Lee B

Here are several quotes from today's followup news: "The New York Times, citing people familiar with the matter, said JPMorgan Chase and at least four other firms were hit this month by coordinated attacks that siphoned off huge amounts of data, including checking and savings account information" "The Wall Street Journal cited unnamed sources in a report that called the attacks a "significant breach of corporate computer security."

EW YORK (AP) — The FBI is investigating a hacking attack on JPMorgan Chase and at least one other bank, according to reports citing unnamed sources familiar with the matter. A report on Bloomberg.com says the FBI is investigating an incident in which Russian hackers may have retaliated against U.S. government-sponsored sanctions against the country. The attack, Bloomberg says, led to the loss of sensitive data. Bloomberg cited security experts saying that the attack appeared "far beyond the capability of ordinary criminal hackers." In a statement, JPMorgan spokeswoman Trish Wexler said companies "of our size unfortunately experience cyber attacks nearly every day. We have multiple, layers of defense to counteract any threats and constantly monitor fraud levels." Wexler did not confirm the reports. The FBI did not immediately respond to messages for comment

Five Ways to Get Tax Deductions for Local Transportation Uses by Ken Berry, CPA, Practice Advisor Tax Correspondent for CPA Practice Advisor publication http://www.cpapracticeadvisor.com/news/11656241/5-ways-to-get-tax-deductions-for-local-transportation-uses Frequently, the IRS challenges deductions for business-related driving expenses, especially when they involve local travel. Start with this basic premise: To qualify for transportation deductions, you must be traveling away from your tax home to a business location. For this purpose, your tax home is generally your principal place of business, not the place where you live, eat and sleep. Therefore, you can’t deduct the cost of commuting back and forth from work, no matter how much your clients believe they should be able to. The IRS views this as a purely personal expense even though you’re going to work for business reasons. And it doesn’t matter if you’re driving or if you travel by bus, rail or taxi or if you do work during the commute. Period. But that doesn’t mean a client can’t deduct some transportation expenses that are in the nature of commuting, but fall outside the technical definition. Here are five prime examples: 1. Working from home: If your home office is your principal place of business -- for example, you’re self-employed or your employer requires you to work from home -- your tax home is the same as your home. In this case, you can deduct the cost of visiting a client or customer across town as long as you keep the proper records. But if you stop for a carton of milk on your way home, the portion of the trip representing personal travel is nondeductible. 2. Multiple business locations: Suppose that you’re based at one of several local job locations and travel between them. For instance, you might be a dermatologist with countywide offices or an officer at a bank operating multiple branches. The cost of the travel between the two business locations, regardless of the method, is deductible. However, if you don’t go directly from one place to the other, your deduction is limited to what it would have cost you for direct travel. 3. Short business stops: It may be advantageous for you to stop off and visit a client or customer on the way into work or on the way home. Accordingly, you may deduct the cost attributable to the travel between your regular place of business and the client or customer’s place of business. But the rest of your commuting remains a nondeductible personal expense. 4. Temporary assignments: Your business may require you to work at a distant job site for a short period of time. Instead of making a long commute each day, you might decide to stay close to the work site and come home weekends. Assuming that the job lasts no more than a year, it qualifies as a temporary assignment. This means you can deduct your lodging and meal expenses, within certain limits, plus the travel between the distant work site and home. 5. Business education: If you’re taking courses at a local college to improve your job skills, you may usually go straight to school after work on weekdays. The cost of the travel between work and the school is deductible (or between school and work if you’re taking a morning class). Naturally, you can only deduct those T&E expenses that are properly documented. (We’ll have more on this in a future article). Also, if you’re a company employee, you must claim these expenses as miscellaneous itemized expenses, subject to the usual limits

Nakajima said the PlayStation Network's online services were unavailable from Sunday through Monday afternoon Tokyo time. While Lizard Squad tweeted that it was responsible for the hack that caused Sony's system outage, Nakajima said it remains unclear who compromised. Sony said that no personal information was stolen as part of the breach. Hackers compromised the company's network — including the personal data of 77 million user accounts — in 2011. Since then, the network's security has been upgraded, the company said

