Dying tax breaks: Use them while they’re hot
Feb 8 (Reuters) – Every year, dozens of little bits of
the tax code fall by the wayside or, more typically, get
ritually renewed by Congress. This half-in, half-out nature of
the tax code frustrates accountants, individual taxpayers and
businesses, and makes rational long-term tax planning a
challenge.
Consider: A report by the Joint Committee on Taxation found
that 60 tax breaks expired at the end of 2011 (though they could
still be extended retroactively), and another 41 are slated to
disappear at the end of 2012.
What Mitt missed on his tax forms, and why?
Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign acknowledged to Reuters and others that his campaign is revising his federal ethics forms. They will now report more than a half-dozen offshore holdings, including income from a multimillion-dollar Swiss bank account, that was not disclosed last year.
The Romney campaign has described the issue as a minor discrepancy, and noted that all taxes owed on the overseas accounts were paid. But given the political football that overseas assets and tax disclosure have become –with the Internal Revenue Service cracking down on those who have assets abroad — that acknowledgment raises important questions.
The big lessons from celebrity estate wars
NEW YORK (Reuters) – Philanthropist Brooke Astor. The Grateful Dead’s Jerry Garcia. There are a few celebrities who, in death, at least in certain circles, have become as known for the litigation over their estates as for how they lived their lives. While the dollars are mind-boggling in these cases, anyone thinking about wealth transfer faces the same issues: dysfunctional families, potentially unequal positions in the family business, perhaps multiple marriages with kids from each.
We spoke with Russell Fishkind, an estate attorney and a partner in the East Coast law firm of Saul Ewing and author of “Probate Wars of the Rich and Famous: An Insider’s Guide to Estate Planning and Probate Litigation,” about what regular folks can learn from these high-profile estate battles.
Year-end tax planning: 5 tips for the self-employed
NEW YORK (Reuters) – There’s little time left in the year for tax planning. While most year-end tax planning stories focus on employees with tips about spending down flexible spending accounts and the like, if you’re self-employed or a small-business owner, you’ve got more options for tax planning than those who receive W-2s from their employers.
But there’s also more reason to be careful and to keep good records, as Schedule C filers have come under increasing scrutiny by the Internal Revenue Service.
Year-end tax planning: the race for tax-loss harvesting
NEW YORK (Reuters) – It’s painful to admit that you’ve lost money on an investment. But even worse is leaving those losers in your portfolio, and ending up paying capital-gains taxes because the only investments you’ve sold this year were the winners.
Tax rules allow you to get a benefit from taking losses, and this year you may have gains you need to offset. While tax-loss harvesting is best done throughout the year, most investors think about it at year end. For 2011, you’ve got just a little time left to get it done.
Taxpayers with overseas accounts seethe at big penalties due
NEW YORK (Reuters) – The Internal Revenue Service’s crackdown on overseas tax cheats is having an unintended consequence on American expats. It’s prompting many of them to pay penalties for failure to file paperwork that may be drastically out of proportion to the actual amount of taxes owed.
After Reuters ran an article on November 9 (link.reuters.com/cyw45s) about the latest developments in the IRS’s search for unpaid taxes on foreign accounts, many American expats and dual citizens contacted us with tales of woe. In phone conversations and emails with more than a dozen people during the last three weeks, we heard stories of stress, fear and attempts to do the right thing before the latest voluntary disclosure window closed in September.
Avoid new tax paperwork for your investments at your own peril
NEW YORK (Reuters) – It’s not just holiday cards and sales flyers cluttering your mailbox: There’s a good chance you’ve also been getting lots of unfamiliar paperwork about your investments. New tax rules require your broker and mutual funds to keep track of the cost of your investments for tax purposes (termed the cost basis), and they are writing now to ask you to choose your accounting method.
Ignore those new forms at your own peril, even if you’d rather ignore all the legalese. There is real money to be saved by choosing the right accounting method, and if you don’t make a choice, your broker or fund company will choose a method for you. It may not be the best one.
How to avoid tax traps and find havens in fund distribution
NEW YORK, Nov 16 (Reuters) – In a volatile year for the
stock market like this one, it’s worth paying attention to
mutual funds’ potential tax situations before they make
distributions. If you buy into a fund with a hefty distribution
slated, you’ll end up paying the price. Conversely, if you
invest in a fund with a lot of capital losses built up, you’ve
just found yourself a nice tax haven.
Investors often don’t think much about distributions, but
at this time of year they should. By law, all mutual funds must
distribute any taxable gains realized during the year from
selling appreciated stocks. Most do so in December, before the
tax year ends.
Undisclosed foreign accounts? The IRS coming
NEW YORK, Nov 9 (Reuters) – For those who have been hiding
assets overseas from U.S. tax authorities, knowingly or not,
the news that Credit Suisse will turn over names and account
details of certain U.S. clients to the Internal Revenue Service
could be the beginning of the end.
The IRS, aggressively seeking to bring taxpayers with
offshore assets and income back into the tax system, offered
several rounds of voluntary disclosure windows to induce
taxpayers to confess. The last window closed on September 9.
Tax deductions are popular, but penalties may work better
When making tax policy, there’s a choice between carrots or sticks: Does the government give taxpayers credits or deductions for doing the right thing (buying their homes, giving money to charity, not emitting greenhouse cases) or penalize them for doing the wrong thing?
Brian Galle, who is on leave as an assistant professor at Boston College Law School and currently a fellow at the Urban Institute in Washington, DC, has been analyzing those choices, and come to a surprising conclusion: Expenditures may be politically expedient, but penalties would often be preferable for fiscal policy.
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