A tax preparation business called Mo’ Money Taxes, based in Memphis, Tennessee, has been sued by several state attorneys general. Illinois, for example, has charged the company with filing fraudulent returns without client authorization and illegally charging its clients millions of dollars in hidden fees. Many of the company’s clients had not received their refund checks. Also, a crime subcommittee of the [...]

The deadline for calendar year corporations (C Corporations and S Corporations) to file their tax returns is Thursday, March 15th. If yoou don’t have your records in order or don’t think you can make the March 15th deadline you can get an extension. Russ Fox of Taxable Talk tells you how to do that: You [...]

CPA Joe Kristan tells us, one more time, why you should never use the sole proprietor form of business: A scary headline:  “Freelance? An IRS audit may be in your future.” A Tax Court case yesterday shows why a Schedule C on your return might interest the tax man. A New York City taxpayer filed [...]

J.K. Harris is the second player in the tax resolution business to have been forced to shut down operations ss a result of thousands of consumer complaints and dozens of government investigations. Paul Caron of TaxProf Blog reports: JK Harris Tax Resolution Firm Closes its Doors Consumer Affairs, JK Harris Suspends Operations, Prepares to Liquidate: Tax-Preparation Firm Swamped by Consumer [...]

Some old, but great, advice from Joe Kristan about how to document the filing of an IRS tax return or extension: If you paper file at the post office, use Certified Mail, Return Receipt Requested. Get the postmarked paper receipt, because the postal service purges its computer records after two years. Certified mail adds $2.70 [...]

America’s founding fathers – Alexander Hamilton, George Washington, James Madison, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin and John Adams - had some very wise things to say about taxes and government. Here are several that I think we would do well to consider today: Thomas Jefferson: The democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work [...]

One of the more talked about provisions of the tax bill signed into law yesterday by President Obama is the temporary payroll tax reduction. WebCPA reports that the IRS has already issued guidance on the relief measure: Millions of workers will see their take-home pay rise during 2011 because the Tax Relief, Unemployment Insurance Reauthorization, and Job Creation [...]

If you own and operate a trade or business and have a history of losses, there is a very good chance the IRS will at some point disallow those losses, especially if you keep poor records. Although good bookkeeping is important in all cases, it is especially important for taxpayer’s with businesses that have shown a [...]

Because in any given year the IRS is able to select for audit only a small percentage of tax returns, it employs a sophisticated system for choosing which returns to examine and which returns to accept as filed. The IRS assigns a numeric value to each tax return known as a DIF score. Returns with [...]

An IRS audit is painful. Even if your return is 100% accurate and the IRS compliments you on your diligence and honesty, it will require a lot of your time and cause you a lot of stress. But there are things you can do to minimize the pain and the stress. Here are our top [...]