Rusty WordPress; first impressions; return to many senders; and other highlights from our favorite tax bloggers.
The rate stuff
- Tax Vox (
https://www.taxpolicycenter.org/taxvox ): When Congress passed reform, it made a number of changes to the individual income tax. One of these changes lowered the value of mortgages on which homebuyers could deduct interest from taxable income from $1 million to $750,000. Did the change encourage homebuyers in 2018 to shrink the size of their mortgages? The answer turns out to be…complicated. - Sikich (
https://www.sikich.com/insights/ ): To reduce reporting inconsistencies, GASB has announced a new standard affecting governments and their reporting standards. - Summing It Up (
http://blog.freedmaxick.com/summing-it-up ): Ever busy, GASB has also issued an Implementation Guide to help clarify, explain and elaborate on requirements of Statement No. 87, “Leases.” - Tax Girl (
https://www.forbes.com/sites/kellyphillipserb/ ): Aided by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Bloomberg Tax & Accounting reports on what the summer’s CPI jumps mean for taxpayers in 2020, together with a first look at predicted tax rates for next year.
Key questions
- Income Tax School (
http://www.theincometaxschool.com/blog/ ): Is your WordPress website up to date? WordPress is relatively user-friendly with lots of great themes and plugins for optimizing. It is not, however, a build-it-and-forget-it platform. A sample schedule of updating tasks. - Solutions For CPA Firm Leaders (
http://ritakeller.com/blog/ ): How do your clients, prospective clients and other visitors feel when they walk into your office? Welcome, comfortable and appreciated? Or do they find themselves staring at an empty front desk or a receptionist who doesn’t offer to hang up their coat? Maybe your firm could use a Director of First Impressions. - Wolters Kluwer (
http://news.cchgroup.com/ ): Can you rely on your audit tool? Two aspects to consider: the content and the software. - Taxable Talk (
http://www.taxabletalk.com/ ): You’re the managing member of an LLC headquartered in Seattle (duly registered as an LLC in Washington). You invest in another LLC, a Delaware LLC, that invests in property throughout the country. You own between 1 and 5 percent of the Delaware LLC each year and are uninvolved in any of the corp’s decisions. Then it invests in California property and is considered doing business in California; it registers with the California Secretary of State and files a California LLC return. Is your Washington State LLC doing business in California? - John R. Dundon II EA (
https://www.johnrdundon.com/ ): The ubiquitous sharing economy business model, much like the Wild West, is a relatively untamed voyage involving the collection, organization and digital storage of what was once deemed private information.
Internal revenue
- IRS Mind (
https://www.irsmind.com/ ): Lower IRS budgets over the past nine years have diminished compliance enforcement resources. Luckily, we guess, the IRS knows what stops a taxpayer in their tracks: notices. - Bloomberg Tax (
https://pro.bloombergtax.com/news-insights/ ): We all know the IRS takes in as much as possible from as many clients as possible, but they spend a lot too. Like $43 million on undeliverable mail in FY18. - TaxMama (
http://taxmama.com ): The “great news” of the IRS appointment of Darren Guillot as deputy commissioner for collection and operations support in the Small Business/Self-Employed Division and De Lon Harris as the deputy commissioner for examination. - Procedurally Taxing (
https://procedurallytaxing.com ): In U.S. v. Askins and Miller Orthapedeatrics, the 11th Circuit agreed with the IRS that an injunction of the business was an appropriate remedy to stop it from continuing to incur employment taxes. The case represents an important circuit-level discussion of what the IRS needs to succeed in obtaining injunctive relief. - TaxProf Blog (
http://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/ ): Some estimate that as much as 70 percent of state spending is on autopilot, meaning constraints are in place before proposals or negotiations even begin. A first-of-its-kind analysis recently looked at how much spending was restricted or partially restricted in California, Florida, Illinois, New York, Texas and Virginia from 2000 to 2015.
