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

* A new blog post from Jason Dinesen is always welcome.  Glad to hear he will be posting more often, after a long hiatus.   

His new post answers the question “Do I Have to Issue1099s for ‘Business to Business Transactions’?”.

I especially like, and echo, his comment (nothing to do with 1099s) –

“I know more about taxes than the ‘friend’ or ‘neighbor’ or ‘dentist’ [seriously, one time a client went on and on to me about some supposed tax strategy their dentist had told them about during the client's dental visit].”

I have been saying for years that the absolute best tax advice I can give anyone is –

Do not accept tax advice from anyone other than a professional tax preparer.

Don’t listen to a broker, a banker, an insurance salesman, or your Uncle Charlie!  You wouldn’t ask your butcher for a medical opinion, so why would you listen to tax advice from your dentist?

* Fellow tax pros – have you renewed your PTIN yet?  The NATP BLOG talked about renewal last Wednesday in “PTIN renewal season begins today”.

I renewed my PTIN on 10/17.  It took only about 2 minutes – and there was NO FEE!

* At FORBES.COM Tony Nitti continues “Reviewing The Democratic Candidates' Tax Plans” by looking at the proposals of “Cory Booker”.

* Roger A. McEowen talks about the “Bad Debt Deduction” at the AGRICULTURAL LAW AND TAXATION BLOG.

* Kay Bell, the yellow rose of taxes, tells us “IRS issued almost 3 million fewer refunds under new tax law” at DON’T MESS WITH TAXES.

This is not a surprise to me.  While taxpayers may have actually had a lower tax liability under the law, because of the IRS withholding FU there were, certainly in my experience, less and smaller refunds, and many taxpayers owed Uncle Sam large amounts.

* Erica York of the TAX FOUNDATION reports on “New IRS Distributional Data on the Federal Individual Income Tax”.

“According to this data, in 2017, the top 1 percent of taxpayers paid an average federal income tax rate of 26.76 percent. The bottom 99 percent, or all the rest of the taxpayers, paid an average rate of 11.4 percent. If we look at just the bottom 50 percent, the average rate paid by these taxpayers is even lower, at 4 percent.”

THE LAST WORD –

The situation with Turkey and the troops finally proves to everyone beyond any doubt that Trump is an ignorant, incompetent and clueless moron who doesn't know his ass from a hole in the ground about politics or policy or anything.

His ignorance and incompetence are truly dangerous to the security of America and the world.

TTFN