your pass-through business is an in-favor business and it qualifies for tax reform’s new 20 percent tax deduction on qualified business income, you benefit at all times, including being above, below, or in the expanded wage and property phase-in range. On the other hand, if your business is a specified service trade or business, it is in the out-of-favor group and you benefit only when you are in or below the phaseout range.

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 business mileage rules can get tricky, and this is especially true if you drive both inside and outside your metropolitan area. This metropolitan area is not what you think it is. The IRS and the courts have created special confusion about your metropolitan area.

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.

With one business use of the home office and no personal use, you qualify for the home-office deduction. The second business use, employee use, and spouse use must equally qualify for the home-office deduction, or else.

If you own rental properties, you don’t want the tax law to call the rentals an investment. Instead, you want the rental properties to qualify as a trade or business so that you achieve tax-favored Section 1231 treatment and many other tax breaks.

What can appear logical when planning for the S corporation owner’s business expenses can prove costly to the owner and, as in this article, cost every penny of the business deductions.

We have had requests for a desktop reference that you can use to quickly look up the 2017 tax rates. You can download the 2017 reference with the link that’s in this article.

Section 1031 exchanges are perfect when you are going to stay in the real estate rental or investment business. When it’s time to cash out, you need to look at different strategies that help you avoid taxes and give you cash to spend (liquidity).

You want to deduct your business, rental, and non-rental losses when possible, because those deductions put cash in your pocket. The sooner you get the cash, the faster you can put that cash to work for you building your net worth. This article helps you realize those losses sooner.

You really should consider antiques when furnishing your offices or buying a unique second business vehicle. Unlike regular furnishings and vehicles, well-selected antiques increase in value. Also, you can depreciate or even Section 179 expense them. When you run the after-tax numbers, you can easily find that an antique will yield 36 times more after-tax cash than a non-antique.

If you are looking for some last-minute tips to save on your 2017 federal income taxes, this article has what you need.

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.

When it comes to college planning, your lawmakers created some real traps. One big trap is the kiddie tax. This insidious tax destroys the traditional IRA as a college funding source and does much the same to your child’s interest and dividends savings. There’s much to know here, and we make it clear.

Do you have children who are currently subject to the kiddie tax? Could those children work for you or someone else and create some earned income? If so, the strategy in this Q&A can eliminate or reduce the kiddie tax.

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.

If you have two or more vehicles in your family, you might find added tax deductions by driving more than one vehicle for business. To know if you benefit or not, you need to put your numbers into our magic two-car formula. This is very easy to do, and the formula result tells you for sure whether you come out ahead or not.

The special rule that applies to administrative or management use of the home office creates a principal office. There are only two ways to create a principal office in your home. The administrative or management office works when you have two offices: (1) an office in the home and (b) an office outside the home.

You may not think of yourself as a manufacturer, but you might nevertheless qualify as one under tax law. There is a deduction for manufacturing that applies to a much broader array of activities than most people realize. There’s no catch and no recapture associated with this deduction—it’s just extra cash for your wallet. Find out if you qualify.

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.

Health savings accounts (HSAs) have gained substantially in popularity since enactment of the Affordable Care Act. Tax-wise, the HSA has some great features such as tax-deductible contributions, tax-deferred (even tax-free if used correctly) growth, and possible retirement benefits.

Depreciation is a valuable tax deduction but is often missed or mistakenly computed. If you missed depreciation or did it incorrectly, you can fix it in the current year and get some possible major tax benefits for doing so. In fact, the need for a correction can create planning opportunities for you.

If you want to convert your home to a rental property, don’t. Instead, sell your home to your S corporation and then have the S corporation make the property a rental property. We have written about this previously, and we received some questions that we address in this article.

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.

When the two-vehicle tax-deduction strategy works for you, you find new deductions without spending a penny or driving a mile farther. In this article, you find that both the IRS and the courts approve of your use of two or more vehicles for business.

You can pay your child to work in your business and get paid for paying your child. Yeah, we know. You think this sounds too good to be true, but it’s true. For how the government pays you and why this works, read this article.

A business owner accumulates earnings in an S corporation and takes no distributions or salary. The business owner then retires and wants to draw the funds out tax-free over multiple years. Are there any issues with this strategy?

The Boston Bruins deducted 100 percent of their meal expenses for employees who traveled out of town for the away games. The IRS challenged that 100 percent and lost. One big deal with the Bruins’ win is that it is precedent-setting, meaning that the Boston Bruins may have created a road map for you that could lead to more 100 percent business meal–expense deductions (versus the usual 50 percent allowance for business meals).

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.

The related-party matching rule places your business on the cash method for deducting payments to related cash-method payees. You need to know this rule to avoid unexpected tax results. Also, you need to know how the different ownership thresholds apply because one share of stock could make you a related party. Indirect relationships expand the reach of the rule and can create additional surprises.

Having a business or activity operated as a partnership means extra tax return filings and compliance headaches. But you might qualify to elect out of partnership treatment. Here, we discuss the two elections available, when you qualify or not, and the impact of making an escape election.

When you and the IRS disagree about an item on your tax return, you need authority on your side to either win your case or avoid a penalty. Court decisions can be a valuable authority to convince the IRS that you are right. We’ll discuss the various types of court decisions and which ones can help you the most.

You may be able to claim the child and dependent care credit for the cost of sending your child to summer camp or a before- or after-school program, but only if it promotes your child’s protection and well-being, and is not for education or another purpose.

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.

You can deduct NFL tickets under the associated entertainment rules. In this Q&A, our member is traveling from Portland to Atlanta to attend a business conference, and while at that conference, he and his team members will attend the NFL game. The conference creates an easy path to this deduction.

The legal marijuana industry is booming across the U.S. But there are tax problems: since marijuana is still a federally controlled substance, selling it comes with costly federal tax consequences. The good news is that with knowledge of the law in this area and some planning, you can cut the tax bill that Uncle Sam would otherwise send you.

You need to know how the related-party rules work if you don’t want to destroy your tax-loss deductions. You are reading this right: you can lose your tax losses when you sell to a related party.

When is it possible for the home-office deduction to include a percentage of lawn care and related landscaping expenses? Answer: As explained below, your use of the home office needs to create a qualifying business reason for a good-looking lawn.

Sometimes you and the IRS disagree about an item on your tax return. When that happens, you need authority on your side to either win your case or avoid a penalty if you don’t win. The Internal Revenue Code and certain IRS interpretations of it can be that authority, and we discuss them here.

If you are buying a business that will include more than one co-owner, you need a buy-sell agreement—period. You have multiple reasons to put the buy-sell agreement in place and not one reason not to have a buy-sell agreement. But when you start to put the agreement in place, you need to consider the planning strategies in this article.

Learn how this IRS revenue procedure allows you to avoid taxes on the sale of a personal residence in which you had a home office or that you used as a rental property. The procedure lays out the methodology, which includes using the $250,000 ($500,000 if married) home-sale exclusion in unison with a 1031 tax-deferred exchange to avoid the taxes and enhance your deductions on the replacement home.

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.

It’s about as good as it gets when you see the words “tax-free” in the tax law. Under the de minimis fringe benefit rules, your business deducts the cost of giving you or your employees flowers, fruit, books, and similar property under special circumstances. The recipients—you or your employees—receive the de minimis fringe benefits tax-free.

Before you can deduct rental property losses, you must first qualify as a real estate professional (a person in the real property trades or businesses). The real estate broker is recognized in the tax code as a person who is in the real property trade or business for purposes of the passive loss rules. The real estate agent is not recognized in the law.

The IRS hit the Mescalero Apache Tribe with a bad result in an employee classification audit. The tribe took the IRS to the Tax Court and forced the IRS to turn over records on the tribe’s workers’ tax payments that will substantially reduce its tax bill. If you have a worker classification issue, you will want to know what the tribe did and why.

A new law requires the IRS to send its inactive tax debts to third-party private debt collectors. If this happens to you, you need to know how this program works including what to expect and what rights you have.

You generally buy an existing business because you believe that the existing business represents less of a risk than starting a new business from scratch. That may be true. And you help make that true when you do your due diligence.

If you have “seriously delinquent tax debt,” IRC Section 7345 requires the IRS to certify that debt to the State Department for action against you. The State Department then must refuse to issue or renew your passport, or it can revoke or limit the use of your current passport. To get your passport back, you need to get right with the IRS.

The IRS can give you monetary mercy regarding your unpaid tax debts by settling them for less than you owe via the offer in compromise program. Like anything with the IRS, this process is not easy, but the result could save you tens of thousands of dollars. We walk you through how to determine whether you qualify and what you could end up paying.

This article answers six questions about the big tax benefits to the sole owner of the C or S corporation who rents a personal residence to his or her solely owned C or S corporation for 14 days or less. The answers deal with (1) the need for a 1099, (2) how to report the 1099 on the 1040, (3) multiple corporations, (4) events for independent contractors, (5) events for employees, and (6) proof of fair rent.

Each state’s LLC act provides default rules for governing your LLC and the members’ rights and responsibilities. Odds are they don’t provide what you want. Luckily, the defaults can be overridden by an operating agreement.

The Section 1031 exchange is a great tax planning strategy when you are using it to your benefit. But there are two times when you need to avoid the 1031 exchange so as to come out money ahead. The first is pretty apparent, but it does catch many taxpayers by surprise. The second requires thought and knowledge, as you learn in this article.

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.

When you buy a business, you probably don’t want the former owners competing with you—at least not for a while. To prevent the competition, you generally enter into a noncompete with the former owners. This has tax implications that you need to consider.

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.

If you qualify to use IRS mileage rates to deduct your vehicle, you need to know if you are cheating yourself with the method you select. The good news is, this article includes a tool that will give the one best method for your deduction and also tell you how much after-tax cash you pocket with that method.

Last month we explained how an S corporation could rent the sole shareholder’s personal residence for 14 days or less, obtain a tax deduction for rent, and create tax-free income for the shareholder. An enrolled agent raises six issues that he thinks could negate this free-rent strategy. Learn what the issues are and why the strategy really does work.

Conventional wisdom says that it’s best to (1) fund your retirement before your child’s college, and (2) use your retirement savings for your retirement and not your child’s college expenses. But conventional wisdom is like a general tax rule. There are exceptions.

If you have employees who have worked for your business for years and years, you might be thinking of buying them something as a way of showing your appreciation. If you follow a few rules, you can make those presents “employee achievement awards”—and thus tax-deductible for the business and tax-free for the employees. (Depending on how you operate your business, you might even qualify as an employee eligible for the tax-free award.)

When you are looking to buy a business and then operate that business as a C corporation, you should consider the tax benefits you can realize by creating debt as part of the corporate capital structure. If you do this, you need to put the debt in place so that the IRS will respect the debt as debt and not treat it as equity.

Are you going to lease your next business vehicle? Are you eligible to use IRS mileage rates? If so, both the IRS and the leasing company are going to give you rules to ponder and expenses to consider before you select your tax-deduction method—either the IRS mileage rate or the actual expense method.

Do you operate your business as an S or C corporation? If so, have you considered renting your home to your corporation for corporate meetings and perhaps the annual holiday party for employees? You should. Why? If you do the rental right, the corporation deducts the rent, and you receive the rental income tax-free.

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.

The home-office tax deduction provides tax savings to business owners. It turns otherwise nondeductible personal expenses into valuable business deductions. When tax law taxes your business as a proprietorship, you simply deduct home-office expenses on Schedule C. But when you operate your business as a corporation, you face special rules to achieve the same benefits.

In many cases, the government hits your lawsuit award or settlement with the double whammy of (1) a tax bill on the gross dollar amount of the award or settlement and (2) a reduction to or even elimination of your legal fees tax deduction. But in some cases the legal fees you paid can become turbocharged tax deductions, saving you thousands of dollars in taxes. We’ll show you when you can qualify for the better deductions and how to claim them.

When you can buy the target’s stock and treat the deal as an asset purchase, you have a real possibility of bringing tax-benefit smiles to both you and the seller. So if you are buying a business, make sure you know when the tax rules allow you to buy the stock of the target and treat that stock purchase as the purchase of the target’s assets.

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 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.

Mileage-rate addicts usually 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.

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.

You’ve decided to create a partnership for a new or existing business. Good news: forming a business partnership is usually tax-free. But you must meet the basic requirements for a tax-free formation, and you need to avoid the situations that cause you to owe taxes on the transfer of property.

Business owners continue to get caught in the complex rules of the self-rental trap. A recent case taken from the Tax Court to the Fifth Circuit shows how business owners can get into tax trouble with self-rentals. But with proper tax planning and possible use of special rules called “grouping,” you can minimize and even eliminate the tax cost of the self-rental trap.

If you receive an award or settlement due to an injury claim, the law allows you to exclude some or all of the money you receive from taxation. You can use this exclusion along with other tax reduction strategies to minimize any tax you must pay on the amount you receive.

When you buy a business, you have much to consider. As you learned in prior articles, you need to consider the type of entity that owns the business and the type of entity you will use to operate the business. On top of that, every asset of the business you are going to buy impacts your tax results. In this article, you see how this all comes together and what you need to do to get the best results.

When you operate your own business, don’t pay yourself last. Pay yourself first. That’s a wealth-building strategy. And if you can combine the pay-yourself-first strategy with a retirement plan, you supercharge your wealth strategy.

Special rules apply to inherited traditional IRAs. In this article, we look at non-spousal IRA inheritances that have their own sets of special rules. For the most part, you will like the rules. And in setting up your IRA for your beneficiaries, you should consider the stretch strategy.

You’ve decided to incorporate a new or existing business. Good news: incorporating a business is usually tax-free. But to make this work when traveling this road, you must meet the requirements for a tax-free incorporation and avoid the situations that cause taxes.

Sending a child to a special needs school can be an onerous financial burden, with some tuitions reaching even $100,000 per year. Tax law lets you deduct tuition and other related costs as medical expenses, but you need to know which expenses qualify and how you should deduct them. This article shows you not only how to qualify but also a possible best way to maximize those deductions.

When setting up your new or acquired business, you and your co-owners should consider the multi-member LLC, another form of LLC, or the straight-up partnership. This is the last article in our three-part series on the “choices of entity” for a newly acquired business. Make sure to consider the options in this article if you are acquiring or starting a business with more than one owner.

