IRS Issues Guidance on Expansion of Work Opportunity Tax Credit

The IRS issued Notice 2009-28 and a revised Form 8850 dealing with new classes of individuals who are eligible for the work opportunity tax credit under §51. The new classes that were added by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Tax Act of 2009 in February included unemployed veterans and disconnected youth. While the definition of [...]

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Strategic Intent vs. Strategic Planning

Hamel and Prahalad indicate in their 2005 article titled Strategic Intent that few western companies have been able to implement strategic intent in their organizations despite deploying considerable resources for corporate strategic planning. To consider why this might be true it is first necessary to look at the differences in methodologies. Strategic planning determines how [...]

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Telephone Excise Claims Are Subject to §6511 Limitations Periods Even Though Customers Never Had to File a Return

Just when you thought you would never need to hear about telephone excise tax claims again… The Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit sustained the finding of the Court of Federal Claims that taxpayers could not file claims for refund of the telephone excise tax that was erroneously collected for all years paid, but [...]

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Taxpayer Wrong About Tax Status of Award, but Court Found She Acted Reasonably Even Though Her Conclusion Was Wrong

Josephine Shelton had worked for Dial Corporation and while she was there she was sexually harassed by her supervisor. Complaints to higher management did not provide relief, and rather she was assigned menial labor or given the least desirable assignments. She developed severe emotional problems, and began to take medications to deal with the physical [...]

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State Court Document Worthless to Obtain Exemption In Tax Court

Yet again we are reminded of the need to strictly comply with the procedures for transfer of a dependency exemption to a noncustodial parent in the case of Swafford v. Commissioner, TC Summary Opinion 2009-82. Mr. Swafford had a Ohio State court document that granted him the right to claim the income tax exemption for [...]

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Taxpayer Finds He Will Need to Pay Interest on Money He Didn’t Ask to Receive

But, then again, he didn’t question the extra refund or send the money back, so… The case of Baral v. Commissioner, TC Memo 2009-113 offers up a case where a taxpayer found that even though the IRS gave him money he didn’t ask for, he still would end up effectively paying interest on that money [...]

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Estate and IRS Split-One Transfer to FLP Bona Fide Sale, Other One Yanked Back Into Estate

The IRS and the taxpayer split the results in the case of the Estate of Miller v. Commissioner, TC Memo 2009-119. The estate lost its argument that the value of the QTIP trust established at the death of the decedent’s spouse should not be included in the decedent’s estate. The estate argued that Valeria Miller [...]

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Free college accounting class for future CPAs

Do you know a high school student who is interested in accounting? DeVry University is offering ACCT 212 – Financial Accounting free this summer to high school students who would like to earn college credits and find out more about accounting. BUSN 115 – Introduction to Business & Technology is also available. These classes are [...]

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To 1099 or Not to 1099

Employee VS Independent that is the question. This may not be what you think. As I begin my own search for work a fundamental question haunts me. Engage as an Employee or 1099 consultant? I purposely left traditional corporate CFO/controller employee based roles when the risk of signing for the corporation was too high. This [...]

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Build Your Brand for Better Opportunities

Our partnership with Jobing.com has started out strong.  Last week, Julie Armstrong with Jobing.com spoke to a group of our CPAs and recent accounting graduates.  In case you missed the program, here are the handouts.  It’s a tough job market, even for our talented CPAs, so this program provided strategies to be successful in your [...]

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