The internal records of as many as 25,000 Homeland Security Department employees were exposed during a recent computer break-in at a federal contractor that handles security clearances, an agency official said Friday. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss details of an incident that is under active federal criminal investigation, said the number of victims could be greater. The department was informing employees whose files were exposed in the hacking against contractor USIS and warning them to monitor their financial accounts. Earlier this month, USIS acknowledged the break-in, saying its internal cybersecurity team had detected what appeared to be an intrusion with "all the markings of a state-sponsored attack." Neither USIS nor government officials have speculated on the identity of the foreign government. A USIS spokeswoman reached Friday declined to comment on the DHS notifications. USIS, once known as U.S. Investigations Services, has been under fire in Congress in recent months for its performance in conducting background checks on National Security Agency systems analyst Edward Snowden and on Aaron Alexis, a military contractor employee who killed 12 people during shootings at the Navy Yard in Washington in September 2013. Private contractors perform background checks on more than two-thirds of the 4.9 million government workers with security clearances, and USIS handles nearly half of that number. Many of those investigations are performed under contracts with the Office of Personnel Management, and the Homeland Security and Defense departments. The Justice Department filed a civil complaint in January against USIS alleging that the firm defrauded the government by submitting at least 665,000 security clearance investigations that had not been properly completed and then tried to cover up its actions. USIS replied in a statement at the time that the allegations dealt with a small group of employees and that the company had appointed a new leadership team and enhanced oversight and was cooperating with the Justice probe. It's not immediately clear when the hacking took place, but DHS notified all its employees internally on Aug. 6. At that point, DHS issued "stop-work orders" preventing further information flows to USIS until the agency was confident the company could safeguard its records. At the same time, OPM temporarily halted all USIS background check fieldwork "out of an abundance of caution," spokeswoman Jackie Koszczuk said. Officials would not say whether workers from other government agencies were at risk. DHS will provide workers affected by the intrusion with credit monitoring. The risk to as many as 25,000 DHS workers was first reported Friday by Reuters. A cybersecurity expert, Rick Dakin, said the possibility that other federal departments could be affected depends on whether the DHS records were "segmented," or walled off, from other federal agencies' files inside USIS. "The big question is what degree of segmentation was already in place so that other agencies weren't equally compromised," said Dakin, chief executive of Coalfire, a major Maryland-based IT audit and compliance firm. In an announcement Friday, DHS warned that more than 1,000 U.S. retailers that their cash register computers could be infected with malicious software allowing hackers to steal customer financial data. Officials urged businesses of all sizes to scan their point-of-sale systems for software known as "Backoff

The Tax Court sided with the plaintiff in a recent case involving the rules surrounding the home office deduction. The deduction is allowed for the portion of a residence that is used exclusively and on a regular basis as the principal place of business for a taxpayer. Setting aside an area of the dwelling for exclusive use is not always easy, however. In Lauren Miller’s case, the IRS challenged her deduction for the expenses allocable to one-third of her New York City studio apartment of 700 square feet. Miller was employed by BrandingIron Worldwide (BIW), a company that provides public relations, advertising, and marketing services. BIW is headquartered in Los Angeles, while at the time she was hired, Miller was BIW’s only employee in New York. Miller used part of her apartment as an office throughout 2009. BIW listed her apartment address and telephone number on its Web site as the address and phone number for its New York office. Miller usually worked weekdays between 9 a.m. and 7 p.m., but was generally expected to be available at all times. Miler’s studio apartment, a single room, was divided into three equal sections: an entryway, a bathroom, and a kitchen area; office space, including a desk, two shelving units, a bookcase, and a sofa; and a bedroom area including a platform bed and dressers. Miller has to pass through the office space to get to the bedroom area. Miller frequently met with BIW clients in the office space, and she performed work for BIW using a computer on the desk. The bookcase and shelving units were used to store books, magazines, supplies and samples related to her work for BIW and its clients. Although she used the office space primarily for business purposes, she occasionally used the space for personal purposed. BIW did not reimburse Miller for any of the expenses related to her apartment. The Tax Court, in Summary Opinion 2014-74, noted that if the taxpayer is an employee, the deduction for a home office is only allowable if the exclusive use of the office space is for the convenience of the taxpayer’s employer. In Miller’s case, BIW listed her apartment address on its Web site as its New York office address, and Miller “testified credibly that she regularly used one-third of her apartment space as an office to conduct BIW business, she met with clients there, and she was expected to be available to work well into the evening.” The court agreed with Miller that her apartment was her principal place of business, that she was obliged to use the space as an office for the convenience of her employer, and that BIW was not able or willing to reimburse her for any of her apartment-related expenses. “Although Petitioner admitted that she used portions of the office space for nonbusiness purposes, we find that her personal use of the space was de minimis and wholly attributable to the practicalities of living in a studio apartment of such modest dimensions.” Therefore, the court concluded that Miller was entitled to the home office deduction.

