Wall St. Journal: “Drink, drive, crack up the car…and write off the damage on your tax return. For one taxpayer, that scenario became reality after he appealed a decision by the Internal Revenue Service. The U.S. Tax Court last week allowed the driver of a car to write off thousands of dollars of damage after he totalled it while under the influence.”
Dr. William Howard Steiniger and his wife were convicted of failing to report $390,000 of income. The doctor’s defense was that the there is no income tax law.
The Tax Lawyer’s Blog: “Each year the IRS publishes examples of its non-filer enforcement actions. Below are the examples for fiscal year 2010. They are excerpts from public record documents on file in the court records in the judicial district in which the cases were prosecuted.”
Commerce Clearing House published a summary of the federal tax provisions to be extended under the Tax Extenders Act of 2009. CCH says
The House of Representatives approved a package of tax extenders on December 9, 2009, largely along party lines by a vote of 241 to 181. The $31 billion Tax Extenders Act of 2009 (H.R. 4213) extends more than 50 popular but temporary tax incentives through December 31, 2010. Most of the incentives would have expired after December 31, 2009. Two revenue raisers – a change in the taxation of carried interest and heightened information reporting and disclosure requirements for foreign bank and fi nancial accounts – would pay for the one-year extensions. President Obama has indicated he will sign the extenders bill as passed by the House, but the bill’s fate is uncertain in a Senate focused almost exclusively on heath care reform.
Forbes.com: “High-income taxpayers, even those without offshore accounts, are now targets. Here’s how to protect yourself. If you’ve picked up a newspaper lately, you’re probably aware that the Internal Revenue Service has created a new enforcement unit to target high-net-worth individuals with complex financial holdings. To read these accounts, you might be led to believe that this Global High Wealth Industry group (GHWI), as it’s called, is a kind of financial SWAT team, poised to pounce on you and your assets at any moment.”