taxplanningdoctor: Look What's Hiding Here - 01/14/20 05:08 PM
 Everyone understands the concept of a "tax haven" — a delightfully sunny island somewhere in the subtropics, or a cozy European duchy tucked away on a scenic Alpine lake. Perhaps the global rich who take advantage of these safe deposit boxes just want someplace nice to stay when they visit their money. Surely that's why places like Kazakhstan and Burundi struggle to attract their share of global "flight capital." Tucking your money someplace miserable would just be silly when the world offers so many sunnier places for shady people to park their cash.Except, it turns out not every tax haven lures … (2 comments)

taxplanningdoctor: War is Hell. Taxes,Too - 01/07/20 06:10 PM
 Moviegoers the past few years could be forgiven for thinking comic books had taken over Hollywood. So much of the "sophisticated adult drama" that grownups used to see in theaters has migrated to streaming video, that it seems suburban multiplexes are reserved for Batman, Superman, and their cape-wearing cronies. (Or are you more of a Marvel Cinematic Universe fan?)Last month, director Sam Mendes released a welcome tale of actual human heroes based on his grandfather's service in World War I. 1917 follows two British soldiers with impossible orders to cross into enemy territory and deliver a message to save 1,600 of their comrades — including … (2 comments)

taxplanningdoctor: Is Your Vision 2020? - 01/05/20 10:25 AM
 
Happy New Year!!
Now that the collective holidays are past us and we’re plunging into 2020, I wanted to reach out to not only welcome you to the next decade, I wanted to try to get a sample of what entrepreneurs like you were thinking.
Are you optimistic about the coming year?  Worried?  What plans are you making so far as investment and growth in your business?  
Of course, all of these are being asked and reflected on in business periodicals and social media already, but let me ask you one more…
What are you planning on doing, personally, to ensure that 2020 is your best year … (1 comments)

taxplanningdoctor: Dirty Money - 12/05/19 06:32 AM
 Let's say you need someone to help you do something really important. Would you settle for someone who just Googled it? Would you look for someone with the right professional license? Or would you hold out for the guy who literally wrote the book on whatever it is you need to do? Expertise doesn't guarantee success: great surgeons still lose patients; great lawyers still lose cases; and Super Bowl-winning quarterbacks still throw into double coverage all the time. But sometimes professional prowess is well worth the extra cost.This week's search for expertise takes us to the University of Miami in sunny Coral Gables, … (2 comments)

taxplanningdoctor: Another Look at the Section 199A Deduction - 11/21/19 10:52 AM
Nothing stays the same in the tax world, and that’s especially true with your brand-new 20 percent Section 199A tax deduction.
 
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 note the changes below.
 
Big Picture on Rentals
 
Your rental activities qualify for the Section 199A deduction in one of three ways:
 
    They are a tax code Section 162 trade or business. … (0 comments)

taxplanningdoctor: Cherished Family Holiday Memories - 11/18/19 10:06 AM
 
Next week brings us the most quintessentially American of all holidays. It's the one we wait for all year, the one that truly captures those ideals that bind us together as a nation, and the one that bridges the cultural and political gaps that threaten to tear us apart. We're talking, of course, about Black Friday, that glorious bacchanalia of year-end binge-buying. If Thanksgiving is a chilled glass of dry white wine, and Christmas is a flute of sparkling champagne, then Black Friday is the Jaegerbomb that gets the party rolling!
The whole thing started off so innocently, too. Miles Standish and William … (0 comments)

taxplanningdoctor: Gold Star Glitch - 11/13/19 08:35 AM
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taxplanningdoctor: When DIY Won't Do: 3 Times, When Hiring a Tax Relief Professional is the Only Way to Go - 11/08/19 05:15 PM
 
 
When it comes to your money, there’s only one person that truly has your best interests at heart - and that person is looking back at you in the mirror. Handling your own finances and making your own decisions can give you peace of mind and help you avoid a costly mistake.
 