You might have a friend in the government you don’t know yet. The Taxpayer Advocate Service is an independent office within the IRS that helps taxpayers solve IRS problems that they can’t seem to resolve through normal channels. In some circumstances, the advocate office can force the IRS to give you relief.

Finally, the health insurance rules that apply to small businesses that want to provide medical benefits to their employees make more sense and allow some benefits. As you would expect, the new rules are not perfect. After all, this is tax law. But the new rules are light-years ahead of the old rules.

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.

Do you have fewer than 50 employees? Are you in compliance with the Affordable Care Act? Whether you are in compliance or not, we may have some big news for you. First, if you failed compliance, a new law has likely just released you from the monstrous $100-a-day penalty ($36,500 per employee per year). Second, if you made changes to get into compliance, you may have overtaxed your employees. Now, with this new law, you may be able to undo some or all of that overtaxation.

Tax law requires your S corporation to pay you, the owner-employee, reasonable compensation for the work you do. But what about in a year when your corporation has a loss? Does a lack of net profits absolve you from the obligation to pay yourself a salary?

When you are buying a business, you want to buy not only at the right price, but also in a manner that keeps your taxes as low as possible. If you structure your deal as an asset purchase, you can use tax-smart price allocations that give the best tax result. And you likely want to include a stipulation in the purchase agreement that can reduce your chances of an IRS audit.

Your adult child asks a big favor—help in buying his or her first home. If you are lucky enough to be able to help, you want to understand and avoid the tax pitfalls. In this article, you find five possible solutions to help your child while avoiding the tax pitfalls.

Some tax strategies claim to help you avoid all your federal income taxes—no math required—simply by making a few straightforward arguments on your tax return. The problem is, they have no basis in law, and in fact constitute tax fraud. The end result will almost certainly be penalties and even jail time. Protect yourself from these scams by knowing how to tell the difference between fairy-tale tax strategies and the real deal.

Here’s an easy question: Do you need more 2016 tax deductions? If yes, continue on. Next easy question: Do you need a replacement business vehicle? If yes, you can solve or mitigate the first problem of needing more deductions and solve the second problem of needing a replacement vehicle at the same time, but you need to read this article now so you know what you have to do and when you have to do it.

If you own rental properties, you want to qualify as a real estate professional. It’s a big deal. In this status, you can deduct your tax shelter losses from your real estate rental properties against your business and portfolio income. We hear that the IRS and some tax professionals are misapplying the law and wrongly denying real estate professional status. That’s an ouch! How does it happen? By mistakenly requiring an election to count multiple rental properties toward the number of hours needed to be a real estate professional.

Yes, December 31 is just around the corner. That’s your last day to find tax deductions for your vehicles that will cut your 2016 taxes. And with our existing high tax rates, 2016 is a good year to cut your taxes. In this article, you can find and release tax deductions that the tax code trapped inside your existing business and personal cars, SUVs, trucks, and vans.

Home mortgage interest deductions make homes more affordable and save taxpayers thousands of tax dollars each year. Now, if you are single, a new IRS decision creates the possibility for added savings—perhaps double—if you co-own a home or vacation property.

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.

The government allows you to deduct and amortize a host of start-up costs and organizational costs when starting a new business. The tax rules in this area are unforgiving, meaning mistakes can prove costly. With proper planning, though, you can save money from your “thinking about it” costs and beyond.

When you get busy with your business, it’s easy to forget about your retirement accounts and medical coverages and plans. But year-end is approaching, and now’s the time to take action to cut your 2016 taxes. This article gives you six action steps for 2016 that can help you reduce your taxes and pocket extra money.

When your business loses money, don’t miss out on valuable tax savings by not filing a tax return that would qualify for a net operating loss deduction. This is one of four traps in the tax law that can cost you tax refunds from prior years and tax shelter for future years.

When buying a business, you face many decisions. One such decision is whether you should buy the assets of the business or the ownership interest. Here, you have both legal and tax issues to consider. Also, depending on the entity you are looking at buying, the ownership purchase option may not be available.

Your stock market portfolio can represent a little gold mine of opportunities to reduce your 2016 income taxes when you take advantage of the tax code’s offset game. The tax code contains basic rules for this game, and once you know the rules, you can apply the correct strategies. In addition to saving taxes with the game of offset, you can also avoid paying taxes on stock appreciation by gifting stock to charity, your parents, and your children who are not subject to the kiddie tax.

The tax law offers several ways to reduce or eliminate U.S. income taxes or foreign-sourced earned income. Picking the correct tax-reduction strategy based on your situation is the key to minimizing your U.S. income tax liability. In this article, you see common scenarios and options that show you how to pay the least amount of U.S. income tax on your foreign-sourced earned income.

A business motor home could provide both big tax deductions and an ideal solution to your business lodging and transportation needs. You would know how clean your sleeping room is. You would know the room’s smoking history. You would know how many pets, if any, have graced the premises.

Planning on leaving the U.S.? If so, you have two choices from a tax perspective, but neither is painless. The tax law that applies to foreign living and expatriation can be tricky, so it’s essential that you depart the country correctly.

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.

In this official tax code program, the landlord-investor benefits because he has no vacancies, few hassles, no management fees, and a known cash flow. The tenant-investor benefits because he gets into this home with little or no down payment, builds equity while paying rent, and gets detailed knowledge about the property while living there. At some agreed-upon future point in time, the landlord-investor sells his or her interest in the property to the tenant-investor or the two of them sell the property to a third party.

Tax law places all conventions, seminars, and similar meetings into one of two areas: (a) inside or (b) outside the North American area. When you are outside the North American area, the rules do about everything possible to make your convention, seminar, or similar meeting nondeductible. So, if your group is not a worldwide group, attend conventions, seminars, and similar meetings only in the tax law-defined North American area. (Don’t worry, you’ll find many great locations in the tax code-defined North America area.)

The government taxes rental income just like any other income. However, a little-known loophole in the tax law may allow you to completely exclude some rental income from your income taxes. The requirements to qualify are simple, but there are some issues that could complicate your ability to use this loophole.

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.

In this part 2 article on choosing the right entity for your newly acquired business, you learn how the three possible corporations work and the advantages and disadvantages of each. In part 1, published last month, you learned about proprietorships and single-member LLCs taxed as proprietorships.

If you’re in retail, you know how useful a renovated, polished store can be in gaining the trust of your customers. Fortunately, restorations and upgrades to your property became far more financially achievable following a law Congress passed last December. Under the new rules, when you make qualifying improvements to your store, you can immediately or quickly write off much of the expense—even if the improvements cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.

As a successful entrepreneur, you’re used to managing every aspect of your business. So it makes sense to pick a retirement plan like a self-directed IRA that gives you virtually unlimited discretion in your investment choices. But when you take this route, be very careful! You need to know the rules of the road, or you could trigger the collapse of your IRA and incur a retirement-ruining tax bill.

Lawmakers make business owners report to the IRS certain payments made to workers such as payments of $600 or more to independent contractors. The rules and deadlines for reporting independent contractor payments on Form 1099-MISC can be tricky. But when you know the rules, you can employ strategies that minimize the impact of these reporting requirements on your business.

The Protecting Americans from Tax Hikes (PATH) Act enacted last December created a new (somewhat hidden) tax break when you make improvements to your nonresidential property. Nonresidential property is any real property you don’t use for dwellings, such as offices, stores, warehouses, hotels, and motels. Don’t be one of the thousands who overlook this new tax break. It’s easy to qualify for, and it can put big, immediate dollars in your pockets.

When you start a business either from scratch or by purchase, you need to consider the business entity in which you will operate. In this article, we discuss the sole proprietorship and the single-member LLC as possibilities. Both of these entities offer income tax simplicity.

If you have investments that generate foreign income, including U.S. mutual funds, you likely pay foreign taxes on that income. You can use one of two methods to reduce your U.S. taxes for any foreign taxes paid, and one method generally leads to a greater tax savings than the other. Not maximizing this benefit can cost you thousands in extra taxes over the years.

Small start-up businesses have an unprecedented new way to save money, and it does not involve income taxes. The new way to save money is on your payroll taxes. How? By applying research and development credits to your payroll tax bill.

To know if you are money ahead deducting your business vehicle using the IRS mileage rate or the actual-expense method, you need to use our magic calculator. Tax software used by tax professionals and consumers compares the first-year deductions only, and because of the wide variation in first-year deductions caused by the luxury vehicle limits, bonus depreciation, and Section 179 expensing, the first-year-only comparison is going to produce inaccurate results.

Business owners and employees who do not pay their payroll taxes can find themselves personally liable for the trust fund portion of those taxes. This is true even if the business operates as a separate legal entity such as a corporation. If you are a business owner or employee in trouble with the IRS over unpaid payroll taxes, you need to consider strategies you can use to stop the IRS from assessing the trust fund penalties against you.

You need to know, and avoid, tax-problem surprises when you gift business property to your parents, children, or others. With the wrong method, you can toss tax-deduction benefits into the trash. You can easily suffer recapture. Don’t let your gift of business property surprise you and take money out of your bank account.

If you own tax code-defined nonresidential property (otherwise known as commercial property), you have to like The Protecting Americans from Tax Hikes (PATH) Act enacted last December. The PATH Act put three huge nonresidential property-qualifying leasehold improvement tax breaks in place through 2019.

When it comes time to sell your business, it’s likely that you need to consider the intangible asset of goodwill. You have several things to consider, depending on the business entity you used to operate your business. For example, if you operated as a C corporation, how do you avoid double taxation on the goodwill? This article shows you how. Regardless of entity, how do you avoid the net investment income tax (NIIT)? This article shows you how.

You may have heard that options are the perfect way to increase profits on real estate investments and rentals. Well, perfect is probably an overstatement, but good profits are available when you know what you are doing. You also need to know the tax rules to avoid clauses, charges, and events that can turn options into sales and trigger taxes when you least expect them.

Because you are a small-business owner, you have a higher chance of an IRS audit. In an audit, the IRS will try to impose accuracy-related penalties on top of any unpaid taxes that it discovers. What you need to know is that the penalties are not automatic. You can beat them with one of the right arguments.

There are many reasons why you may want to donate your business vehicle to charity, not the least of which is that you’re helping a worthy cause. But if your goal is to couple that good deed with a nice tax deduction, make sure you do the math before you hand over the keys to avoid suffering an unpleasant tax surprise.

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.

Your government offers a very generous subsidy, a 30 percent tax credit, if you install solar equipment at one or more of your residences. And if you live in the right area of the country, you can come out well ahead on this deal. But this is tax law, and as you would expect, there are some tricky rules that you need to follow to qualify for the credit.

You face special tax laws when you attempt to buy a rental property and that purchase attempt fails. In general, the rules work to help you with that failed purchase, but you need to know how and when the rules work for you.

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.

If you report a tax cheat to the IRS, you may receive a portion of any money recovered following an audit. For example, the IRS paid $104 million to a citizen who revealed that his Swiss bank employer was helping clients evade U.S. taxes. If you feel it is your civic duty to report a tax cheat, the IRS would be glad to hear from you and reward you for initiating a successful investigation.

Tax savings when renting to relatives depend on your compliance with the tax law’s fair-rent standards and your relatives’ use of the property. Violate these rules and you face the triple whammy of additional taxation. And it’s easy to violate the rules, especially if you don’t know what they are.

What happens when you locate a commercial office (an office in the home or a regular office) in a duplex or apartment building? It’s possible that this location can produce tax-favored depreciation for the office. This seems a little strange at first, but once you see how the rules work, it’s pretty logical.

You have special tax-planning considerations when you sell a business that has zero-basis receivables and/or self-created goodwill. If you operate as a C corporation, you need additional planning because of double taxation. And the good news is that planning helps reduce the tax burden.

The sale or trade-in of a business vehicle has positive or negative tax ramifications. You have a choice in this matter. But first you need to know the dollar amount of your gain or loss. This article gives you the six steps to finding your gain or loss.

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.

Business-related classes or seminars can put a serious dent in your wallet, so, of course, you’d like to write off those costs as business expenses. But there are some strict and somewhat tricky rules for deducting business education expenses. In some cases, the education can fail the tax deduction test but qualify for business deductions following an alternative path.

Personal service corporations pay taxes at a hefty flat tax rate of 35 percent. As a result, many personal service corporations pay their shareholder-employees year-end bonuses to zero out the taxable income. A recent court case put the kibosh on this for a law firm and should put you on notice.

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.

If you struggle with depression, anxiety, or other mental disabilities, you may rely on an animal for critical emotional support. But this support animal might do even more for you. It could qualify as an animal for which you can deduct its cost, training, and maintenance.

Follow these three easy steps to an IRS audit-proof tax-deferred Section 1031 exchange of your SUV for a car.

The IRS deemed that personal use of business-earned frequent flyer miles and hotel reward points are tax-free until further notice. Cash rewards are another matter. First, they are not gross income. Second, they reduce basis. Third, they produce a deduction when you donate them to charity.

Self-employed individuals and employees who live and work abroad can potentially exclude most, if not all, of their earned income from United States taxation. But to make this happen, you need to get on top of a few tricky tax rules. And your best bet is to use the tax code safe-harbor 330-day rule not only for safety but also for some extra after-tax income.

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.

When you sell a business, you will likely sign a noncompete agreement, also known as a covenant not to compete. As the seller, the purchase price allocated to the noncompete does not produce the tax result you want. But the noncompete does do for the buyer what the buyer wants. Thus, you need to know how the noncompete works so you can negotiate the sale with knowledge.

You have tax decisions to make every year when you own a vacant lot and/or unproductive land. It starts with the interest and property taxes and what you can or cannot deduct as itemized deductions. If you can’t deduct some or all of the interest and property taxes, then you can capitalize them by making a formal election in your tax return. But if you incur other costs, you likely sit in a Catch-22 where you simply suffer the 2 percent floor on miscellaneous itemized deductions and the alternative minimum tax (AMT).

Take advantage of the government’s tax-free $250,000 home-sale-profit exclusion ($500,000 if married) by selling your home to an S corporation that you establish. This gives you two things: (1) tax-free income and (2) a step-up in basis for the rental house.

Tax law grants tax-free income status to the proceeds you receive from income replacement disability insurance policies. You pay a price for this tax-free income: You may not deduct the premiums. Special treatment applies to overhead disability, and there’s also special treatment for S corporation payments on behalf of “more than 2 percent” shareholders.