Be aware that Business Credit Cards do not have the same protection under the law that personal credit cards do.

With his citizenship status, can he qualify to be legitimate S Corp shareholder ?

Some customers of The UPS Store may have had their credit and debit card information exposed by a computer virus found on systems at 51 stores. A spokeswoman for UPS says the information includes card numbers, postal and email addresses from about 100,000 transactions between Jan. 20 and Aug. 11. United Parcel Service Inc. said Wednesday that it was among U.S. retailers who got a government bulletin about the malware on July 31. The malware is not identified by current anti-virus software. UPS spokeswoman Chelsea Lee says the company is not aware of any fraud related to the attack. Atlanta-based UPS says it hired a security firm that found the virus in systems at stores in 24 states, about 1 percent of the company's 4,470 franchised locations.

My ATX Sales Representative just called me and said he was authorized to offer me a 10 % discount if I renewed today. I will wait to January. He told me that their top priority was to fix the Server Retry issue.

I would just add a new asset called "kitchen improvements" and I believe the standard life for residential rentals would apply.

FRANKLIN, Tenn. (AP) — Hospital operator Community Health Systems said a cyberattack took information on more than 4 million patients from its computer network earlier this year. The Franklin, Tennessee, company said Monday that no medical or credit card records were taken in the attack, which may have happened in April and June. But Community said the attack did bypass its security systems to take patient names, addresses, birthdates, and phone and Social Security numbers. The hospital operator said it believes the attack came from a group in China that used sophisticated malware and technology to get the information. Community Health has since removed the malware from its system and finalized "other remediation efforts" to prevent future attacks. A spokeswoman did not immediately respond to a request from The Associated Press seeking comment on the attacks. The information that was taken came from patients who were referred to or received care from doctors tied to the company over the past five years. Community Health Systems Inc. is notifying patients affected by the attack and offering them identity theft protection services. The company owns, leases or operates 206 hospitals in 29 states.

NEW YORK (AP) — A data breach at Supervalu may have impacted as many as 200 of its grocery and liquor stores and potentially affected retail chains recently sold by the company in two dozen states. The announcement lengthens the list of retailers that have had security walls breached in recent months, including Target, P.F. Chang's and even the thrift store operations of Goodwill Industries International Inc. Hackers accessed a network that processes Supervalu transactions, with account numbers, expiration dates, card holder names and other information possibly stolen, the company said. Those systems are still being used by the stores sold off by Supervalu last year for $3.3 billion, potentially opening up customer data at those stores as well. The breach occurred between June 22 and July 17, according to Supervalu, which said it took immediate steps to secure that portion of its network. The cards from which data may have been stolen were used at 180 Supervalu stores and liquor stores run under the Cub Foods, Farm Fresh, Hornbacher's, Shop 'n Save and Shoppers Food & Pharmacy names. Data may also have been stolen from 29 franchised Cub Foods stores and liquor stores. Those stores in North Dakota, Minnesota, Illinois, Virginia, North Carolina, Maryland and Missouri. But Supervalu said that a related criminal intrusion occurred at the chain stores it sold to Cerebus Capital Management LP in March 2013, stores that Supervalu continues to supply with information technology services. Those stores include Albertsons, Acme, Jewel-Osco, Shaw's and Star Market — and related Osco and Sav-on in-store pharmacies in two dozen states. Cerebus affiliate AB Acquisition said that it's working closely with Supervalu to evaluate the scope of the potential breach. Supervalu has yet to determine if any cardholder data was actually stolen and said Friday that there's no evidence of any customer data being misused. Information about the breach was released out of "an abundance of caution," the company said. The company believes that the intrusion has been contained and it said it is confident that people can safely use credit and debit cards at its stores. Supervalu and AB Acquisitions are offering customers whose cards may have been affected a year of consumer identity protection services via AllClear ID. Supervalu has also created a call center to help answer customer questions about the data breach and the identity protection services being offered. The call center can be reached at (855) 731-6018. Customers may also visit Supervalu's website under the Consumer Security Advisory section to get more information about the data breach and the identity protection services. There are efforts underway to make credit and debit cards more secure following a rash of security breaches in recent months.