There is a lot to be said for the do-it-yourself approach to your money, yet the go it alone path does have its limitations, especially when it comes to the IRS and back taxes.
 
We see clients that have tried to handle their taxes on their own, sometimes raising red flags … (0 comments)

taxplanningdoctor: TurboTaxed - 11/06/19 11:06 AM
 
Turn the dial on the Wayback Machine to 1849, and join us in California, where "there's gold in them thar hills!" Two kinds of people are getting fabulously rich. Obviously, there are the prospectors, grabbing their shovels and racing for the latest strike. Then there are the shovel sellers getting rich on the prospector's dreams. 170 years later, shovel-selling is still big business. In fact, the richest gold-rush descendants started out as shovel sellers: the billionaire Haas family, heirs of the original Levi Strauss.
You'd probably be happy to pony up for a shovel if your neighbor found gold in their backyard. … (0 comments)

taxplanningdoctor: Welcome to the Desert of the Real  - 10/28/19 03:56 PM
 Twenty years ago, sci-fi fans geeked out to a new thriller called The Matrix following a dystopian vein established in Blade Runner, Total Recall, and The Terminator. It starred Keanu Reeves as "Neo" and Laurence Fishburne as "Morpheus": freedom fighters in a world where machines have trapped humanity in a computer-generated dreamscape called the Matrix, to distract their minds while sucking energy from their bodies and brains. (Their allies include another hacker named Trinity, famed for cracking the IRS database, but that's not what brings us here today.)Early in Act One, Morpheus shows Neo two pills that look like ordinary cold medicine and presents him with … (0 comments)

taxplanningdoctor: Pumpkin Spice-Flavored Taxes - 10/21/19 12:52 PM
 
October is chock-full of obscure holidays and commemorations. October 3 is National Boyfriend Day. October 15 — the real personal tax filing deadline — is National Grouch Day. (Coincidence? We think not.) October 19 serves up National Seafood Bisque Day (which sounds a lot tastier than October 25, National Greasy Food Day). Then there's October 21, National Clean Your Virtual Desktop Day, which sounds like it was cooked up by the same HR funsters who think "trust falling" into a co-worker's arms is somehow an appropriate thing to do at work. We swear we're not making any of this up. 
But none of those … (0 comments)

taxplanningdoctor: Kids These Days - 10/14/19 12:23 PM
 
The French Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau once said that if a man is not radical at 25, he has no heart — and if he's still radical at 45, he has no head. And while Clemenceau focused his attention on the battlefields of World War I, history supplies an endless number of stories where radical youth challenge their entrenched elders.
Income inequality has always been a popular target of the young. Today, It's growing even worse. The Berkeley economists who helped design Senator Elizabeth Warren's wealth tax have reported that for the first time ever, the 400 richest households in the country … (0 comments)

taxplanningdoctor: Teeny Little Slices  - 10/07/19 03:33 PM
 
Here in the United States, we spend a lot of time arguing about income taxes . . . who should pay, how they should pay, and how much they should pay. Right now, the average American forks over 13.5% of their income in individual income tax, and 30% of their income in federal, state, and local taxes overall. Of course, "average" covers a pretty wide range — 50 million families pay no income tax at all, while the top twenty percent of earners pay over 69% of all revenue collected. It costs the economy $409 billion just to figure out the … (0 comments)

taxplanningdoctor: Ornithology - 10/01/19 05:52 PM
Every fall, in one of nature's enduring miracles, birds fly south for the winter. The Sterna Paradisaea , or Arctic tern, flies as far as three times the distance between the earth and the moon in a lifetime. The Branta Canadensis, or Canadian goose, flies 3,000 feet high at 40 miles per hour and covers over 1,000 miles per day if the weather is right. The tiny archilocus colubris, or ruby-throated hummingbird, crosses the entire Gulf of Mexico in a single 18 to 22-hour marathon trip.Birds aren't the only brightly-plumed creatures to fly south for winter. Many species of Homo Affluentus leave their homes in the northeast … (3 comments)