Renting equipment to your corporation requires knowledge of the tax laws. If you as a non-corporate lessor want Section 179 expensing, you need to comply with three special rules. If you can’t comply, you may obtain the benefits of Section 179 in other ways as we explain or simply stay with the rental without using Section 179.

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.

When you sell a business, you and the buyer may structure a contingency that can vary the selling price. The tax code gives you three basic reporting possibilities for contingent prices, and, of course, the three possibilities give you planning opportunities.

Your claim to Section 179 expensing comes with strings. You make a deal with the government to keep your business use above 50 percent during the depreciation periods for the assets that you expensed. Should you violate your agreement, and depending on when you did that, the government can show up and recapture a big chunk of your Section 179 expensing.

Did you get big tax deductions using Section 179 expensing and/or bonus depreciation on your vehicle purchases in 2012, 2013, 2014, and/or 2015? If so, you now have a vehicle with a low adjusted basis. That gives you a tax problem when you sell the vehicle. To lessen and possibly eliminate the problem, use a Section 1031 tax-deferred exchange.

The tax implications for your office building and rentals have changed. Now when you fix up and improve those buildings, you need to be alert to additional savings that were not available in some prior years. Further, if you are buying a new building, you absolutely need to examine how you can create deductions where none existed before.

The IRS is pursuing taxpayers with foreign accounts and activities. You are likely aware of the FBAR and Form 8939 filing requirements, but the tax code has many other lesser-known required filings that carry large penalties for non-filing. Get onboard now. Learn the tax code’s requirements and how you might fix noncompliance and avoid huge penalties.

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.

Tax laws and regulations are not known for their clarity. That’s why it’s so surprising how clear the IRS made its regulations on foreign business travel. Even more surprising, the regulations actually work in your favor! If you know what you’re doing, you can deduct most, if not all, of your costs associated with foreign business travel. And the best part: you need not work very hard.

You likely feel some pain when you lose a rental property to foreclosure. And if you have the mortgage structured wrong, tax law adds to whatever pain you experienced with the lender. But in the right circumstances, you can lose your rental property to foreclosure and save money, too.

Get ready to thank the IRS. With the new tangible property regulations you can write off replaced components and achieve two types of tax savings. Before the new regulations, if you replaced a roof, you likely continued to depreciate the old roof and also depreciated the new roof. The old roof—the ghost roof—usually triggered additional recapture taxes. You are going to like the new rules, especially the two new types of tax savings.

If you are selling your S or C corporation, you have plenty to think about. And of course, the buyer has much to think about too. By using an election in the tax code, you and the buyer can get on the same page so you can sell with one level of taxation and also give the buyer what the buyer wants most—a step-up in basis of the assets acquired.

Do you claim the home-office deduction? If so, did you claim zero depreciation on the office so you could avoid the recapture tax? If yes, you need to spend a few minutes with this article to see whether that zero depreciation on the home office was a good idea or not.

What happens if you die? Or, in particular, what happens if you own an S corporation with others and one owner dies? Will you want to deal with the heirs? If not, how will you pay off the heirs? You might find the answer in an employer-owned life insurance policy, as discussed in this article.

You need to thank your lawmakers for the ability to claim your net operating loss (NOL) against income from other years. Think of it: tax deductions you incurred this year that exceeded your current-year taxable income turn into tax benefits, either immediately by carrying the NOL back or in the future by carrying the NOL forward. This article explains how this works, what you need to do, and how to see where you get the most dollars for your effort.

Health insurance premiums are rising at an astronomic rate. This is one of the biggest monthly expenses for many families. That’s where, because you are in business, a properly planned and executed Section 105 plan can work for you. This plan works like magic—it turns your medical expenses into tax-favored business expenses.

Few things can rock your world like the prospect of losing your home. In a foreclosure, the lender sends you one or two Form 1099s that will worry you too. The 1099s could show that you have cancellation of debt income (that’s taxable income). And then, just to pile on, the foreclosure that took away your home might trigger a taxable gain. That’s all bad news. But when you know the rules, you’ll see that you can make some or all of the bad-news tax problems go away.

If you and your spouse are the right ages, you can use one simple strategy to collect an EXTRA $50,000 or so in Social Security benefits. But it gets even better: while you’re collecting this additional amount, your own Social Security benefits continue to grow for an even bigger payout! But to do this, you need to act immediately.

The tax rules for determining whether amounts you spend on your rental properties are for improvements (which you must capitalize) or repairs and maintenance (which you can expense) are complicated. But if you qualify as a small business, the IRS has a possible gift for you in the form of hassle-free and income-generating safe-harbor expensing.

If you want to claim retroactively enacted bonus depreciation on ALL the qualifying assets you purchased during the year, smile. But if you don’t want that extra 50 percent depreciation on some or all of the assets, you need to take action on your tax return to avoid phantom depreciation and its very ill effects.

If you sold your home using seller financing, you likely don’t look forward to your buyer defaulting on your loan. Here’s a twist: It may not be a bad thing in the end. Under the right circumstances, you could walk away with more cash in your pocket—and you could make some or all of that cash tax-free! But there’s one big trap that you need to avoid.

In IRS Notice 2015-17, the IRS allowed S corporation owners in 2014 and 2015 to avoid the $100-a-day penalties on S corporation reimbursements of individually purchased health insurance and on providing insurance for the owners only. But 2016 is a new year, so what is that status now?

Are you suffering from phantom depreciation? This is when the tax law is depreciating your vehicles and other assets without giving you any deductions. Pretty outrageous, right? You suffer this when you fail to elect out of bonus depreciation. In this article, we show you how to fix bonus depreciation problems and also recoup a missed Section 179 deduction.

When you sell your business, you face two types of federal income taxes: (a) regular and (b) capital gains. Capital gains are better—much better. If you sell the assets rather than the business interest, your sale of self-created intangibles likely produces capital gains. Of course, the best bet is to sell the business interests rather than the assets, assuming you operate as other than a proprietorship, which can sell assets only.

Even the most savvy business owners can, at times, have trouble paying their bills. If one of those bills is your tax bill, the possibility of having to deal with the IRS to arrange payment is daunting. But have no fear: as you’ll learn here, the IRS offers multiple payment options, depending on how much you owe and your financial situation.

Schedule C business owners and their spouses must obtain health insurance coverage for themselves (and any other dependents) or risk a penalty under health care reform. While there are many ways to get that coverage, one way—a properly established proprietorship reimbursement arrangement—can lead to three and possibly four significant tax advantages for the business owner and spouse.

Do you ever worry that people or businesses that owe you money might not pay up? Do you take some comfort from the idea that if you end up on the short end of the stick, at least you can salvage a tax write-off out of it? Don’t count on it if you haven’t read this article.

Yes, December 31 is just around the corner. That’s likely your last day for finding tax deductions to cut your 2015 taxes. And with our existing high tax rates, 2015 is a good year to cut your taxes. In this article, you can find and release tax deductions that the tax code trapped inside your existing business and personal cars, SUVs, trucks, and vans.

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.

A business motor home could provide both big tax deductions and an ideal solution to your business lodging and transportation needs. You would know how clean your sleeping room is. You would know the room’s smoking and no-smoking history. You would know how many pets, if any, have graced the premises.

When you get busy with your business, it’s easy to forget about your retirement accounts and medical coverages and plans. But year-end is approaching, and now’s the time to take action to cut your 2015 taxes. This article gives you six action steps for 2015 that can help you reduce your taxes and pocket extra money.

If you are thinking of getting married or divorced, you need to consider December 31, 2015, in your tax planning. Here’s another planning question: Do you give money to family or friends (other than your children who are under age 24)? If so, you need to consider the zero-bracket planning strategy. And now let’s consider your children who are under age 18. Have you paid them for work they’ve done for your business? Have you paid them the right way? You’ll find the answers here.

Here’s an easy question: Do you need more 2015 tax deductions? If yes, continue on. Next easy question: Do you need a replacement business vehicle? If yes, you can solve or mitigate the first problem and solve the second problem at the same time, but you need to read this article now so you know what you have to do, when to do it, and what you might want to wait for before doing it.

Learn how orthodontists and other professionals can have an office downtown and also qualify for a home-office deduction using tax law’s administration rules.

Your stock market portfolio can represent a little gold mine of opportunities to reduce your 2015 income taxes when you take advantage of the Tax Code’s offset game. The Tax Code contains basic rules for this game, and once you know the rules, you can apply the correct strategies. In addition to saving taxes with the game of offset, you can also avoid paying taxes on stock appreciation by gifting stock to charity, your parents, and your children who are not subject to the kiddie tax.

As a small business owner, you have good odds of someday facing a penalty for late filing and/or late payment of your or your corporation’s taxes. It’s likely you will think that you have to pay the penalties. But as you’ll learn here, when you know the rules of the road, you can travel the IRS mercy path and have those penalties forgiven.

Do you have significant insurance needs? If so, the captive insurance company might save you money on your insurance, create a nice tax shelter, and produce a pile of cash. To achieve this agreeable result, you have to follow the rules and consider the tax code safe harbors.

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.

Here’s a handy-dandy strategy for getting some money to your college student to help him or her pay for school. Have your child engage in an activity that’s not subject to self-employment taxes. If you operate your business as a corporation or your child is age 18 or older, this is a great college funding tool that you need to consider.

Do you rent property to your business? Under the self-rental rule, you could forfeit your expected tax breaks and end up on the hook for unexpected taxes. This is true even if you create a separate entity to rent the property to your business.

If you want to rent one, two, or twenty bedrooms in your home, you need to avoid one big trap and navigate two sets of rules to obtain the tax benefits you likely were hoping for when you thought of this rental activity. This is an area where tax knowledge is power. Without the knowledge, you could create a very unsatisfactory tax result.

You might want to tap your IRA penalty-free for medical expenses. If so, avoid the three traps that we explain in this article. Don’t be a victim. You suffer first because you incurred medical expenses, then you have to pay income taxes on the withdrawal of money from your traditional IRA, so the last thing you want is to pay a 10 percent penalty on top of all that.

Do you have a solo 401(k) plan with more than $250,000 in it? Did you, your tax preparer, or the plan administrator file your 5500-EZ? Are you sure? The penalty for not filing the required 5500-EZ for a plan year is $25 a day, capped at $15,000. That’s for one plan year. If you failed for 10 years, that’s $150,000.

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.

You need to know the tax rules before you convert business property to personal use. You don’t want the recapture surprise. You don’t want the tear-jerking missed tax deduction. With a little tax knowledge, you can avoid both the surprise and the tears.

Have you been claiming zero depreciation for your home office so that you can avoid the depreciation recapture tax? Surprise! Tax law has allowed and allowable depreciation rules that can make you pay the recapture tax without giving you the actual depreciation deduction. If this happens to you, you are going to pay a double tax.

You don’t automatically get to deduct mortgage interest on a rental property. Lawmakers have set traps. One trap can totally destroy the interest deduction. Another trap makes you wait a long time to realize the tax benefits of the deduction. Make sure you know what the traps are so you can avoid their impact on your bottom line.

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.

A Roth IRA is an extremely attractive option for retirement savings, since you can grow those earnings completely tax-free. You can convert your traditional IRA to a Roth IRA no matter how high your income. But you could get slammed with a hefty tax bill when you make the switch without a plan. In this article, you find three surefire strategies that will not only minimize your tax bill when you roll over those funds to a Roth IRA, but in some cases also eliminate the additional taxes completely!

If you are selling a rental property or your home, you should consider seller financing as a possible method to achieving a rate of return better than you are receiving from your current investments. This article gives you six ways to improve the structure of your seller financing so you can pocket more cash.

You may want to consider seller financing when you sell a rental property. It can boost your rate of return. Now, you might say “Yeah, but what happens if the buyer doesn’t pay up?” There could be a big silver lining here that you haven’t considered, and that’s why you should read this article now.

If you plan on paying a nanny at least $1,900 during 2015, then you need to pay the nanny tax (payroll taxes from you, the employer). This strikes fear into many taxpayers who think this is a HUGE HASSLE and a HUGE EXPENSE. But there’s no need to fear this tax. In this article, you learn how you can offset most, if not all, of the tax expense with the help of a couple of tax breaks. In fact, you may actually end up with more money in your pocket in the end.

The paradox of choice applies when you consider the multitude of tax benefits available when paying educational expenses. In this article, we help you put money in your pocket by taking both the paradox of choice and the complexity out of two education tax credits with our step-by-step guide.

If you are selling your business, you likely want minimum taxes and no exposure to business-related liabilities once the sale is completed. That’s what this article is about. In an asset sale, you see types of taxes and opportunities that make the asset sale work to your advantage. In a stock sale, you likely get tax-favored capital gains, but you may have to give up something to the buyer.

The self-employed health insurance deduction could give you a big surprise when you file your taxes—and that’s not good. The law imposes a couple of restrictions that many people don’t know about and that might strip you of your tax savings. Take some time right now to figure out whether you qualify for the deduction and if not, what you can do about it.

If you want to convert your C corporation to an S corporation, you need a plan. No plan, BIG tax. The BIG tax means the tax on built-in gains at 35 percent. But it’s worse than that, and bigger than that, because after the 35 percent tax payment, you continue to pay at your regular tax rates on the remaining 65 percent that flows from your S corporation to you. This is torturous double taxation. So make a plan to avoid as much torture as possible, perhaps all of it. This article helps you with that plan by showing you four strategies that you can use.

Lawmakers have yet to decide if they will retroactively enact bonus depreciation and the higher Section 179 expensing limits for 2015 purchases. But if you’re looking to buy a large SUV or truck for your business, you may be surprised to learn how fast you can write off the full cost of the vehicle even if lawmakers fail to extend the tax breaks. Knowing the write-offs may entice you to pull the trigger on that purchase immediately instead of waiting for changes in the law.

A Roth IRA is not your average retirement plan. It’s a retirement savings, boondoggle savings, down payment savings, college savings, and emergency savings plan all wrapped into one. But to realize the benefits, you need to know how to avoid taxes and penalties when you take the money out. The good news: do this right and you can tap that Roth IRA and pay ZERO taxes and ZERO penalties.

Your rental properties provide tax shelter when you can deduct your losses against your other income. For you to deduct your losses, you need to pass the tax code’s 750-hour test. The good news in this article is that the home-office deduction can help you pass this test in some delightful ways that you would not usually think of.

