WHAT’S THE BUZZ? TELL ME WHAT’S A HAPPENNIN’ –

* “Just Tax”, a song parody shown at a recent GOP conference, is making the rounds on tax blogs. Kelly Phillips Erb was the first to bring it to my attention in her post “'Just Tax’ Parody Meant to Encourage the GOP”.
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Kelly had previously written a post about the tax troubles of Foxy Brown. While I commented on twitter that I thought “Foxy Brown” was a Pam Grier movie (and it is) I do admit that I have heard of that singer before. But WTF is “Lady Gaga”?
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* Kelly also reports on an interesting situation in which the IRS denied a deduction for a taxpayer who donated their home – but not their property – to the local Fire Department to use for training purposes in her post “Liar, Liar, House on Fire”.
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Apparently – “While not a common practice, such donations are apparently made from time to time for use in fire department and police department training. The homes can be used for all sorts of training purposes, including learning how to identify arson and search and rescue drills.”
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Many years ago I donated my Karman Ghia to the local Police Department for use in demonstrating the “Jaws of Life”. I did not itemize at the time, so there was no tax deduction.
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As stated above, the IRS did not allow the deduction, and the taxpayer is taking the Service to Court. I look forward to Kelly’s continued coverage of this item.

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This issue is also the basis for her Fix The Tax Code Friday question

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* Susan Bradford tells us that, “The states of Alabama, Connecticut, Georgia, Iowa, Mississippi, Louisiana, Missouri, New Mexico, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Vermont and Virginia along with the District of Columbia are offering tax holidays for back-to-school shopping on various days this month and next” in her post “Taxpayers in 15 States Will Enjoy Sales Tax Holidays” at her SUCCESSFUL TAX STRATEGIES blog.
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* Stacie Clifford Kitts reminded us that “Federal Minimum Wage Increases to $7.25” yesterday at her blog MORE TAX TIPS.
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* Trish McIntire weighs in on the recent TIGTA report on paid preparers in “TIGTA on Tax Preparers” over at OUR TAXING TIMES.
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In lieu of or until actual registration and licensure one would think that the IRS would be able to track preparers using the PTIN. I can’t think of any reason why a tax preparer would prefer to use his Social Security number when a PTIN is available.
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I do not recall if the report indicated that when an erroneous identification number was discovered this was followed through by a preparer penalty or at least an inquiry.
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* When I discover a new tax or related blogger one of the first things I do is to check out their various blogrolls to look for more new tax or related blogs. That is how I came across STUFF ACCOUNTANTS LIKE by pfi and the post “Acronyms, What are Your Favorites?”.
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I have always been a big user of acronyms. Clients and readers of TWTP are aware that GDE is God Damned Extensions and that the "clean" version of DFB is Damned Fool Bureaucrats.

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I checked through the 92 comments to the post for some new ones. Here are some I liked –
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CRAP - Conveniently Rationalized Accounting Principles
CPA - Cut and Paste Artist (I always thought CPA stood for Constant Pain in the Arse)
JFDI – Just F**king Do It
SWAG: Scientific Wild Ass Guess
DILLIGAF- Does It Look Like I Give A F**k (I expect I will be using this a lot in the future)
WITTB – What it takes to balance
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I was glad to see others used WTF (2 related meanings - I used it above) and FUBAR.
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TTFN