You’d think these blokes had enough to do, with testimony before Congress, putting out fires set by (the suddenly anti-administration) press, etc.  But get ready:  IRS is about to begin the administration of something like 47 tax provisions occasioned by “Obamacare.”  And, according to CNBC, IRS has also to determine how to distribute annual subsidies to 18 million folks who make less than $45,000 per year and thus qualify for help in buying their health care coverage.  And if this isn’t enough, the Revenooers will collect taxes on medical devices and the new Medicare surtax on high income folks, not to mention conducting audits on tax-exempt hospitals.

None of this comes cheap, of course – the Treasury Department tells us all this IRS enforcement will cost something like $881 billion for fiscal years 2010 through 2013. Read the rest of this entry »

Lots has been written, of late, on the possibility of Congressional action on the tax reform front this year.  All of the recent Obama scandals (and the tendency of Congress to go on vacation every other week) may torpedo these plans.  In any case, it is instructive to keep an eye on how the thinking is evolving – like some of the thoughts recently expressed (May 23) by the Senate Finance Committee Staff in their memo entitled:  “Economic Security:  Health, Retirement, Life Insurance, Fringe Benefits and Executive Compensation” which contains some troubling narrative. Read the rest of this entry »

Once again, cometh taxpayers before the Tax Court, trying to pass muster on what the government thinks are “fun and games,” and therefore losing the related deductions.

Ed and Lydia Heinbockel are the latest to try their luck – dubbed by the Tax Court as “a happy couple possessed by entrepreneurial spirit.”

Nice, but not quite enough to sustain some tax deductions – related to Ed’s airplane chartering business, Lydia’s personal shopping business, and the two of their purported vineyard business, and intra-family loan activities. Read the rest of this entry »

Seems the Revenooers, falling all over themselves in apologies, have hit an unintended hot button in the recent admission that “conservative groups” seeking tax exemption may have been unfairly targeted with respect to their tax exempt status applications.

Of course, in the never-ending Obama manner of blaming Bush for every problem, the politicians populating the White House were quick to point out that the IRS Commissioner (Douglas Shulman) when all of this started, was a Bush appointee.  We can hardly wait for the report of the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration’s (TIGTA) report on all of this – due out this week. Read the rest of this entry »

So saith Senator Tom Harkin (D-IA) and Congressman Peter DeFazio (D-OR) in their recently introduced “Wall Street Trading and Speculators Act,” which would slap a new tax of three-hundredths of a percent on certain “covered” financial transactions.

So there, you greedy “speculators,” who obviously are raping the rest of us and need to pay more on your (supposed) ill-gotten gains!

The proposed new tax would be levied on the fair market value of any security being purchased or cleared on a United States facility or transactions with respect to derivatives traded or cleared on a United States facility or under which a U.S. person has rights. Read the rest of this entry »

And this news presumably comes as no surprise to anybody with an ounce of intelligence.

According to recent info released by the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center, the top 1 percent of U.S. taxpayers would pay 67 percent of the higher taxes called for in 2023 under Obama’s recent budget proposals.  Households making as little as $30,000 annually would pay some higher taxes.  Households making between $500,000 and $1 million would pay an average of $13,474 in additional federal income taxes. Read the rest of this entry »

Well maybe it did for 2012, but if Obama has his way, start working on your 2013 (and beyond) plans right now!

Recall that the Big O recently came out with his “budget,” so to speak.  In case you missed it, consider these nuggets contained therein: Read the rest of this entry »

It’s bad enough that folks with the highest income pay most of the freight, but now comes word from IRS that they’ve increased their surveillance of these folks’ affairs.

Last week, the Revenooers released their “2012 IRS Data Book,” in which IRS notes, “Overall, in FY 2012, individual income tax returns in higher AGI classes were more likely to be examined than returns in lower AGI classes.”

IRS examined about 12.1 percent of the 337,477 tax returns reporting income of $1 million or more, compared to 2.8 percent of those reporting between $200,000 and $1 million, and 0.4 percent of most of those reporting income under $200,000.

But we guess the taxing authorities just aren’t finding enough dough, because the politicians keep coming up with more things to tax.  Take, f’rinstance, Berkeley City Councilman Gordon Wozniak who has cooked up the idea of taxing emails!  Read the rest of this entry »

A commonly uttered query amongst Democrats, it seems.

F’rinstance, last week’s Senate-endorsed budget bill included a provision which endorses giving states more power to collect sales taxes on purchases their residents make online, from out of state vendors.  Online businesses with less than $1 million in annual sales would be exempt, we hear.  Gee thanks.  According to the Associated Press, an estimated $20 billion in sales taxes go uncollected annually by out of state online merchants.

And speaking of the existing tax level just never being quite enough, we hear from New York that a recently passed temporary (an oxymoron in any tax discussion) tax on high income earners in New York, which was due to end next year, will live on.  The good governor Cuomo was recently heard to utter that, “There will be an extension of the surcharge set to expire next year.”

Sigh. Read the rest of this entry »

And you thought you had this all figured out when the Supreme Court told you some of the Obamacare exactions were “taxes,” contrary to all of the blather from the politicians when all of this was being debated, thereby rendering the whole mess constitutional, as far as Uncle Sam is concerned.

So now comes the great state of California, once again raising for debate that age old question of whether something is a “tax,” or merely a “fee.”

And leave it to the Franchise Tax Board to conclude, in the case of California’s new fire prevention “fee,” that said “fee” is not deductible on your income tax return, because it just isn’t a real property tax.

By way of background, in 2011, California enacted legislation imposing a charge of $150 as a “fire prevention fee” on each structure within specified areas of the state.  The legislation was enacted for a variety of reasons, including: Read the rest of this entry »