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

Working away on the GDE’s (the E is for “extension”).

* Kelly Phillips Erb, FORBES.COM’s TaxGirl, tells us “What To Keep & What To Throw Out After Tax Day”.

While, as usual, the post provides good advice from KPE, I do disagree with some of her points.  I am one of the tax professionals who firmly believes that you should NEVER throw out the copies of your federal income tax return – you should keep them forever.  This goes for your W-2s as well.  You never know when something on a past return will be needed, as I have found over the years (I keep on file every tax return I have prepared for every current client and have occasionally had to consult a 10+ year previous return) and it serves as a financial history.  I do recommend dying with a filing cabinet of 50+ years of tax returns.

And I believe you should keep the final paycheck stub of the year for each employer for at least the statute of limitations period – or, more better, forever along with the W-2.

* Kay Bell tells us “Big businesses benefit most from new tax pass-through law”.  Is anyone really surprised? 

* FYI, ACCOUNTING TODAY tells us “IRS offers relief to taxpayers with family HSAs”.

* And Michael Cohn reports in ACCOUNTING TODAY that “Congressional staff aims to finish technical corrections to tax reform bill”.

No surprise here –

“Republican lawmakers rushed the bill through Congress in order to be able to use a budget reconciliation procedure to avoid a filibuster by Senate Democrats, and inconsistencies emerged in the hastily drafted legislation.”

Michael points out (highlight is mine) –

“Staffers on Congress’s Joint Committee on Taxation have been preparing a set of technical corrections to the tax reform bill and hope to have it in legislative form by the end of this congressional session, which ends this year. But that doesn’t mean it’s going to pass anytime soon.”

* At the TAXPROF blog Bryan Camp gives us a “Lesson From The Tax Court: The Cohan Doctrine Cannot Always Save You”.

What is the “Cohan Doctrine”?  See here.

TTFN