You need to know a number of tax rules when it comes to selling your business. For example, you likely want tax-favored capital gains, but your buyer may not like that idea, as it cuts into the buyer’s tax deductions. This article is the first in a series of articles on selling your business, and it will help you understand how this process is going to work.

A great tax shelter is a rental property that shows a positive cash flow and a deductible tax loss. You can still have that type of tax shelter in today’s tax world. To make this work, most taxpayers, likely you included, need to avoid the investor trap to deduct their losses against all their other income (thus creating tax shelter). This article helps you avoid the investor trap so you can create the rental property tax shelter.

Most business meals suffer a 50 percent cut in the amount you can deduct. But here’s one of those business meal strategies that produces a 100 percent deduction. So if you spend $5,000 for meals with this strategy, you don’t deduct $2,500 because of the 50 percent. Instead, you deduct the full $5,000.

Business owners who operate their businesses as corporations and also deduct an office in the home commonly use one of three tax-deduction methods in an effort to achieve tax benefits. One method provides no tax benefit; it’s just smoke and mirrors. The second method might create a small deduction or none at all. The third method is the correct choice, as it ensures the full tax deduction and even reduces your chances of an IRS audit.

Tax law gives you several nice tax-saving strategies for your business assets but not many for your personal assets. So what happens when you convert a personal asset to a business asset? Does the personal taint last forever? No! This conversion opens the door to a world of new deductions.

You likely want to hire independent contractors whenever possible. But if you are bending and breaking the rules, you face big back taxes, horrific penalties, and interest. So, a question for you: Have you been misclassifying your workers? If so, the IRS has a good deal that lets you off the hook with just a tiny payment. We’re talking a fraction of what you would otherwise owe if you lost your contractor classification in an IRS employment tax audit.

The government wants to give you the gift of education. Your lawmakers in Washington created a tax break for courses that improve or maintain your business skills. You can deduct in full the cost of education ranging from a standalone seminar all the way up to an advanced degree—including the cost of an MBA program. But in order to get this deduction, you have to follow a couple simple rules.

You can protect yourself against the financial consequences of chronic illness or disability by purchasing long-term care insurance. The premiums for this insurance are not cheap, but tax law lets you write off the cost, thus subsidizing your purchase. But beware—there are three ways to take this deduction. Choosing the wrong method could cost you thousands of dollars in tax benefits.

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.

The IRS is making an unusually nice offer to you as a business or rental property owner—but it’s good for just a few months. You can take extra deductions right now if you performed certain major renovations on your business or rental property in prior years. If you think this applies to you, act fast so you do not miss the October (or September, if incorporated) 2015 deadline.

If you are an S corporation owner, you can get a full deduction for your health insurance premiums—despite Obamacare and even if your S corporation provides zero health benefits to non-owner employees. You have to follow a few steps to qualify for this deduction, but that’s a piece of cake once you know the rules.

If you hire workers and want to classify some of them as independent contractors, you absolutely need to know about Section 530 and its safe harbor. By law, Section 530 is the first step in an employment tax audit. And if you don’t know about Section 530, you are making a potentially fatal financial mistake.

Have you been longing for the good old days when you could offer a Section 105 health plan to your employees without having to comply with the new Obamacare rules? Well, you can still offer such a plan—provided that you limit the benefits to vision and dental.

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.

The government wants you to have happy employees. That’s why the tax code grants you extra deductions when you provide entertainment and entertainment facilities that primarily benefit rank-and-file employees. In this article, we examine how the rules work when you take your employees on a party trip.

Do you have an upcoming business trip? Wouldn’t it be nice to travel there on a cruise ship and reach your destination fully revitalized? Surprisingly, tax law allows you to treat your cruise vacation as a business transportation expense, which means you can deduct most or all of the cost.

Have you ever visited a competing business as a customer to see how its operations stack up to yours? With the right documentation, you can fully deduct the costs of this research into your rival—even the amount you pay for their products or services—as business expenses.

You save employment taxes when you hire workers as independent contractors. But you want to make certain that the workers are indeed contractors, or you could subject yourself to some expensive tax penalties. In this article, we show you three steps to independent contractor status for your workers.

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.

If you own a corporation, you need to plan in advance for the eventual sale or liquidation of your corporation—even if you do not expect either to happen anytime soon. In particular, the planning you do regarding your business goodwill could mean hundreds of thousands of dollars in tax savings.

Through a simple two-step process, you can fully deduct the cost of meals you provide to your employees. That’s right—this strategy helps you avoid the dreaded 50 percent reduction for entertainment expenses. But be careful when you use this strategy—your business may need to classify your meal differently from the meals for non-owner employees.

The IRS just launched its latest attack on your reimbursements for individually purchased health insurance: Even fully taxable reimbursements could still violate the Obamacare rules and expose you to the $100-per-day penalties. But don’t worry. We’ll give you several strategies to beat this new rule.

Whether or not you complied with Obamacare last year, we have some big news for you. It’s no problem, compliance or not, and either way the news is big for two reasons. First, if you failed Obamacare compliance in 2014, the IRS likely just released you from the monstrous $100-a-day penalty. Second, if you did it right, you may have overtaxed your employees and now, with the new IRS guidance, you can undo that overtaxation.

A November 2014 FAQ from the Department of Labor created quite a scare for S corporation owners, raising the possibility of huge Affordable Care Act (ACA) penalties simply for deducting your health insurance premiums according to IRS guidelines. However, a recent IRS notice explains how you can now safely avoid these penalties and claim your rightful deductions.

Lawmakers did it again. They retroactively reinstated a number of so-called extender laws, including those tax-favored Section 179 expensing and bonus depreciation deductions. Did you buy vehicles and equipment last year? If so, this new law can make you smile, as this article shows it did for Harry Spencer.

Before you sell or trade your business vehicle, take a minute to think. The actions you take now could come back to haunt you at tax time. You could be creating extra tax for yourself or missing out on tax losses that you could use to offset other income. We’ll tell you what you need to know to be sure you make the right decision.

If you put your kids to work in your business, you can use their compensation to create nice tax savings for yourself. This strategy lets you spend time with your children during the workday and teach them valuable lessons about working life—as well as valuable lessons about money and tax planning.

In a previous edition of the Tax Reduction Letter, we explained how you get business deductions for the cost and laundry expenses of work clothes you buy for yourself and your employees. This update explains how you still get your full deduction even if you do not provide this benefit to all employees.

Trust, but verify. That’s the motto you should have when it comes to your payroll tax payments. You likely have a professional or business associate take care of your tax filing and payments. But you could save yourself a lot of trouble down the road by knowing how to verify that your trusted associate has done what he or she claimed to do.

Giving to charity is a noble act no matter how you choose to give. But for purposes of tax savings, some forms of giving are much more beneficial to you than others. As a business owner, you can turn your charitable contribution into a business expense. While this does not change anything from the charity’s perspective, this hugely increases your tax savings.

Your trip from home to the office each day certainly feels like part of your workday, but it’s not—at least according to the IRS. Unless you fall into certain exceptions, your commute creates personal mileage, which is not deductible. But there’s a solution, and it’s so easy that if you don’t do it, you’re simply giving money to the government that you could keep for yourself.

Would you like to use a Roth IRA for your retirement investments, even though you make too much money to contribute to the account directly? You can. Congress has “accidentally on purpose” created loopholes to allow even high-income earners to contribute to Roth retirement accounts. But you can’t contribute directly. You have to bring your money in through the back door.

Your rental property is worth more to you than simply the generation of rental income. Your property may also create tax losses that you can use to offset your income from other sources. It’s not as easy as it used to be to make your rental property a legal tax shelter, but you can still do this if you put in the right number of hours toward the right type of work.

2015 is the first year that stockowners can sell their C corporation stock completely tax free under Section 1202 of the tax code. If you started a C corporation or purchased stock recently and you qualify for this rule, you need to determine the date you acquired the stock and wait five years before you sell. This waiting period could save you thousands and even potentially millions of dollars in taxes.

Sometimes it feels like the IRS wants everything from you, including the shirt off your back. At the Tax Reduction Letter, our team of researchers works every day to find ways to protect you from government overreach. We’ll be sure to help you keep your money—and even give you a deduction for that shirt on your back! Read this article to find out when the IRS allows you to deduct the clothes you wear in your business.

If you discriminate when you contribute to the health savings accounts (HSAs) of your employees, the IRS will make you pay a 35 percent tax on the total amount of your contributions. This tax can add up quickly, and if you have to pay it, you’ll kick yourself when you discover you can escape the tax entirely by following the three rules in this article.

If you want to file your taxes for last year (2014) as an S corporation for the first time, you might be surprised to discover that the deadline to elect S corporation status has long passed. But if you didn’t file your election in time, don’t despair. By following the rules in this article, you can retroactively create your S corporation well after the deadline and get the full benefit of your tax savings.

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.

Twenty years after the Tax Court approved a strategy that grants you extra deductions for your second home, the IRS would like you to forget it ever happened. Even though the case remains current law, you won’t find any mention of this strategy in IRS guidance to taxpayers. Unless you just happened to know old cases—or read this article—you might never have known how you could save thousands in taxes on your second home.

If your doctor recommends that you buy equipment for your health, pay attention. First of all, you should follow your doctor’s orders. But just as important, you may be able to deduct some or all of the cost. This article explains how the one-owner businessperson is in the best possible position to deduct the cost of medical equipment.

The IRA double-win strategy allows you to get a tax benefit when you first contribute to your retirement plan and then again when you withdraw the money. This article reviews how the strategy works and answers some member questions we received regarding the process.

If you are a regular reader of the Tax Reduction Letter, you know that you can use a Section 125 plan to save money on group health insurance. A number of subscribers have requested a template for how to set up one of these plans, and that’s what this article is all about—we’ll help you get your plan up and running.

The IRS lifted its long-standing ban against deductions for local lodging expenses. Now you can deduct the cost of a hotel for yourself or your employees even if you’re staying near your home. But there are three rules to know to make sure that your expense falls within the IRS “safe harbor” for deductibility.

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.

You enter a muddy legal area when you claim a home-office deduction in connection with your rental properties. Why? You must prove that you operate the rental properties as a trade or business. This article shows you the best way to meet that “trade or business” test and safeguard your deductions (and escape self-employment tax in the process).

There are special rules that you need to know regarding the deduction of your net losses if you co-own or co-manage a business or investment with your spouse. Tax law gives you some nice advantages, but they’re not what we would call logical. If you don’t know how the rules work, you might be missing out on money-saving benefits.

Your traditional IRA comes with a looming tax bill. Sure, you deduct your contributions, but you have to pay tax on 100 percent of the money you eventually withdraw. Fortunately, the tax code gives you a great year-end planning technique that you can use to minimize this future tax. You can strategically roll your traditional IRAs forward (and backward) to Roth IRAs, which allow you to withdraw qualified distributions tax-free.

If you own stock, you can take action now to escape the tax that you will incur when you ultimately decide to sell. By strategically timing sale and repurchase transactions, you can take advantage of the zero percent bracket for capital gains and gradually eliminate most or all of your tax before you ultimately dispose of the stock.

December 31 is just around the corner. That’s likely your cutoff date for finding tax deductions that will cut your 2014 taxes. And remember, your 2014 taxes are the highest they’ve been in 28 years. This article helps you identify tax deductions embedded in your existing business and personal cars, SUVs, trucks, and vans.

When you get busy with your business, it’s easy to forget about your retirement accounts and medical coverages and plans. But year-end is approaching, and now’s the time to take action. This article gives you seven action steps that help you reduce your taxes, pocket extra money, and get ready for 2015.

This article gives you easy year-end tax planning strategies for your everyday business. For example, prepaying your expenses under the IRS safe harbor and simply not billing customers and patients until 2015. These two strategies are certainly easy, as are the other three strategies in this article.

Your stock market portfolio is a great place to look for year-end tax planning opportunities. First, it’s a place where you can avoid paying taxes on stock appreciation by gifting stock to charity, your parents, and your children. Second, it’s a place where you can play a simple game of offset where you cancel out high taxes. This article gives you seven strategies that reduce your taxes and make you smile.

In your last-minute search for tax deductions, examine your children under the age of 18, your marital status, and your relatives in the zero tax bracket. With some planning, you can save good tax money here.

It’s November. It’s also the beginning of year-end tax planning time. And for many business owners, it’s car, truck, van, and SUV buying time. The combination of car, truck, van, and SUV buying time and year-end tax planning can help you make a sizable dent in your 2014 tax burden. And if lawmakers get their act together, they could further increase your tax benefits before December 31.

You can use a motor home for your business. If you are thinking of buying a motor home at this time, your Section 179 expensing election is somewhat in limbo. It’s possible that lawmakers will reinstate last year’s limits on Section 179 expensing. This article examines the gamble you take if you buy before lawmakers take action or if they fail to reinstate last year’s limits.

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.

If you operate your business as a sole proprietorship, the government takes a big chunk of your profits in the form of self-employment taxes. But there’s good news. With the help of your spouse, you can reduce your self-employment tax bill by using a simple rental strategy.

Would a unique downtown historic building be the perfect site for your office? It may be more affordable than you think. Your state and federal governments want you to rehabilitate these buildings and give you a financial incentive to do so. Here is their offer to you: if you invest in and restore a historic building, the governments will give you tax credits to offset a huge chunk of the cost of restoration.

The Affordable Care Act allows you to pay for employee insurance by increasing taxable compensation. But that’s not the route you want to take, since it means more taxes for both you and your employees. This article gives you ideas on how to pay for employee insurance without hiking up your tax bill.

You normally would not expect to have more money in your pocket after you pay your tax bill. However, with this new ruling from the IRS, you could end up with just that—a negative tax on the sale of your home! Read this article to find out how a taxpayer sold her home for a $100,000 before-tax profit and turned that into a $110,000 after-tax value.

Have you ruled out taking the home-office deduction because you believe your home is too small? You should think again. You can set up a mini home office using as little as a single square foot of floor space. When you read this article, you’ll see why this could generate thousands of dollars in tax savings.

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.

If you invest in gold, stamps, or antiques but you don’t know the tax rules governing collectors, you’re probably falling into costly tax traps that you could easily avoid with tax knowledge. When you put yourself in position to improve your tax situation, you put more money in your pocket (which gives you more money to build your collection). Read this article to discover how you can deduct your collection expenses and also minimize your taxes when you sell your items for a profit.