The IRS has announced that taxpayers can no longer apply for Employer ID Numbers (EINs) by telephone. Taxpayers must either apply online from the "Employer ID Numbers (EINs) Application" at https://sa.www4.irs.gov/modiein/individual/index.jsp, or by filling out and faxing or mailing Form SS-4, Application for Employer Identification Number. See the Form SS-4 instructions for detail

Even the answers to simple questions can be deceptive. The new client will say yes or say, "Yeah I did that," when they really didn't understand your question.

Surprise, Surprise ! Big banks and wealthy investors are accused of benefiting from a tax credit program that is supposed to help poor communities, according to a new Senate report. The report, from Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., describes how millions of dollars in New Markets Tax Credits are being diverted to benefit billionaires, major banks, Hollywood producers and fast food chains. The program is supposed to spur new markets in struggling communities, but Coburn said it is instead subsidizing companies and corporations that have little need of taxpayer assistance, providing financing for projects such as a sculpture in the desert, a vintage car museum, and pet care centers. In at least one case, a project supported with a New Markets Tax Credit is threatening to bankrupt an entire town and eliminate jobs, including the entire police department. “The New Market Tax Credit is a reverse Robin Hood scheme paid for with the taxes collected from working Americans to provide payouts to big banks and corporations in the hope that those it took the money from might benefit,” Coburn said in a statement Monday. “When government picks winners and losers, the losers usually end up being taxpayers. Washington should reduce federal taxes on working Americans and all business owners who create jobs by eliminating tax earmarks, loopholes and giveaways like the New Markets Tax Credit.” The New Markets Tax Credit program was expected to steer private financing into low-income communities to help create jobs. Yet, virtually every neighborhood, from Beverly Hills to the Hamptons, could qualify for the program, Coburn noted. “As a result of the definition of qualified low-income communities, virtually all of the country’s census tracts [neighborhoods and communities] are potentially eligible for the NMTC,” according to a report from the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service. While some of the projects are well intended, such as health clinics, Coburn acknowledged, it is difficult to measure if the tax credits are helping those who are seeking a hand up or simply subsidizing banks, corporations and others companies that are already succeeding. The tax credit is intended to benefit the poor but is instead benefiting big banks and other private investors that claim more than $1 billion in NMTC annually. These include JP Morgan Chase, Bank of America, Goldman Sachs and Wells Fargo, among others. The program duplicates over 100 other federal economic development efforts. There are at least 23 community development tax expenditures costing taxpayers over $10 billion annually and 80 overlapping discretionary programs costing $6.5 billion annually, 28 of which are specifically designed to spur growth in new markets. Because of this redundancy, many projects and corporations are double-dipping on taxpayers—receiving multiple federal subsidies through other grant programs and tax giveaways. In addition, it is unclear which of these best meets the overlapping goals, or if any of them spur more economic growth than policies encouraging private investments that do not spend taxpayer money. A separate Government Accountability Office report that was issued Monday was also critical of the New Markets Tax Credit program, revealing that fees charged by Community Development Entities reduced the amount of assistance provided to low-income community projects by $619 million (7.1 percent) from 2011 to 2012. A majority of NMTC-financed projects used more than one source of public funding, even though the purpose of the tax credit is to leverage private investment. The GAO found that 62 percent of NMTC projects received other public funding from 2010 to 2010. One-third of NMTC projects received other federal funding, while 21 percent of NMTC projects received funding from multiple other government programs. In many cases, investors were able to claim the tax credit on the equity provided by the other public sources. The NMTC has subsidized wealthy investors in nearly 4,000 projects, including car washes, bowling allies, parking lots and breweries, according to Coburn’s report. Many of these are not a federal priority—such as an ice skating rink and a car museum—while others help corporations with little need of taxpayer handouts, including food and beverage chains such as Subway, IHOP and Starbucks. One of the program’s projects is threatening to bankrupt the city of Desert Hot Springs, Calif., where the cost to maintain the wellness center established with NMTC support has prompted across-the-board salary cuts and city officials are even considering elimination of the police department. Tens of thousands of dollars intended for the financially challenged clinic were spent to create a sculpture in the desert. In another project in an area of Atlanta where condominiums sell for millions of dollars, NMTCs are being used to expand the world’s largest aquarium, according to Coburn’s report. “With ticket prices costing nearly $65 for a 15 minute show, the real beneficiaries are SunTrust Bank, Wells Fargo and the Emmy-award winning producers and Hollywood ensemble hired to develop the show, and of course the dolphins who live in the larger aquarium

