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

* Kay Bell celebrated Labor Day with “Tax Carnival #106”.

She starts off the carnival with “a tax professional who's proudly been doing his job for 40 years” – me!

I liked “7 Easy Ways to Decrease Your Income Tax and Keep More Money” by TWTP reader Thomas Scanlon and Madeleine Begun Kane’s “Reining In Your Returns”.

* Jason Dinesen ran a holiday rerun of a rerun on a timely topic at the DINESEN TAX TIMES – “Dinesen Tax Greatest Hits — Deducting Flood Losses and Other Storm Damage”.

* Darren Mish tells us that “Colorado Police Warn of Tax Scam” at his IRS PROBLEM SOLVER blog.

As Darren points out – “the IRS also does not call residents by phone”.  And it also never initiates contact via email.

* Bill Bischoff tells us that ”Roth IRA Conversions: Still Tax-Smart” at   MARKETWATCH.COM.

* A timely “tweet” from Michelle Edwards –

“Just a friendly reminder that the IRS would like your estimated quarterly taxes by September 17th.”

* William Perez has some advice for those of you who are “Finishing up 2011 Tax Returns for the October 15th Deadline” – i.e. GD extensions – at ABOUT.COM TAX PLANNING: US.

* A “tweet” introduced me to Green Party Presidential candidate Jill Stein (who, to be honest, I have never heard of before) and the “Green New Deal”.

Here is what I discovered when I looked for the Party’s tax platform -

 “The right to fair taxation that’s distributed in proportion to ability to pay. In addition, corporate tax subsidies will be made transparent by detailing them in public budgets where they can be scrutinized, not hidden as tax breaks.”

One – I am somewhat bothered by “distributed in proportion to ability to pay”.  And two – “corporate tax subsidies will be made transparent by detailing them in public budgets where they can be scrutinized, not hidden as tax breaks” is fine with me.  But what about individual (i.e. 1040) tax subsidies?

* The IRS Return Preparer Office’s FACEBOOK page has a “Farewell Message from David Williams”.

David Williams was a very good first tax preparer regulation “czar” – we certainly could have done a lot worse.  He has been responsive to the tax preparer community, and to me personally. 

Unfortunately he has been adamant about not providing any “grandfathering” exemption from the initial competency test for experienced preparers like myself (40 years in “the business” without incident) and about exempting CPAs and attorneys from the testing requirement.

TTFN