Are you an S corporation owner who takes advantage of the office-in-the-home deduction? If so, here’s good news. With the right tax planning, you can sell your home containing the office and defer or eliminate 100 percent of your tax, including recapture for any depreciation that you claimed. That news should put a smile on your face. Read this article to find out how you can use this strategy to pocket some extra tax dollars.

Lending money to an employee can be a great way to help your worker through difficult times and build loyalty to your business. But when you do this, you need to plan for the possibility that your employee is unable or unwilling to repay the loan. In this article, you will discover the sad example of a business owner who suffered the consequences of poor planning. Fortunately for us, his mistakes serve as a guide on preserving good tax treatment for bad loans.

Your home may be your biggest investment and storehouse of cash. While interest rates remain low on home loans and home equity lines of credit, you may be tempted to pull money out of your home with a loan. Before you act, you need to know 1) how much interest you can deduct, 2) what the limitations are on those deductions, and 3) when you get slammed by the alternative minimum tax (AMT). Read this article and find out how to make sure that your home equity interest produces tax benefits for you.

In this precedent-setting case, the Tax Court had to decide for the first time whether a tax preparer’s fraud extends the statute of limitations for IRS audit of the client return when there is no charge of fraud against the client. If the court rules against the client, then by precedent a tax preparer’s fraud extends the client’s allowable audit period from three years to forever.

When you own a business, you should look at all possible assets that you own personally and how you might use them to increase your business deductions. This is particularly true for vehicles. And the beauty of identifying assets such as personal vehicles that you can use for business is that you don’t spend money to create deductions. You simply use assets you already own.

If you are going to attend a convention, seminar, or similar meeting, you need to know that tax law breaks the Earth into two locations. In location one, you deduct your convention, seminar, or similar meeting if the event benefits or advances the interests of your business. That’s easy. In location two, you have to meet a much more difficult reasonableness standard. That’s not easy.

You never, ever want to borrow money from this one place. It’s poisonous. If you don’t suffer immediately, you might wish you had. This is a situation in which the money is readily available, you think it’s yours, and you think you are simply borrowing the money. But that’s not what’s happening. You are in truth stealing the money and violating your fiduciary responsibilities.

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.

If you buy a property, fix it up, and then sell it, is that property a dealer or an investor property? The classification boils down to your facts and circumstances. That makes it a tough call for both you and your tax preparer. And if investor status produces long-term capital gains, you want to avoid dealer status, because that causes ordinary income and self-employment taxes.

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 operate your business as a proprietorship and hire your spouse as an employee, you likely have questions about the need to pay wages to make your spouse a bona fide employee. And you likely want your spouse as a bona fide employee who receives as a tax-free fringe benefit a Section 105 medical reimbursement plan—family coverage, of course.

If you own rental property in your name or in the name of a single-member LLC, you report your rental property income and expenses on Schedule E of your IRS Form 1040. But what happens when you have an expense for which the IRS has not created a line item on the form? Answer: If it’s an ordinary and necessary expense, it’s deductible.

Would you like to avoid payroll taxes on your S corporation’s inclusion of the cost of your health insurance on your W-2? You can. First, you and your S corporation can take advantage of one of two safe harbors. If you don’t qualify for a safe harbor, you can go back to a law originally enacted in 1939 and claim that you are in a separate class of employee exempt from payroll taxes on the health insurance fringe benefit that your S corporation gave you. And then if all else fails, you can pull out the IRS’s own publication and its online assistance and insist that the IRS follow them, even though they’re legally incorrect.

You may have seen advertisements online for “defined contribution health plans.” If you use one of these plans, be sure you understand how they work. Some of them appear to offer reimbursement methods that violate tax law and expose you to enormous penalties. Read this article to identify both the safe and unsafe types of defined contribution health plans and learn how to comply with the law.

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.

Here’s a trick question: should you operate your real estate activities as a business or as an investor? If you operate as a business, you can deduct trips to real estate seminars and conventions. But if you are flipping houses, you don’t want business status because that makes you a dealer and taxes you at high ordinary tax rates rather than lower tax-favored capital gains rates. Check out this article about deducting seminars and insights into how the tax law treats dealers, investors, rental properties, and more.

That ugly alternative minimum tax (AMT) can raise its snakelike attack when you least expect it. In this court case, by changing the medical practice from a solely owned corporation to practicing as an employee of an education institution, the surgeon looked squarely in the eyes of the AMT and lost almost $20,000.

When you buy a house with less than 20 percent down, your lender will almost always force you to buy mortgage insurance. This protects the lender in case you default. Tax law used to help a lot people with the cost of mortgage insurance by allowing a deduction to certain taxpayers. That selective help on personal homes expired in 2013, but there’s hope for an extension, and existing deductions continue for your rentals and office in the home.

IRA rollovers are dangerous. In a recent court case, a judge overturned a long-standing rule on IRAs, subjecting the taxpayer to income taxes, a 10 percent penalty, and an additional 20 percent penalty! Learn how the court made a new rule that you want to avoid, and then discover an alternative method for your retirement funds that completely eliminates the danger.

If you are looking for creative ways to get rid of a house that won’t sell, consider the lease-option. This strategy only works with the right tenant and your correct use. But get this right and it’s a nice deal for everyone involved. Make sure you avoid the traps that blow up the deal and add extra taxes to your tax bill. After all, your real purpose with the lease-option is to increase your cash flow and keep your taxes to a minimum.

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.

Have lawmakers inserted any sleight of hand into your Form 1040 tax calculations? Yes, they have! And it’s really terrible. For example, the alternative minimum tax (AMT) rules make you pay taxes on your tax deductions. How’s that for true sleight-of-hand terribleness? The AMT even makes you pay taxes on the personal exemptions the regular tax law grants for your children. It’s outrageous. But, because you own a business, there are some things you can do to get even.

Lease or buy? That’s the question you often face when you want to replace your business vehicle. To help you get maximum tax-deduction benefits should you decide to lease, examine the three often overlooked tax deductions in this article.

Good tax planning these days includes planning for your children as old as age 24. They may be subject to the kiddie tax, which can skyrocket their tax rates, even on investments they received from grandma and the ones they created themselves from their own income. If you have children under the age of 24, read this article to learn when the kiddie tax applies and to see what strategies you can use to reduce or completely eliminate the kiddie tax.

When a situation outside of your control forces you to sell your house, you will have a lot of things on your plate, not the least of which are tax concerns about the sale. Fortunately, there is a friend you can turn to—the IRS. In one of its rare moments of sympathy, the IRS may lend you a helping hand and lower your tax burden if you can show that you are in a difficult situation.

Would you like to deduct business meals with your spouse? What would the IRS think about that? If the IRS said that the meals were not deductible, what would the courts say? You would think there are hundreds of rulings and court cases that explain this. Not so. There is one tax rule that mostly assures the deduction, but it requires an addition. Spend a few minutes learning how tax law treats your spouse when it comes to business meals.

You may not expect to sell your current home or vacation property any time soon, but you should take these (easy) steps right now to prepare for—or better yet, avoid—the tax burden when that day ultimately comes. If you plan to rely on the home sale gain exclusion to shield all of your profit, don’t do that. We’ll tell you why not in this article. We’ll also show you how certain records can substantially reduce the taxes you owe on the sale of your home.

Tax law grants depreciation deductions. That’s good. It then recaptures or otherwise taxes the deductions you claimed. That’s bad. Don’t let depreciation and Section 179 deductions hoodwink you. Because of the back-end tax, the deductions amount to less than they appear on the surface. This means tax planning is in order if you are to pocket more tax money. This article helps you with that tax plan so that you get more out of your depreciation and Section 179 deductions.

When you operate a side business at a loss, the IRS might think your money-losing business is simply your private tax shelter and, if so, attack it as a hobby (i.e., activity not engaged in for profit). In the regulations, the IRS looks at nine factors to decide whether you can deduct your business losses. This article shows you how the rules worked against Dr. Mikhail and how you can avoid a similar fate.

Corporate advances are a nice way to get around the double tax problem of C corporations. But there is a hidden danger. If you take a loan from your corporation without taking all the right steps, then you are asking the IRS to apply its double-tax system (plus penalties). Read this article to learn the right way to take your corporate advances.

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.

This article gives you a bird’s-eye view of the new health care landscape so that you can see all your post-Obamacare health care options together in one place. Choose the health plan that works best for your business based on the number of employees you have and the amount of money you are willing to spend.

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.

If you are suffering or about to suffer an IRS audit, you should know how your tax positions stack up against the IRS examiners’ positions. In most cases, you are discussing the facts, not the law, and you prove your facts with receipts, canceled checks, and logbooks. Once you get into the law, you need to know the rules that trump other rules. This article explains how you use the laws, rulings, and other IRS documents to prove the legal side of your case in an audit. And should your case advance beyond the IRS audit to the courts, this article helps you understand what the courts are looking for.

As you know, Obamacare has a dramatic impact on Section 105 medical plans that cover more than one employee. Of course, the first question is who is an employee for purposes of the Section 105 medical plan. And if you have multiple employees, you will be happy to know that this article gives you eight strategies for making the 105 plan work for you.

If you are an S corporation owner and you buy health insurance for yourself or your family, you need to follow the IRS rules described in this article in order to protect your tax deductions for the health insurance premiums. You also learn how to escape the Obamacare penalties for group health care even if you discriminate against your employees.

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.

Once you borrow money from your life insurance policy, you need to pay attention and ask some questions. First, are you using the loans for a business purpose? Second, are you repaying the loans? Third, if you’re not repaying the loans, what happens when the loan balance causes the insurance company to terminate your policy? If you know what happens, you’re prepared. But if you don’t know what happens, you’ll be unhappy when you receive your tax surprise.

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?

In this article, part 5 of the entertainment facility discussion, you learn how lawmakers take shots at your hunting activities. First, both real and personal property involved in your hunting activities face the entertainment facility disallowance rules. Leasing land for the hunt has its problems too. But if you like to hunt, and if you would like to learn how to deduct your hunting, this article is for you!

You can create losses without selling assets when you liquidate your S corporation. But be warned: you first need to know exactly how the gains and losses are going to flow. In this article, you see the hurdles erected by lawmakers and the IRS. You learn what you need to know. With this knowledge, you can plan. That plan might include or exclude liquidation. It depends on where the liquidation chips fall.

Don’t be a victim of your own success. When you operate two businesses, one that is profitable and one that is not, the IRS likes to attack the deductions of the losing business. When the IRS attacks, you are in for a fight. But it’s a fight that you can win with knowledge and planning.

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?

When you operate your business as an S corporation or a C corporation, you first need to remember that the corporation is a separate legal entity. If you incur travel expenses on behalf of the corporation, those are corporate expenses. You either need an agreement saying you can deduct the expenses personally or that you will submit the expenses for reimbursement. One of these two choices is really bad.

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?

Let’s say you operate your business as an S corporation but use a personal car for corporate business. To create the proper tax deductions, the right way to handle this situation is for the S corporation to reimburse you using one of two tax law-approved methods.

The entertainment facility rules are designed to destroy your entertainment facility deductions. But the law contains a number of exceptions. In Part 4 of this series, you learn how to use the business meeting and overnight lodging rules to make your vacation home a tax-deductible business asset.

Find out how giving stock in your S corporation rather than the same dollar amount in cash can save you over $6,000. Until recently, this income-splitting strategy worked only when giving to adults, but because of the recent Obamacare tax, you now get a benefit when you shift money to your children.

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.

Learn how employee use of your ski cabin or beach home produces a 100 percent business asset with deductions for depreciation, operating expenses, and mortgage interest. This can make for a great fringe benefit for both the employees and you. It also can make for a profitable investment.

When you incorporate your business, you have to decide which assets you want to contribute to your new corporation and which you want to keep in your own name. For some assets, you get better tax benefits and better liability protection when you don’t transfer them to your corporation.

The new 2014 Obamacare tax rules that apply to health reimbursement accounts (HRAs) such as Section 105 medical reimbursement plans make it difficult and impractical to have a Section 105 plan or other HRA when you have two or more employees. But if you have no employees or only your spouse as an employee, you escape the jaws of Obamacare and your Section 105 or other HRA plan gives you all the good tax benefits that you had before Obamacare.

Are you subject to the new 3.8 percent Obamacare tax? Do you own rental property? If so, use one of the three escapes in this article so that your rental property can avoid the 3.8 percent tax. The three escapes revolve around the concept of a rental property as a trade or business property. The IRS just released new safe-harbor rules making it easy for some owners of rental real estate to qualify their rentals as trade or business property exempt from the 3.8 percent tax.

When you buy a business, buy the assets—not the stock. The assets will significantly increase your tax savings in the early years of your new business. This article gives you the nuts and bolts of buying a business. It even explains how you can buy the stock of the target corporation and treat the stock purchase as an asset purchase.

When you sell your rental property activity, you get a gift of sorts in that you now get to deduct the losses denied in earlier years. Tax law calls the denied losses suspended. To ensure realization of your rightful tax deductions, you need to avoid the hidden traps in this process that delay or prevent you from using your suspended losses. Make sure you know the right way to sell your rental property or activity in order to free up your losses for immediate tax deduction.

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.

For tax years’ beginning after December 31, 2013, Obamacare contains good and bad news for Section 105 medical reimbursement plans—health reimbursement accounts (HRAs). Bad news: the new health law requires that you pay for group health insurance if you want a Section 105 plan for more than one employee. Good news: with one employee only, such as your employee-spouse or yourself if you operate as a C corporation, you don’t have to buy group health and you can reimburse expenses as you always have.

Do you employ 50 or fewer employees? Are you looking to do something on the health care front, but not interested in the group health insurance option? Health savings accounts (HSAs) could be exactly what you are looking for, especially as Obamacare becomes law.

The new 3.8 percent Obamacare tax on investment and passive income makes its debut on your 2013 tax return. Are you ready? Have you made a plan to avoid or minimize the tax? You should. And you can. In this tax-planning article, you’ll find five real-world tax reduction strategies to keep your money safe, happy, and in that place where it belongs—your pocket.

Your tax-benefit time for your business and personal vehicles is running out on December 31. If you are going to do something, do it now. This article gives you 10 year-end tax-benefit strategies for replacing or adding a business vehicle.