A little background: Oregon was the first state to license tax preparers in 1973. It's a two step process, first you must past a test to become a Licensed Tax Preparer and then after two years of experience under a Licensed Tax Consultant, you can take a more comprehensive test (very similar to the EA Exam) to become a Licensed Tax Consultant. (Note: CPAs and Attorneys are exempt from these rules.) In Oregon almost all EAs have gone thru this process before becoming EAs. Over 20 years ago when I became an EA, I also held an active CPA license so I was given a LTC license and was not subject to the other requirements. Where the conflict arises is when someone with an EA license moves into the state and wants to start preparing tax returns. Oregon's Tax Board is saying, you can't. This conflict has been intensifying over the last several years resulting in an official statement from the Oregon Society of Enrolled Agents as follows: "The Board of Directors of ORSEA feels that: The Oregon Board of Tax Practitioners has broken the law. Not accidentally, but with full knowledge. In January of 2013, the Board issued Rule 800-020-0015 (5), requiring enrolled agents to have 360 hours of work experience during 2 of the prior 5 years to become a Licensed Tax Consultant. The rule has the effect of prohibiting an Enrolled Agent with less than 360 hours from working under a Licensed Tax Consultant to gain the experience required; effectively shutting the door on using the Enrolled Agent License to begin a career in Oregon. They knew they broke the law when they passed the rule. Oregon Revised Statues explicitly state: "the board shall license as a tax consultant any person who is, on the date of the application for a tax consultants license, enrolled to practice before the Internal Revenue Service pursuant to 31 C.F.R. part 10 if the person has passed to the satisfaction of the board an examination covering Oregon personal income tax law" ORS 673.637. Knowing they broke the law they tried to cover themselves by submitting a bill (HB2214) attempting to change the law after the fact. The legislature rejected the amendment, calling it a "solution without a problem." According to the minutes of the May 2013 OBTP meeting "The Board members would like to retain the 360 hour requirement regardless of the absence of the requirement in the statutes." They broke the law and they knew it! They even wrote it in their minutes! The Tax board wasn't in the least bit interested in following the law since they did not even respond to our attorney's request to explain their legal reasoning (if any) they had for passing the rule. We as an organization have asked the Oregon Court of Appeals to invalidate the rule. The only purpose of the rule is to prevent new EAs and semi-retired EAs from working. There has never been a documented case where an unsupervised EA with less than 360 hours of experience has harmed anyone. The OBTP director admitted this in testimony in front of the legislature. The Rule is illegal. The board knows this"

I posted this article from Forbes, because I thought it was interesting. It doesn't mean that I agree with everything it says or that I endorse what says. If we only posted things from primary source documents only, there would be a lot fewer posts and a lot less to discuss.

