WHAT’S THE BUZZ? TELL ME WHAT’S A HAPPENIN’

+ Check out the DECEMBER issue of LOIS!

+ Kay Bell discusses temporary holiday employment in “Employees, Contractors and Taxes” in her BANKRATE.COM blog.

“You got a job for the holidays. That extra cash certainly will come in handy. But be careful, or you could end up paying more than you expected to the IRS.”

+ And over at DON’T MESS WITH TAXES Kay reports “Democrats, Republicans Duking It Out Over Payroll Tax Cuts”.

“We all knew that members of Congress too often act like kids. Now the payroll tax cut issue has taken on the air of a recess scuffle.”

If Congress does not act all working Americans will suffer a 2% pay cut effective January 1^st.

+ TAX GIRL Kelly Phillips Erb updates the story with “Senate Votes No on Payroll Tax Cuts” at FORBES.COM.

This is just the beginning.

+ A good quote from a tweet –

“Give a man a gun and he can rob a bank, give a man a bank and he can rob the world.”

+ OOPS!  There appear to be many more changes to the 2011 Schedule E than just the breakdown of income to 1099-K source and all other income I mentioned in my recent post on changes to 2011 IRS forms.

Trish McIntire covers my omissions in her post “Schedule E Changes” at OUR TAXING TIMES, reporting what she has learned at a recent year-end tax update class (the year-end update I have booked is in mid-December).  

While the final version of many 2011 forms are now available at the IRS website, at the time I wrote the forms update post, and as of this writing, only the “draft” 2011 Schedule E was available.

+ Another good Friday tax quote from Rob Teuber’s TAX LAW FORUM –

“Politicians never accuse you of ‘greed’ for wanting other people’s money – only for wanting to keep your own money.”

THE LAST WORD:

Did Herman Cain have a 13-year affair with his latest accuser?  Of course he did.  But who cares?

Not that I would ever want Herman Cain in the White House, but I have said for years I would prefer that a “snake” occupy 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue than someone who is totally faithful to his wedding vows.

Look at history.  FDR, JFK, and Slick Willy were all famous for “extra-marital” activity – and all were good Presidents (who knows what BC would have accomplished if he had not been distracted by that fool Kenneth Starr).  The word is that LBJ was a total, pardon my French, prick as a person, but much was accomplished during his tenure in office.

Jimmy Carter and Dubya were faithful husbands (at least I am sure about Carter) – and look at the damage done during their presidencies.

TTFN