You can achieve year-end tax benefits by offsetting your stock market gains and losses in the right way. You also can make a gift of appreciated stock to charity, which will increase your tax benefits over what you would achieve with a cash gift. Be careful here though, as a gift of depreciated (versus appreciated) stock to a charity decreases your charitable deductions, costs you cash, and makes you unhappy when you find out what you’ve done.

In this article, you’ll learn how to create and/or ensure medical and retirement deductions before December 31. Of course, you need to get busy now. There’s not much time left. And if you are one of the targets who’s now subject to the new, higher tax rates that apply in 2013, you will find year-end planning more beneficial than ever.

If you have been waiting until now to start looking for some new and easy tax deductions to lower your 2013 taxes, this article has ideas you can use. For example, (1) using the IRS safe-harbor prepayment strategy or (2) simply using your credit cards to pay some bills gives you great last-minute deductions. In this article, you’ll find five last-minute tips for creating 2013 tax deductions.

What happens if the IRS makes a mistake in its publication or instructions? Is this your problem, or what? And how would you know if the IRS made a mistake? This article explains how the IRS made a mistake in its publication and in its instructions on the gross-income limit that applies when you want to claim the home-office deduction and have more than one place of business.

You likely have a handle on how the acquisition of a new asset is going to give you tax benefits. But have you considered the asset you are replacing? Your first step with the asset that’s going good-bye is to see whether you have a gain or loss. If you have a loss, see last month’s article. If you have a gain, take this short test to make sure you are getting maximum tax benefits.

Are you thinking of converting your C corporation to an S corporation? If so, you need to examine how the built-in gains tax can create trouble for you. Of course, once you know some of the trouble, you can find ways to mitigate it, and if you are patient, you can totally avoid it.

Tax rates are changing. You completed a side-by-side comparison of your S corporation with other entities, and you decided that it’s time to convert that S corporation to a C corporation or a sole proprietorship.

Tax law treats the built-in desk as either personal or real property depending on where you locate the desk. The personal location, such as your home, can make the built-in desk real property whereas the commercial location, such as your home office, makes the built-in desk personal property. In business, you want the personal property classification so that you can get the vastly quicker write-offs.

You have many ways to make your entertainment facility tax deductible. For example, you can treat use of the facility as compensation to the users. Tax law tags two types of people in your business for purposes of entertainment facility W-2 and 1099 compensation: “specified individuals” and others. For specified individuals whose use of the business beach home, ski lodge, or other entertainment facility creates taxable compensation, tax law limits the business’s deduction for its entertainment facilities. For compensated taxable use by nonspecified individuals, the business faces no special limits on deductions for entertainment facilities.

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.

Let’s say that you calculate a tax loss on the sale of your business vehicle. Tax law gives you tax benefits from a valid tax-loss deduction. But you need to make the right move to realize those tax benefits. And when it’s time to dispose of your old business vehicle, you have a number of choices, only one of which will produce immediate tax benefits for you.

Are you thinking of converting your business to an S corporation? The IRS will be watching you closely. Learn to avoid the common mistakes that many business owners make.

The IRS just ruled that a same-sex married couple are spouses for federal income tax purposes. This means the same tax deductions and tax benefits that accrue to other married couples now accrue to same-sex married couples. The IRS ruling is a direct result of the Supreme Court’s decision in Windsor. This article sets forth business and personal tax breaks that marriage provides.

See how this musician could lose money for seven years in a row and prove that he was in the music business to make a profit. This was important. By winning his case, he cut his taxes by more than $17,000 for the two years at issue before the court. If you have an activity that you hope is a business activity, but that might be a hobby, you need to read this article.

How would you like a business tax deduction for your yacht, hunting lodge, hunting lease, airplane, beach cottage, fishing camp, swimming pool, ski lodge, or tennis court? Tax law contains a clear set of rules that you can follow to create such deductions. And as you would expect, the rules are pretty demanding.

If you are a sole business owner and also have 10 unrelated rental properties, what are the tax ramifications of the rental properties? How is the income from those properties reported to the IRS? What is the best way to structure ownership of those properties to limit your liability exposure? This article addresses these questions and more.

Do you have disability insurance? Is your disability protection a traditional disability income policy or a disability overhead expense policy? If you become disabled, do you have to pay self-employment taxes on the benefits that you receive? This article explains what you need to know about the disability policies and the self-employment tax.

Have you purchased vehicles for use in your business? Did you take a 179 deduction for them? What happens to your deduction if you retire or become disabled before the end of the vehicle’s useful life? What if you die? This article gives you what you need to know.

Say you inherit an annuity. That’s nice. But when you examine the annuity you find that it’s a bad investment; what can you do about it? Answer: plenty! This article shows you how a Section 1035 tax-free exchange can work to your benefit. Note the words “tax free.” That’s lovely, a tax-free fix for a bad annuity.

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.

You may deduct your costs of business travel. But what happens to your deductions when you travel by cruise ship? Do the rules change? Do the rules vary by business destination? The answer is that the tax-deduction rules change for cruise ship travel and they change by business destination.

You might simply file a form to convert your business from a corporation to a sole proprietorship, but this simplicity can trigger unexpected taxes galore. Don’t let the taxes surprise you. Evaluate the tax costs. See if the conversion works to your best financial advantage. Also, make sure to examine tax law’s three special tax-benefit techniques available to small-business owners.

Do you have a vacation home rental? Do you use it for both rental and personal purposes? If so, you need to know the rules on what makes a repair day. Why? Repair days do not count as either personal or rental days. And that’s only part of the story.

Do you gain or lose tax advantages when you marry? Lawmakers have tried to deal with the marriage issue for years, and they have made multiple changes in the laws. But there’s no perfect law, so winning and losing because of marriage still exists.

What one mistake can you make with your taxes that will cause you to pay penalties of up to 47.5 percent? And that’s not the worst part. What could be worse than a 47.5 percent tax penalty? How about both the penalty and a full-blown IRS audit? That’s far worse.

Taxpayers get into a self-directed IRA to achieve investment returns larger than they can achieve with conventional IRAs. Whether that works out or not is the investment side, but another big issue is the tax side. In this court case, the taxpayers learned that they destroyed their self-directed IRA on the first day. Thus, during the six years this self-directed IRA operated it did not exist under the law. This put the IRA owners on the hook for taxes and penalties.

Business entertainment is tax deductible even when you pay only for yourself. That’s because entertainment tax deductions are based on the activity, i.e., whether it’s bona fide business entertainment, not on who paid for whom.

Would you like to find more tax deductions for your business? This taxpayer created an ESOP as one way to gain more tax benefits from his business. He also created a management services corporation to provide services for his existing corporation. But he made one common and most tragic error. He just did not do the work.

Have you considered providing your employee with an automobile? Would that automobile be used by the employee for business purposes or personal purposes? The tax effect for the employee depends on the answers to that question. This article gives you what you need to know.

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.

Depending on how you operate your business and where it’s located, the federal income tax terms “personal home” and “tax home” can have a big impact on your business vehicle deductions. And then there’s the difference between the federal income tax terms “business travel” and “business transportation” and how one rule applies when you are inside the area of your tax home.

As with other forms of business entertainment, taking a prospect, colleague, or client to a sporting event is deductible at the rate of 50 percent of costs. But, as this scenario illustrates, if the sporting event you and a prospect, colleague, or client attend is a certain type of “charitable sporting event,” your costs are 100 percent deductible.

Do your tenants improve your property? Should they? Under Section 109 of the Internal Revenue Code, landlords receive the tenant improvements at termination of the lease free of income taxes. “Tax free” is what you have to call a nice package of tax benefits.

Inheriting an IRA used to mean a heavy estate tax and federal income tax burden. But recent changes to the estate tax have significantly reduced this burden. Further, spouses have special income-tax planning techniques available that can make inheriting an IRA today a much happier experience.

Have you considered buying a personal seat license so that you can buy season tickets to watch your favorite football, basketball, hockey, baseball, soccer, or other team? Would you use the tickets for business purposes? If so, then you need to know if you can claim tax deductions for the cost of the seat license. This article tells you what you need to know.

Don’t claim that home-office tax deduction! It’s a red flag. Whoa! What’s a red flag and who says so? This article debunks the red flag for the home-office deduction.

The rental property tax-shelter game is for those who know how the rules work. Your rental property acts as a tax shelter when you can claim tax deductions for your rental property losses against your other sources of income. To qualify your rental properties for tax shelter benefits, you need proof of hours worked on your rentals. You win the tax shelter test when you (1) pass a 750-hour test, (2) pass a second, more-hours-in-real-estate test, and (3) pass an hours-worked material participation test for each shelter property or group of properties, if elected.

Lawmakers reduced your deduction for legitimate business entertainment meals from 100 to 80 percent in 1986 and then from 80 to 50 percent in 1993. That might be good news. It could protect you from the dreaded Sutter rule, where you could lose all your entertainment meal deductions if you didn’t spend more, or differently, than you spend on yourself. Yes, tax laws can be strange.

You can’t claim a home-office deduction if you also have a second location for your business outside the home. Right? Wrong!!! Here’s why.

How would you like to buy a small business, sell it at a huge profit, and defer the taxes as if you had completed a tax-deferred exchange? You can. It’s not a Section 1031 exchange. But it can give you the same exact tax deferral that you can achieve with a Section 1031 exchange. You find this great benefit in Section 1045 of the Internal Revenue Code.

If you wreck your business vehicle, you will like the involuntary conversion rules that allow you to defer any taxable gain, providing you replace the vehicle within two years. This is true regardless of how you operate your business, corporation, or proprietorship.

As the landlord or the lessee, you get big tax breaks when you can take advantage of a qualified leasehold improvement. We gave you those details last month. But if the landlord and the lessee are tax law-defined related parties, you can kiss those tax-favored benefits good-bye. In this article, you learn who those related parties are so you can avoid the kiss good-bye.

Antique desks, clocks, cabinets, bookcases, rugs, conference tables, paperweights, and even cars can add character and beauty to an office. Antiques also make a great investment because they appreciate in value. And here’s one more neat thing about antiques: you can expense them under Section 179 of the tax code if you (1) actually use them to conduct business; and (2) such use causes wear and tear to the antique.

Do you operate your business as a corporation? Does the corporation own the business car? Do you drive the corporate-owned car or other vehicle for personal purposes? If so, you need to know how the IRS treats your personal use and what that personal use does to the corporate tax deductions.

When you attend a convention or similar meeting, your attendance automatically qualifies as you having a substantial and bona fide business discussion. When you precede or follow a substantial and bona fide business discussion with entertainment that takes place in a non-business setting such as going to Disneyland, you qualify to deduct the cost of the Disneyland tickets.

This article answers six questions about the big tax benefits to the sole owner of the S corporation who rents his personal residence to his solely owned S corporation for 14 days or less. The answers deal with (1) the need for a 1099, (2) how to report the 1099 on the 1040, (3) multiple corporations, (4) events for independent contractors, (5) events for employees, and (6) proof of fair rent.

The Federal Housing Authority (FHA) guarantees loans so that lenders can make mortgage loans with lower down payments, lower closing costs, and easier credit qualifications. When the mortgage crisis hit, the FHA changed the rules for mortgage companies that had independent contractors brokering FHA mortgages. The change allowed only W-2 employees to sell FHA loans, and thus many mortgage companies converted their brokers from independent contractors to W-2 employees. For many, this new W-2 status produces a totally unfair tax result that can be overcome with knowledge.

Do you own an office building or commercial retail building that you lease? Are you a tenant in an office building or retail space? Are you considering some leasehold improvements to the space? If so, you need to get your act together lickety-split, as time is running out on IRS-approved huge tax deductions for “qualified leasehold improvement property.”

Your ability to deduct a home office is straightforward until you allow your spouse to use the office or you add a second business to the mix. When your spouse uses the office or you add a second-business, your home-office tax deduction becomes more complicated.

Do you own your business? Do you pay parking for yourself? An employee? If so, you need to know how the tax-free fringe-benefit rules for parking work, as explained in this article.

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.

How much of a vehicle deduction do you want from your business-vehicle purchase? A lot? A little? Could lawmakers trip you up in your desires? Absolutely. There are big differences in what you can deduct, depending on whether you buy a pickup truck, SUV, or car. Further, the differences among the categories depend on the weight of the vehicles. You need to know what the differences are if you are going to get the vehicle deduction you want.

Last month we explained how an S corporation could rent the sole shareholder’s personal residence for 14 days or less, obtain a tax-deduction for rent, and create tax-free income for the shareholder. An enrolled agent raises six issues that he thinks could negate this free-rent strategy. Learn what the issues are and why the strategy works.

You may be leaving thousands and even tens of thousands of dollars in unclaimed tax deductions on the table if you traded in a vehicle you owned on the lease of a business vehicle. Here’s a look at why the money gets left on the table. It’s a simple matter of thinking that this was a trade. For tax purposes, it was not a trade. And that’s usually good for your pocketbook.

If you have workers who are paid on a 1099 as independent contractors, you need to avoid one fatal mistake. When you make this fatal mistake, you subject your worker employment classification to either the tax court’s common-law seven-factor test or the IRS’s 20-factor common-law test. Both of these tests are hard on the employer and often result in harsh reclassification of the 1099 independent contractors to W-2 employee status.

Is your last payment of payroll taxes in the hands of the IRS or in the hands of an embezzler? How would you know? There’s one easy way to know: simply use the IRS’s online service to check. But that’s a lot of trouble, so why bother? Because if the money has been stolen, you (1) are out the money and (2) have to pay that same amount to the IRS. If you have to pay twice, you are going to be furious. Don’t let this happen.

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.

Do you operate your business as an S or C corporation? If so, have you considered renting your home to your corporation for corporate meetings and perhaps the annual holiday party for employees? You should. Why? If the rental is done right, the corporation deducts the rent, and you receive the rental income tax-free.

As you likely know, tax law contains a number of rather ugly rules. One such rule is the disallowance of 50 percent of certain meal and entertainment costs. For example, party with your employees and get a 100 percent deduction, but have a serious meeting with your employees in a restaurant and you are stuck with the 50 percent deduction. Interestingly, there is a totally different rule that gives you better tax deductions when you serve the business meal to your employees at a meeting that takes place on your business premises.

Tax law limits the home mortgage interest deduction to a maximum mortgage balance of $1.1 million. But what happens when you have an office in your home for which you claim tax deductions and also have a mortgage in excess of $1.1 million? In this article, the IRS agent incorrectly disallowed some home-office mortgage interest, and the tax professional had difficulty finding the tax law that would overcome the disallowance.