Good article in Forbes: FAIR Tax Abolishes IRS - Then What? Follow Comments I’m always annoyed when I hears somebody arguing that if we made some tweaks in the tax system, we could abolish the IRS. Then we come to the FAIR tax, which actually explains, in detail, how its enactment allows for the abolition of the IRS. FairTax.org has quite a bit of information about the various aspects of the program, I’d suggest that you take a good look at it. It is probably worth studying. Here is the nutshell version of the Fair Tax Plan: Description unavailable (Photo credit: TheodoreWLee) The FairTax Plan is a comprehensive proposal that replaces all federal income and payroll based taxes with an integrated approach including a progressive national retail sales tax, a prebate to ensure no American pays federal taxes on spending up to the poverty level, dollar-for-dollar federal revenue replacement, and, through companion legislation, the repeal of the 16th Amendment. This nonpartisan legislation (HR 25 / S 122) abolishes all federal personal and corporate income taxes, gift, estate, capital gains, alternative minimum, Social Security, Medicare, and self-employment taxes and replaces them with one simple, visible, federal retail sales tax – administered primarily by existing state sales tax authorities. The IRS is disbanded and defunded. The FairTax taxes us only on what we choose to spend on new goods or services, not on what we earn. The FairTax is a fair, efficient, transparent, and intelligent solution to the frustration and inequity of our current tax system. But You Still Need To Collect It They’ve got that covered. The collection of the national sales tax will be handed off to the states, which will be paid a percentage. Most states already know how to collect sales taxes. So the abolition of the IRS is accomplished by substantially ramping up 50+ revenue departments (Besides the states, you have DC, the territories, and maybe some of the 500+ sovereign Indian nations). So when you hear that enacting the FAIR tax will save all that money we are spending on the IRS, it is not really happening. In an article available on the site Tax Administration and Collection Costs: The FairTax vs. The Existing Federal Tax System, the authors estimate that it will cost the states $9.66 billion to collect the Fair Tax and there will be a net federal savings of $9.38 billion. So there is actually a small increase in the government tax administration. The big savings projected are in the private sector compliance costs, which they estimate as being reduced by over $340 billion. Progressive? The proponents claim that the “prebate” concept makes the Fair Tax progressive. The “prebate” would be a monthly check on the amount of tax that would be paid by someone spending a poverty level income. They peg that at just over $11,490 per adult and $4,020 per child. So a single person who went through the proper registration would get a check for $220 monthly based on 2013 numbers. The check goes up by $77 per child. So all those Tax Court cases about who gets the exemption, child credit and head of household status – now we can have them about who gets the kid’s prebate. That makes the tax progressive when it comes to consumption (at least overtly), but it is highly regressive when using income as a measure. Superficially, this system is Thomas Piketty on steroids. Most people spend most, if not more than their income, so among them, thanks to the prebate, the tax is progressive. Different story for the 1% who can invest most of their income. As a percentage of income, the amount they pay in sales tax will be much, much lower. There is another odd quirk that adds a touch of regressivity to the Fair Tax. The social security tax will be repealed, but the wage reporting and benefit calculations will remain in place (although, there are hints that there might be other things in the works). Let’s imagine two guys, call them Joe and Harry. They each spend $80,000 per year, so they pay the same in sales tax. Joe makes $80,000 per year and Harry makes $90,000. Harry saves the other $10,000 for his retirement. Harry will also have a higher social security payout than Joe. It is worth noting that the progressive income tax and the estate tax were put into place in response to Gilded Age inequality, when the government was funded mainly by consumption taxes. Simpler? Of course, the Fair Tax is simpler than the current income tax, but it would probably be easier to prune the bells and whistles from the income tax, if you can forgive a mixed metaphor, than to pass the Fair Tax. With an income tax, though, there remains a core complexity- What expenditures are being made to produce income, making them deductible in arriving at income? That core complexity remains in the Fair Tax. Vendors of all types collect the 23% on everything they sell, goods, services and rentals. They pay the tax on everything they buy, but then take a credit for the things that were used in the business. OK. So will the moderately sociopathic who own businesses ever buy anything that they don’t take credit for? Here is what the proponents have to say about that issue So all the litigation that we have about deductible business expenses will remain relevant with the Fair Tax. Only the audits will not be conducted by one agency. There will be fifty or more with a possible race to the bottom in terms of how aggressive they are in order to make their states more business friendly. Also, as registered sellers, they are subject to the possibility of being audited by the state. During such an audit, they will have to produce the invoices for all the “business purchases” that they did not pay sales tax on and will have to be able to show that they were bona fide business expenses. If they cannot prove this, then they will have to pay the taxes that should have been paid when the items were purchased, plus interest and penalties. The probability of being audited will be much greater than it is under the current system with its over 140 million tax filers. Under the FairTax, there will be less than 20 million businesses that will be filing sales tax returns and thus subject to the possibility of being audited. Thus, the probability of tax cheats getting caught will be much greater than it is today, making tax evasion riskier than it is today. Additionally, while the FairTax has much stronger taxpayer rights than does the current tax system, the FairTax legislation provides for a number of fines and penalties for noncompliance. It also authorizes a mechanism for reporting tax cheats and obtaining a reward. Finally, one of the things that makes the Fair Tax simple is its comprehensiveness. All final consumption by everybody is subject to the tax. The income tax would be vastly simpler if Congress did not use it as the Swiss Army Knife of social policy using income tax credits and deductions to encourage various things, like research and historic preservation. What will stop them from doing this with a national sales tax? Gee, I could afford to pay $100 for that life-saving drug, but I can’t afford $123. Let’s exempt prescription drugs, but not birth control, unless its needed for some other condition – on and on and on. And In The End? Most of the l the cases that I read would still be matters of controversy under the Fair Tax. Who’s kid is this? Is that really a business expense? You flat out did not pay, so we are taking your stuff. With fifty plus different revenue departments doing the enforcement, how likely is it to be consistent across the country? Fifty plus revenue departments implementing a federal tax is a recipe for massive inconsistencies. Eventually, after horror stories about the aggressive New York and California auditors and the way too easygoing ones in Alaska, it will occur to somebody, that collecting federal taxes consistently across the country probably requires federal employees. Somebody feeling nostalgic might propose calling the resulting agency the IRS, but that probably will not happen.

