WHAT’S THE BUZZ, TELL ME WHAT’S A HAPPENNIN’

* Tax pros – what do you have to say about “The Mortgage Interest Dilemma”?

* Have you ever wondered “Does your State Have an Estate or Inheritance Tax?”  The TAX FOUNDATION provides the answer – (highlight is mine)

“Currently, fifteen states and the District of Columbia have an estate tax, and six states have an inheritance tax. Maryland and New Jersey have both.”

What does tell us?  Don’t die as a resident of New Jersey or Maryland – especially New Jersey! 

* Can you help with any of my “Unanswered Questions”?

* As if the Service wasn’t in enough trouble.  We now discover, thanks to ACCOUNTING TODAY, that a new TIGTA report found the “IRS Didn't Fire Hundreds of Lawbreaker Employees” –

“Nearly a thousand Internal Revenue Service employees who willfully violated the tax laws received suspensions, reprimands or counseling over a 10-year period instead of being fired, according to a new report.

The report, by the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration, found that the IRS mitigated proposed terminations in over 60 percent of the cases involving willful tax noncompliance by IRS employees and did not clearly identify the reasons why some of the employee terminations were reduced to lesser penalties.”

* CCH HEADLINE NEWS reports “Four New Delivery Services Added to IRS’s List of Private Delivery Services and Five Removed”.

* And CCH also tells us about “Tax Relief Available for Victims of Severe Storms, Tornadoes, Flooding, Landslides and Mudslides in Kentucky”.    

* Trish McIntire explains a basic concept of taxation that you need to understand in “No Income Is Taxed Alone” –

“The problem is that no income is taxed alone. It’s added to the rest of your income and taxed that way.”

 

Perhaps I will write in depth on this topic in a future TWTP post. 

* Kay Bell, the yellow rose of taxes, provides still another reason why refundable tax credits are a bad idea in “IRS Issued $5.6 Billion in Erroneous Education Tax Credits” at DON’T MESS WITH TAXES (highlight is mine) -

“The Internal Revenue Service issued $5.6 billion in erroneous education tax credits, primarily the American Opportunity Tax Credit (which is a temporary replacement of the Hope Credit through 2017) and the Lifetime Learning Credit, in connection with claims on 3.6 million returns filed for the 2012 tax year, says TIGTA.

Around $2.5 billion of the wrongly issued credits were refundable, meaning the money went to taxpayers even if they owed no tax bill. The remaining $3.1 billion in erroneous credits were nonrefundable.”

 

TTFN