taxplanningdoctor: Couples Therapy - 09/16/19 03:37 PM
 
Reddit's r/relationships forum is one of the internet's favorite soap operas. Posters sum up their angst in a snappy shorthand: "I (22M) have fallen in love with the woman I serve (21F). I left to seek my fortune. But now she thinks I'm dead so she agreed to marry a pompous jerk (30sM). How do I make her love me?" They add a few paragraphs to fill in the gory details, then wait for responses. Clearly none of the readers weighing in are trained therapists, which leads to much hilarity and maybe explains why so much of their advice involves lawyers, … (2 comments)

taxplanningdoctor: Cheap Hits - 09/09/19 03:00 PM
 
Chances are good that sometime soon, you'll find yourself in front of a football game. Love it or loathe it, from now through early 2020, the game will dominate the airwaves, to the point where, if you can't sleep at 4AM, you can find an ESPN channel somewhere featuring a bunch of aging ex-jocks droning on about their fantasy teams. (If that doesn't put you back to sleep . . . .) Pro football is like a shark, relentlessly prowling for more: more passing, more scoring, more replays, more concussions.
Many fans, turned off by the NFL's 24-hour Hype-o-Matic, have turned their eyes to the college game. … (4 comments)

taxplanningdoctor: Deductible Man - 09/03/19 05:43 PM
Burning Man" is a celebration of creativity and community that pops up for nine days every year before Labor Day in the Nevada desert. (Turn right at Reno, go about 100 miles, and when it looks like you're actually driving on the moon, you're there.) It started as a simple bonfire for a handful of creatives on San Francisco's Baker Beach. Since then, it's become a see-and-be-seen destination for 70,000 social media influencers, celebrities, and Silicon Valley billionaires, with $425 tickets and the "guest of honor" standing up to 105 feet high before the ceremonial Saturday night burn.
Burning Man champions decidedly … (2 comments)

taxplanningdoctor: Something to Celebrate - 08/26/19 11:11 AM
 
It's okay if the name "Andrew Yang" doesn't ring a bell. His biggest accomplishment so far was creating a program called Venture for America that trains entrepreneurs to work at startups in developing cities across the country. Now he's running for President, and polling at a rockin' 2% among Democrats. But he's scored enough contributions from online donors to make it to the stage at the next Democratic presidential debate, which means there's a chance he could still break through to the front rank of contenders.
How is Yang different from the other 59 Democrats running for President? His unique selling proposition … (0 comments)

taxplanningdoctor: By the Time We Got to Woodstock . . . - 08/18/19 11:52 AM
Fifty years ago, a dairy farmer named Max Yasgur thought it would be a rockin' idea to rent his field to a bunch of kids who wanted to throw a concert. From August 15-17, 400,000 hippies, peaceniks, and plain old music fans converged on the scene. If you're a 60s fan, Woodstock represents the high point of that era, a giddy celebration of peace, love, and good vibrations. If you're a hung-up Mr. Normal, you might dismiss it as three days of mud-soaked filth, drugs, and public nudity. And while Woodstock Nation may not have managed to save the world, they … (0 comments)

taxplanningdoctor: Now We Know Why They Call It A "Joy" Stick! - 08/11/19 08:12 AM
Parenting is full of special moments that create lifelong memories. Your heart bursts in joy as you watch them take their first steps, ride their first bike, and bring home their first report card. When they get a little older, there's the pride you feel when they bring home their first "real" paycheck, tear into the envelope, and listen to them wail in distress, "hey, what the @* is FICA?!?" Glenn Giersdorf, who lives an hour outside Philadelphia, didn't experience that moment quitethe same way as most parents. That's because his son Kyle spends six to ten hours per day sitting in … (15 comments)