I saw a black helicopter over my house last night !

Under the Affordable Care Act, there are two unique reporting requirements. The first is the individual mandate reporting requirement under Section 6055 of the Code. The second is the “pay or play” reporting requirement under Section 6056. Many employers have been wondering about how onerous these reporting requirements may be and while not finalized, the IRS did release draft forms that will apply to these requirements. There have not been any instructions issued (although they are expected in August) and they are not final and probably will not be until sometime later this year. But for now, they provide some insight into what information employers will have to collect. Under Section 6055, health insurers and employers sponsoring self-funded group health plans must annually report to the IRS and participants whether the group health plan coverage constitutes minimum essential coverage under Health Care Reform. The IRS forms used for Section 6055 reporting will vary depending on whether the reporting entity is an employer or an insurer. Large employers that sponsor self-insured plans will report on IRS Forms 1095-C and 1094-C (transmittal form), completing both sections of Form 1095-C, under a combined reporting approach, to report the information required under Section 6055 and Section 6056, discussed below. Entities that are not reporting as large employers (for example, health insurers and sponsors of multiemployer plans) will report on IRS Forms 1095-B and 1094-B (transmittal form). Under Section 6056, employers have to demonstrate they have satisfied the obligation to offer coverage to employees under the “pay or play” rules. To report this, employers are going to use Form 1095-C, with Form 1094-C as the transmittal. Note that even though they don’t have to comply until 2016, mid-size employers (between 50 and 99 full-time employees) are still required to comply with the reporting requirements if the mid-size employer sponsors a self-funded group health plan. See related story: IRS releases draft forms for ObamaCare Now remember that these forms are drafts and the instructions are not written yet. Certainly we hope that the instructions will provide an even clearer understanding of how and when to report and who gets copies. But for now, employers should take a look at these drafts just to get a feel for what information they will have to provide and develop a system for making sure that information is collected in a timely manne

I agree, I do payroll processing and for all my clients use decimals. This should be 8.88 Hours. Not aware of any cite. Plus in your example you have reduced their time by 8 minutes. If you were rounding, you would have round up to 9 Hours.

Click on the following link for an interesting article: http://money.cnn.com/2014/06/25/pf/debt-of-an-ex-spouse/index.html?iid=SF_PF_River

New York suspends tax preparers – for not filing taxes New York Governor Andrew Cuomo’s office has suspended 40 tax preparers, including one at practitioners H&R Block, for failing to file their state income tax returns in 2011 and 2012. State tax commissioner Thomas H. Mattox commented: “It’s this simple: If you don’t file your own taxes, you shouldn’t be allowed to file returns for other New Yorkers”. All have the right to challenge the penalties

Kentucky gives nod to Noah’s Ark tax break A Kentucky state tourism board has given preliminary approval for an $18m package of tax breaks for a proposed full-scale replica of the Ark built by Noah, as described in the Book of Genesis. Construction is scheduled to begin later this year, with the attraction opening by summer 2016