Tax Preparation and Consulting, Financial Counseling and Education
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This question often comes up when a military landlord owned and lived in a property, transferred away (PCS) for a few years and converted the property to a rental. Then the military landlord returns to the area and wonders if it is a good idea to move back in or not. There are at least …
We military landlords tend to want to maximize deductions and minimize taxes. That is probably true of all taxpayers. I know I haven’t had a client yet who said they wanted to pay more in taxes than was required. For the purposes of this article, surviving an audit means walking away without any additional taxes, …
Depreciation is often a new concept for landlords and unfortunately many landlords, experienced and inexperienced, have mistakes in this area of taxes. Depreciation can be defined as “a reduction in the value of an asset with the passage of time, due in particular to wear and tear”. Usually (or maybe often or maybe traditionally, I’m …
Often as a taxpayer’s tax situation gets more complicated it starts to make more sense to hire a tax professional. Most people I”ve known who do their own tax prep don’t reference IRS publications and instructions very often and certainly not the tax code directly. But that is what due diligence requires to ensure the …
It is amazing how many people feel like they know enough about this topic to provide tax advice on it – often the wrong tax advice – when they don’t have knowledge of the applicable IRS publications, the IRC, and the CFR. I have had lawyers, real estate agents, and property managers tell my clients they …
Many of us taxpayers find that our tax refund slips through our fingers within a few weeks of receiving it. And some of us wished we had saved all, or at least some, of it. If you are among the want-to-be savers, here are a few ideas to help make that happen: Lower Your Tax …
If a debt is forgiven or discharged for less than you owe, the amount of debt that you don’t have to repay is considered to be cancelled. Cancelled debt can happen if the creditor or lender can’t collect, or if they have given up on collecting. Since in theory at least, having your debt cancelled …
Just like many areas around this topic, this can get messy. I’ll summarize, but if you are preparing your own tax return, the IRS has an entire publication for this that you should consult, Pub 504. There can be several filing options. The starting point on determining which options are available is whether the taxpayer …
Unfortunately I often come across this when a parent files their tax return electronically and the return gets rejected by the IRS. The rejection code will indicate that another tax return was filed claiming the dependent. At this point if the parent with the rejected return is certain that they have the right to claim …
No one wants to be on the IRS naughty list or have any issues with the IRS. Over the course of our lives we learn a few practices to help us avoid problems or at least reduce how bad a problem may become. For example, I refill my gas tank when it reaches ¼ of …