Once you decide whether to buy or lease your business vehicle, you need to ensure that the actual transaction you enter into is the one you intended. It’s not simply a matter of what you call it. The actual terms of the agreement must make it a “true lease” or a purchase. If the IRS finds that the lease is not a lease or that a purchase is not a purchase, the IRS re-characterizes the transaction, charges you additional taxes, and then hits you with hefty penalties.

If you intend to travel to a business or personal location, you should check out the travel rules before you take the trip. This article sets the stage for what you need to consider. You might find that what you thought was going to be a personal trip is instead a tax-deductible business trip.

This article contains a short quiz that will help you understand when you can gain tax deductions by using more than one vehicle for business. You will see what the IRS has to say about driving more than one vehicle, how the mileage log works when you drive more than one vehicle, and what it takes to make this pay off for you.

Although personal considerations come into play, the choice between buying and leasing a vehicle for your business ultimately boils down to cost. So it’s essential to understand how to compute and compare the costs and to have the right tools to make those computations easy. This article gives you what you need.

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.

Our rental property analyzer reveals the truth about your rental property and gets you to bottom-line results that you can fully understand. The new higher tax rates impact your rental property. We suspect that you already knew that. But did you know that the higher tax rates could give you a better bottom line (i.e., more after-tax cash in your pocket from the investment)? This article explains how higher taxes work to your benefit.

When you operate your business as an S corporation, you run into some weird tax-deduction rules, like those that apply to health insurance. For example, the S corporation may not deduct the cost of your health insurance as an employee-owner fringe benefit. Then, if you pay for the health insurance personally, you may not personally deduct the cost of the health insurance as a self-employed individual. Tax law has you in a classic catch-22. But there is a workaround that’s very straightforward and beneficial as described in this article.

If you own rental properties, enjoy being in that business, and want to grow that rental property business, you need to know the ins and outs of the Section 1031 exchange. The word “exchange” is misleading; what you really do in a 1031 is sell an existing property and then buy a new property, but you do this using an exchange intermediary. It’s easy and the intermediary is not expensive. In this article you will learn how to avoid Mr. Adams’s fate as we follow him to court with an exchange that involved a rental to his son that raised issues with the IRS.

Employees complicate your retirement plan design, but you have many design options. This article takes you through six plan designs that open your eyes to the many possibilities you have to ensure that you get from your retirement plan the maximum retirement benefits you want.

Are the S corporation dividends (technically distributions) taxable? If so, how does that work on my personal tax return, and how do I then get the money out of the S corporation?

Have you considered the options that are available to you in designing your retirement plan? In this article, you will see how you might put away as much as $214,404 when you earn only $140,000. On the other hand, you might not want to put anything into retirement this year, and this article explains how your plan design can enable a zero contribution.

One of our subscribers encountered a tax preparation firm that charges a commission for amending past returns. Our subscriber asked this question: “Is such a commission legal?”

What happens if you buy a timeshare and then sell it at a loss? Is the loss deductible or not? Your answer depends on how you used the timeshare. Did you allow it to be rented to others? Did you use it for business stays? What about personal use?

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.

Tax law picks on “entertainment facilities” and makes them difficult to deduct. This is where tax planning comes in. With good tax planning, you can create deductions for your entertainment facility.

Buy or lease? That is the question you must answer when you acquire a new vehicle for your business. Unfortunately, like most business owners, you may simply not know the right way to weigh the options. Result: You could end up paying more than you should and/or miss out on glorious tax savings. Here’s what you need to know to ensure this doesn’t happen.

The fiscal cliff is coming on December 31 unless lawmakers do something. What does that mean to you? Does it mean you should pay more taxes this year? Perhaps. For insights into what you need to consider, read this article.

If possible, you want to take money from your corporation in some form other than salaries and wages, on which you pay payroll taxes. One such tactic, the lease of Section 179 personal property to your corporation, can accomplish this, but it rubs against one big gotcha and two steep hurdles. This article shows you how to avoid the gotcha, avoid the hurdles, and get the result you want.

To repair or improve your property? That’s the question. But should you have to wade through 256 pages of regulations to get the answer to whether your fix-up is a repair or an improvement? Perhaps not. The IRS is giving you an out on those 256 pages, at least until 2014

It’s easy to think that a business convention, seminar, or similar meeting is deductible when in fact it is not. The meeting could be in the wrong location. It might have the wrong people in attendance. Its purpose might not rise to the level needed for deduction. Protect your deductions for conventions, seminars, and similar meetings by knowing the rules in this article.

How does the tax law treat the classic car when you use it for business? Can you deduct it just as you would any car you use in business? Learn how some tax law changes enabled the classic car as a business asset and why that can work to your advantage.

As a subscriber, you likely remember that the trade of a business car for another business car is a Section 1031 exchange. Most businesspeople and real estate investors use the 1031 exchange to avoid paying taxes on the profits that would exist if the asset had been sold outright. In this article, you see how poor Mr. Bird made a $47,000 tax loss not deductible because he used Section 1031 when he traded in his old car on a new car.

You might have asked yourself this question: Can I claim the home-office deduction and not claim depreciation as part of that deduction? The answer: Yes, but you need to have records that prove your zero amount. And then there’s the sad fact that you likely cheat yourself out of some after-tax cash by not claiming your depreciation deductions. This article explains how this works and more.

When you draw Social Security benefits before you reach full retirement age, you lose 50 cents on the dollar for each dollar that exceeds the earnings limit. With respect to the earnings limit, you find both good and bad news in 401(k) contributions.

The IRS just released the new 2013 standard mileage rates. For business purposes, you can use the standard mileage rates in lieu of actual expenses for depreciation and operating expenses of the vehicle. It’s different for charity, medical, and moving mileage. Here, the rate is in lieu of “out of pocket” operating expenses only.

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.

In this article, you’ll learn four tax-planning strategies for your medical deductions and two strategies for your retirement. If you want to implement the strategies for 2012, you need to get busy now. There’s not much time left, and one of these strategies requires action before December 1.

If you want to do something with your business vehicles this year, you don’t have much time left. This article gives you the year-end strategies you need to ensure maximum tax benefits should you decide to replace or add a business vehicle.

Should you get married or divorced before December 31, 2012? What about your children—do you have them on the payroll? And what about the cash gifts you have been giving to your favorite aunt to help her in her later years—are you doing this gift the best way? You’ll find the answers to these questions in this article.

Are thinking about harvesting your tax losses? You should be. Leaving tax-deductible losses on the table at the end of the year is very disappointing. And then there’s the stock gift to charity. Are you doing these correctly so as to maximize your tax benefits? Make sure by reading this article now.

Good news. As you may remember from our previous article, the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals sent the Shellito case that involved a Section 105 medical reimbursement plan back to the tax court. We report in this article good news: The tax court reversed its original decision and granted the Shellitos their deductions. Most importantly, this reversal adds clarity to making your Section 105 medical reimbursement plan work.

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.

One of the many benefits to owning your own business is the ability to deduct travel expenses, especially when you combine pleasure with business travel. You likely know lots of reasons for legitimate business travel, but this article will add new reasons and additional knowledge.

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.

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 plane, boat, and car; accordingly, if you travel for your business, you should know the rules in this article.

Doing your taxes yourself using tax preparation software is dangerous business. You might realize the danger up front and decide that you need some type of audit defense or representation insurance in case of an IRS audit. And then, once the audit commences and you engage your audit defense team, find yourself in the soup like the couple in this article.

If you, or another entity you own, rent buildings or equipment to your business activity, you likely face the self-rental rules. If you are unsure of what the self-rental rules mean and you have these types of rentals, you absolutely need to read this article.

Although you might have thought you converted an asset from business to personal use, you did not. You now simply use the asset for personal use and that changes your business/personal mix. The business asset retains its business attributes and that means gain, loss, and recapture at the time of ultimate disposal.

When it comes time to remove yourself from your business, what’s your plan? This article gives you one maneuver to consider if you operate your business as a corporation. It’s called the stock redemption, and this article shows how a father used the redemption to transfer ownership to his children in a tax-friendly manner. The principles in this article can also be used to transfer ownership to business associates, employees, and other shareholders

Do you own an airplane? If not you, how about your corporation? This month, we are writing about the new IRS regulations that govern your use of your C or S corporation’s aircraft. In this article, you will find more than a half dozen strategies that you can use to minimize the tax bite caused by personal use of your corporation’s aircraft.

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.

When you use a motorhome for business travel, what tax rules do you trigger? For example, is the motorhome for lodging or transportation? Lodging has one set of rules. Transportation has a different set of rules.

Do you operate your business as an S corporation? If so, how does the home-office deduction work for the employee-owner? Here are six answers that the S corporation owner needs for the home-office deduction. One of the six answers gives you ideas on how you can comply with the “convenience-of-the-employer” test.

Tax law’s passive-loss rules are pretty much the grim reaper of current-year tax benefits from your rental properties. Note the words “current year.” Those passive losses trapped this year are available down the road. With planning, you might be able to release those trapped tax benefits when you want.

The tax law definition of your tax home can jump up and bite you when you have a business operation away from your personal residence. Since tax law does not govern where you live, it treats your decision on where to locate your home as a personal decision that gives you a personal location. When your tax home is not near your personal home, you can lose both (a) overnight business travel deductions and (2) business mileage from an office inside the home to a regular office outside the home.

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.

The IRS recognizes deductible business travel using the “overnight rule.” In other words, to have a deductible business travel day, you must be away from home long enough to stay overnight or require sleep or rest. Once this rule is in play, special circumstances can make weekends, holidays, and other personal days tax deductible. This article puts the many travel-day circumstances in an easy-to-use flowchart so that you can save tax dollars on your combined personal and business trips.

As you know from last month’s article, the self-rental rules can catch you unaware and alter your rental property tax benefits. You can solve the self-rental problems by eliminating the rental and having your business own the building. That’s one solution. This article gives you a second solution that you might like better. Here, we show you how to qualify for a special election that allows you to treat your rental and your business as one activity for federal tax purposes. This can give you the best of both worlds: (1) legal protection and (2) tax shelter.

Is your receipt of a life insurance death benefit tax free to you? For income tax purposes, the likely answer is yes. But when you get into the estate, the answers are (1) maybe, (2) no, or (3) yes, depending on who the recipient is and what type of planning has taken place. Life insurance planning is important now because the current $5.12 million exemption from estate taxes expires on December 31, 2012, and lawmakers slotted the 2013 exemption at $1 million and increased the tax rate from 35 to 55 percent.

If you and your spouse work together in your business, you need to know the rules of the road for owning and operating your proprietorship, limited liability company, or corporation. In part 1 of this article we discussed how you can save both self-employment and income taxes with the right mix of income and employee status of your spouse. In this part 2, you learn what you need to do to ensure that your operating business entity allows you to achieve the benefits of part 1.

Your timeshare can qualify as a second home for the mortgage interest deduction easily if you don’t rent or attempt to rent it. Once you introduce rent into your timeshare equation, you trigger two tough rules: (1) a special mortgage-interest-deduction rule for the personal part of the timeshare and then (2) the dreaded vacation-home rental rules for the rental part.

If you operate your business as a proprietorship, S corporation, or single-member LLC, the HSA gives you, the owner, the ability to discriminate in benefits on your behalf. In addition, you get the HSA’s front-end tax deduction, tax-deferred growth, and no taxes on withdrawals used for medical expenses.

When you rent to a business in which you and/or your spouse work 500 hours or more, you engage in a self-rental that limits your loss deductions and taxes your profits. In other words, you get tax law’s double whammy. There is one solution to this problem.

The home-office deduction lives in the world of false myths. One such myth is depreciation recapture. In most cases, the benefits of depreciation deductions far outweigh the recapture. Further, with a little planning, you can easily defer and even avoid the recapture tax altogether.

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

Is your lease a lease? Are you sure? There are lots of funny rules that make what looks like a lease, a purchase—and what looks like a conditional sales agreement, a lease. This article shows you what happened to Arthur Boyce and gives you a number of tips to help you avoid his plight.

CPA subscriber points out that for the Section 105 medical reimbursement plan to work, marriage is not required.

Your husband-and-wife business may already be a success. That’s great. Now, with a little tax planning for the husband-and-wife business, you can increase your after-tax profits and sleep better at night knowing that your business form is good.

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.

To claim a home-office deduction, you must use a portion of your home exclusively for business. The meaning of the word “exclusively” (pretty much “only”) is explained in this article.

The W-2 mortgage loan officer in this tax case beat the alternative minimum tax (AMT) by winning his claim that, in spite of his W-2, he was an independent contractor who should report his business expenses as a proprietorship on Schedule C of his Form 1040.

Because you are in business, you likely have the opportunity to improve your tax deduction for long-term care insurance. In fact, you might achieve a 100 percent deduction. If you are married, the 100 percent deduction can include your spouse.

This subscriber owns a timeshare that he is not going to use this year. He wants to know how he can obtain business tax deductions if he lets his employees use it, assuming the employees do some good work. He learns that he has two possible ways to let an employee use the 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.

Learn how this IRS Revenue Procedure allows you to avoid taxes on the sale of a personal residence in which you had a home office or that you used as a rental property. The procedure lays out the methodology, which includes using the $250,000 ($500,000 if married) home-sale exclusion in unison with a 1031 tax-deferred exchange to avoid the taxes and enhance your deductions on the replacement home.

You likely hate tax-law surprises. Foreclosures, short sales, and mortgage modifications can both reward and punish you, sometimes during the same transaction. You may not have a problem with your home’s value or its mortgage, but you may have a relative, friend, or client who faces this situation. If so, you may want to know how tax law treats the principal residence foreclosure, short sale, or loan modification.

You might justify a zero salary to the owner of an S corporation in the right circumstances. But there are some pitfalls, particularly if your purpose is to avoid payroll taxes. Further, and this is often overlooked, state law can come into play on the zero-salary game.

If you own rental property or your business’s building, you need to know what the IRS has in its new set of regulations that define when you have a tax-deductible repair and when you have an improvement that you must capitalize and depreciate. Repair deductions are best, but these are likely a little more difficult to achieve under the new regulations. Also, the new regulations contain a big new break that allows a write-off of the old component’s adjusted basis.

You might qualify for an office downtown, an office in your main home, and an office in your vacation home. Wow! Three offices. And tax law might make all three offices principal offices. (Of course, three principal offices is an oxymoron, but hey, this is tax law, so three principal offices is a true possibility.)

You would think that tax law could make deducting mortgage interest straightforward. Perhaps that’s too logical; for certain, it’s not true. The rules on deducting mortgage interest contain a number of twists and turns that you that need to know to make sure your mortgage-interest payments qualify as tax deductions.

If you own rental properties, you need to know how to qualify for real estate professional status, and then you need to create proof of time spent on your rentals. No time-spent proof, no passive-loss deductions. Next, you have to decide to group or not to group your properties. Don’t leave this grouping decision to the IRS or to the courts.

To know if the S corporation is the best choice of entity for your business, first you need to consider three advantages and nine disadvantages. Next, you need to take the S corporation advantages and disadvantages that apply to you and get a bottom-line number comparison with your second choice for an operating entity. In this way, you can make a logical choice, knowing that your best choice will stay with you for a number of years and let you pocket more after-tax cash while you sleep better at night.

When the husband or the wife cheats on taxes, both spouses are liable for the unpaid taxes and penalties. However, the non-cheating spouse can qualify as an innocent spouse or for equitable relief. In new guidance, the IRS has made it easier for the non-cheating spouse to get out of paying the taxes.

When you and/or your spouse own more than one business, you must look at all businesses as one business when applying the Section 105 medical reimbursement plan discrimination rules. If you are blocked by the discrimination rules, consider discriminating in health insurance coverage to your benefit.

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 IRS does not like offshore and foreign bank accounts that are not reported on the FBAR, IRS Form 8938, and Schedule B of IRS Form 1040. Millions of U.S. taxpayers have perfectly legal and properly reported offshore and foreign bank accounts. But legal or illegal, they must be reported on the two income tax forms and the FBAR.

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 Web to grab the tax assessor’s allocation and use that against your depreciation deductions.

Keeping your home until death has advantages. At death, your estate avoids both capital gains and recapture taxes, and passes the home to your heirs at a stepped-up fair market value basis. This combination triggers a good number of income tax planning strategies.

If you incorporate your personal service business, you face the personal service corporation tax rates, where tax brackets do not exist and the 35 percent flat-tax rate applies.

Tax law contains a strange rule that doubles the business tax deduction for a charitable skeet shoot over the deduction allowed for business entertainment. In fact, the charitable-skeet-shoot rule produces a business tax deduction greater than what you could deduct as a charitable deduction.

Panama is now part of the tax-defined North American area where tax deductions are favored by tax law. For entry into this favored tax-deductible area, Panama had to agree to give the IRS and other government agencies banking and other information that otherwise was not available under Panama’s bank secrecy laws.

Tax law favors and allows deductions for civic and public service clubs and even names some favored clubs. But tax law does not allow dues deductions for airline, hotel, country, golf, athletic, and business-meal clubs.

The IRS admits that its regulation that made the single-member LLC a corporation for payroll tax purposes is unfair to small business family employment. To right this wrong, the IRS allows the single-member LLC to use the family employment rules to exempt FICA and Medicare taxes retroactively to January 1, 2009. The regulation granting this change expires on or before October 31, 2014.

Is your worker an independent contractor or an employee? You want to get this right at the beginning. But if you improperly classified an employee as an independent contractor, the IRS has a tax penalty relief program for you. Should the IRS plan not have the best relief for you, consider the Section 530 employer protection plan.

In the right circumstances, the single-member limited liability company (LLC) gives you corporate liability protection combined with easy Schedule C (proprietorship) rules for your tax return. In this article, you learn the two tax advantages and two tax disadvantages to the single-member LLC.

Okay, it’s December and you have some last-minute tax planning to take care of. This article helps you identify big last-minute tax deductions for bonus depreciation and Section 179 expensing on business cars, trucks, vans, and motor homes, including those you already own and may or may not use for business.

Are you looking for more tax deductions this year? It’s not too late. Learn 12 last-minute tax-planning ideas that you can implement to create or push more deductions into this year so you can pay less in taxes this year.

Tax law makes it hard for the owner of an S corporation to win deductions for his health insurance. First, the corporate-provided health insurance is not a tax-free fringe benefit for the owner. Second, the S corporation has to pay for the health insurance or the owner will suffer a loss of tax deductions. Third, the S corporation payment for the health insurance will produce wages either exempt or nonexempt from FICA and Medicare taxes. This article shows you how to make the three tax deduction rules work for you.

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.

Is your business entity the best tax-deduction business entity for you? Do you need liability protection? How do the different entities produce different tax deductions? If you are looking for answers to these questions, this article is for you. Also, the article contains one sure way to select the best business entity for you.

If you want to operate your business as an S corporation, you need to recognize that the S corporation is a separate legal entity and that you are an employee agent of that corporation. You also need to ensure that the S corporation is the earner of the income. You may not assign your income to your corporation.

Your business ownership creates an opportunity for a tax plan that can give you tax deductions for hiring your children and can give your children tax-free income. But your tax plan does not stop there. Your children might start Roth IRAs where they can invest their tax-free income in a college fund. Done right, as described in this article, the government pays you for your help with this plan.

Does your chart of accounts contain two categories for your business entertainment tax deductions? It should. Your tax deduction for an employee party goes into a different deduction category from your regular business entertainment. Learn about the two accounts and how to get more tax deductions when you party with your employees.

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.

Are you subject to the self-employment tax if your activity does not rise to the level of a trade or business? Answer: no. When not subject, you report the non-business income on page 1 of your Form 1040 where the self-employment tax does not apply. That’s good for the income. The deductions for this non-business activity have to take another route, and the deductions don’t fare very well.

Tax law requires your attention to enable tax deductions on your business vehicles. Your tax write-off results differ with certain aspects: vehicle type (car, van, pickup truck, crossover vehicle), new or used, use of Section 179 expensing, and bonus depreciation. This article guides you through the deductions so you can select what gives you the best write-offs.

How does the owner of a corporation claim a tax deduction for an office in the home? Rental is not the best method. Deducting employee business expenses as miscellaneous itemized deductions is not the best method. The best method is to use an accountable plan, as you will learn in this article.

Learn the basics of the two-car tax-deduction strategy and then, best of all, use the magic formula calculator to see if you increase or decrease your tax deductions with this strategy.

Tax-deductible business expansion beats both capitalization and start-up expense classification. Capitalization basically means no tax deduction until you get out of the business. Start up means you can deduct up to $5,000 and then must amortize the remaining start-up expenses over 15 years.

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.

When the two-car tax-deduction strategy works for you, you find new deductions without spending a penny or driving a mile farther. In this article, you find that both the IRS and the courts approve of your two-car tax deductions.

To find the cash value of tax deductions generated by prepaid expenses, you need to consider the time value of money. Focusing on just the compound value of the tax benefits is a mistake.

Learn how you can qualify for a tax refund when you pay the “nanny tax” on the wages that you pay your nanny. For the most part, you want to qualify for the child and dependent care credit because the dependent care assistance program discriminates against the one-owner or husband-and-wife-owned business.

If you are looking to buy a business individually, this article explains the tax deductions you achieve when you begin to think about the business you want to buy. If your corporation is going to buy the business, this article explains how to apply the process of thinking about it to the corporation. The rules for buying an existing business are different from those explained last month for creating a business from scratch.

To get a tax deduction for your yacht, use it for business travel and avoid the entertainment facility rules. If you run afoul of the entertainment facility rules, you have one small hope. To maximize your deductions, you want more than 50 percent business use and knowledge of the luxury water transportation tax deduction limits.

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.

With proper planning, you can use two exceptions to add a Section 105 plan, FSA, or HRA to your HSA.

The Roth IRA is tax advantaged. The foreign sales corporation also is tax advantaged. Imagine putting the tax-advantaged foreign sales corporation inside a tax-advantaged Roth IRA. That’s what happens in this article.

The courts have determined that the alternative minimum tax (AMT) cheats many commissioned W-2 employees out of their rightful deductions. To fix this problem, the courts have allowed certain commissioned W-2 employees to move their employee business expenses from the IRS Form 2106 itemized deduction category to the tax-advantaged sole proprietorship on Schedule C.

If you are thinking about a new business, you need to know the rules on how to deduct start-up costs right now. Why? Your deductible costs could start accumulating simultaneously with your thinking about this new business.

The home-office deduction requires exclusive business use of the residence area used as an office. Under this exclusive-use standard, how much and what types of personal use does the law allow?

The defined benefit retirement plan might be your choice of retirement plans if you are age 50 or older and your business earns a healthy income.

The new 100 percent bonus depreciation enables new tax planning strategies, as it applies to both the carryover and boot basis on a trade-in or other Section 1031 exchange.

You trigger business deductions once you start your business. Thus the question: Which triggers do you need to pull for the business to start?

Do you claim a home-office deduction? Do you have a garage (attached or detached) at your home? If so, you need to spend a few minutes with this article. You will learn when to include and exclude the garage when calculating your home-office space.

The single-member LLC is a disregarded entity for federal income tax purposes, but a corporation for employment tax purposes.

Learn the two special rules that make travel to a convention in Paris or other foreign destination tax deductible, or not.

This is part 4 in our series of articles on retirement plans for the one-owner or husband-and-wife-owned business. Here we explain the solo 401(k), which permits the largest deductions of the defined contribution plans. The solo 401(k) has unique advantages when your income fits this profile.

If you own rental property, you need to pay attention to the passive-loss rules. This court case helps clarify two rules that can enable deductions for rental property losses.

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.

If you are married, operate your business as a proprietorship, and have only your spouse as an employee, you likely want a Section 105 medical reimbursement plan that can turn most, if not all, of your medical expenses into business deductions on your Schedule C. Before health care reform, you did not need to give your employee-spouse a W-2 for Section 105 medical plan reimbursements. Now, thanks to the IRS, the Section 105 medical reimbursement W-2 requirement for small businesses does not apply before the 2014 W-2 reporting season—and may not apply afterward.

Repairs to your home give you zero tax benefits. Improvements to your home add to your basis and reduce your taxes. Thus, don’t repair your home. Improve it!

The self-directed IRA is not a common sight, but it is even more uncommon, almost rare in fact, for the self-directed IRA to have an interest in a tax-advantaged domestic international sales corporation. This article gives insight into what’s possible with a self-directed IRA.

The real estate professional exception that can create rental property loss deductions does not apply to properties rented for an average of seven days or less.

You would think that you could find a straightforward tax answer to deducting or not deducting the handgun you carry for business protection. Not true. There is just one case and it is likely not right on point, but it does give you something to consider.

How often do you say, “Thank goodness for the IRS?” Well, you are going to say that when you see how the IRS saves the bacon when you claim the recently enacted 100 percent bonus depreciation on your business car.

The SIMPLE-IRA may be the best retirement plan for the modest-income business owner. And, as you would expect from its name, the SIMPLE-IRA is easy to understand and implement. However, there is one very unusual exception. The SIMPLE-IRA has a current-year October 1 deadline for having the plan in place. That’s 12.5 months earlier than the deadline for a SEP.

New law retroactively repeals, as if never enacted, the 2010 law that required three new types of 1099 reporting: (1) 1099 reporting by owners of rental real estate, (2) 1099s for payments to corporations, and (3) 1099s for purchases of property.

Part 2 of the divorce series of articles covers your retirement plans and IRAs. Your goal when giving a little or a lot of your retirement plan to your ex is likely to be that he or she who gets the cash should pay the taxes. To make the taxes follow the money, you need specific words in the right divorce documents. If you fail to put the words in the right place, you can give the cash to your ex and double whammy yourself by paying taxes and penalties to the IRS.

Setting the owner of an S corporation’s salary so that the owner saves money on self-employment taxes requires attention to some details. This article shows how a CPA with S corporation earnings of $246,000 had a reasonable salary of $91,000 according to the IRS. If you follow the principles used by the IRS to identify the $91,000 salary, you build audit-proof support for the salary.

You have at least three parties in your divorce: you, your soon-to-be ex, and your Uncle Sam. Yes, as with almost everything, there are tax consequences to a divorce. This article puts you on a path that will help you protect your money and your assets.

This is the second article in our series on the best small-business retirement plans. Here we identify the four major advantages and three disadvantages to the SEP.

Tax law limits depreciation deductions on cars, trucks, and vans that don’t qualify for Section 179 expensing. The IRS updates the limits each year for inflation. This article explains how the limits work and gives you a link to the 2011 revenue procedure that contains all limits for both purchased and leased cars, trucks, and vans.

When you operate your business as a corporation, you need to pay attention to the details if you want the corporation respected by the IRS. If you fail in the details, your corporation could lose its status as a corporation and cause you big trouble.

The taxpayer in this case made three major mistakes, one of which was the probable cause of his IRS audit. His assertion of being an investor and not a dealer defied most of the nine factors the courts use in deciding the dealer versus investor question.

This is the first in a series of articles on retirement plans for small-business owners. In this first article, you learn the basics. Why should you have a retirement plan? When should you start contributing to your plan? What types of plans are available to you? Regardless of the type of business entity—proprietorship, LLC, S corporation, or C corporation—this article gives you the basics you need for a quality retirement plan.

Hallelujah, gamblers in the business of gambling may now deduct business expenses in excess of gambling losses. The Tax Court, in a new, precedent-setting case, establishes new rules for gamblers in the business of gambling.

The IRS changed its 1040 instructions to allow the proprietorship and single-member LLC a self-employed health insurance deduction for Medicare Part B. The impact on the S corporation owner is not as favorable.

The hobby classification on a tax return is death to deductions. You have a number of choices, but the two most prominent are (1) quit the hobby, or (2) make the hobby a business.

The IRS has issued a new revenue ruling granting bigger deductions than the courts have granted on home mortgage interest deductions for alternative minimum tax purposes.

Learn why it is important to get the independent contractor classification correct. If your supposed contractor status is in reality employee status, you suffer major penalties.

The new under-age-27 health insurance coverage grants windfalls, pitfalls, and planning opportunities.

If you travel out of town overnight on business, you need knowledge of the tax rules that allow and disallow such travel. This article clarifies the days that tax law deems to be business and the days that tax law deems to be personal.

For 2011, you can qualify for the uncapped and unlimited 30 percent tax credit for installing qualified solar, wind, and geothermal in your home, vacation home, or other residence.