Even without the Triple Crown on the line, today is still a big one for thoroughbred race fans. Could Suddenbreakingnews, getting a workout back in March, spoil Exaggerator's quest for another trophy in today's Belmont Stakes? Exaggerator, who out raced rival and previously undefeated Kentucky Derby winner Nyquist in Baltimore's muddy Preakness Stakes last month, is the favorite to win the Belmont Stakes later today. But the wide open field -- Nyquist's owners pulled the pony because it had been dealing with a fever and elevated white blood count -- has opened up the betting. A new horse in the... Read more →
June 2016
A few years back, the Internal Revenue Service revamped its website and did a pretty good job. IRS.gov won some awards and is better than many other federal agency online presences. Andrew Miller's winning redesign of IRS.gov via the Tax Design Challenge. (Image courtesy Miller's Organizer Sandbox) But the IRS decided that as more of us taxpayers are online every day, it wanted to make sure it was remains part of our cyber interaction. Getting public design input: In March, the IRS announced the Tax Design Challenge, its first foray into crowdsourcing. The competition offered a variety of cash prizes,... Read more →
Which government agency do people hate more, the tax collector or the Department of Motor Vehicles? Depending on the day you ask, they probably swap the most-detested title. Vehicle property tax collectors love it when folks in their jurisdictions own expensive autos like this Ferrari. For around 50,000 Connecticut drivers, the anger right now is being equally shared. Computer tax error: The Nutmeg's State's DMV says that's how many incorrect car tax bills will be mailed to Connecticut drivers as a result of the department's continuing computer problems. The DMV has admitted it sent faulty information on those 50,000 autos... Read more →
Sometimes you just have to feel sorry for the Internal Revenue Service. The federal tax agency finally brings its Get Transcript online service back fully online after more than a year and BAM! It gets smacked. Click image to go to the new, more secure Get Transcript website. The Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration today issued a report charging that that the IRS missed some taxpayers whose information fell into criminal hands in last year's Get Transcript hack. What the crooks were after: The online Get Transcript tool, which now requires a tougher, two-step authentication process in order to... Read more →
Get Transcript is back. The Internal Revenue Service's online tool where taxpayers can download copies of their prior year filing data had been effectively out of service for more than a year after it was hacked in in early 2015. The online service still worked as long as you were willing to request your old filing data online, but wait for the actual information to be mailed to you in paper form. IRS efforts to upgrade the site's security recently progressed to the point where it was allowing some transcript requests to be randomly downloaded. Today, June 7, the IRS... Read more →
When Crain's New York Business reported in March that self-proclaimed brilliant businessman Donald J. Trump got a tax break available only to folks making $500,000 or less, the ostensible billionaire's people said it was a mistake. If that's true, it's an error that's being repeated. Crain's June 6 online article says that Trump once again received a middle-class tax break on the property tax bill for his luxurious apartment in Trump Tower (pictured at left) on Fifth Avenue. The initial report that Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, was poor enough to get a special Big Apple property tax break... Read more →
Work-related moving expenses are tax deductible. You don't even have to itemize. The claim is made as one of the adjustments to income, generally referred to as an above-the-line deduction, right on the long Form 1040. Vintage moving van | Alden Jewell via Flickr But don't think just because this is a relative easy tax write-off that the Internal Revenue Service will just give the claim a cursory glance. IRS examiners will be looking. Just as Giliard Schwartz. A really big move: The San Antonio, Texas, woman claimed $330,000 in moving expenses on her 2012 tax return. Instead of that... Read more →
Last week was not a good one for the presumptive Republican presidential nominee. Terrible | Veterans questions testily answered: Donald J. Trump was forced by persistent inquiries to finally fulfill his promise of distributing donations to veterans' charities for which he held a fundraiser back in January. He handled it with all the aplomb and grace we've come to see so far in his quest for the White House. (Sorry about my sarcasm font not working on that last sentence.) Awful | Trump loses tournament: Then his golf course in South Florida lost a key event. The PGA Tour announced... Read more →
June is jam-packed with special days. It kicks off with the official start of the Atlantic/Gulf of Mexico hurricane season, which seems a bit late since we've already seen two storms form this year. Then there's Flag Day, Father's Day and the arrival, here in the Northern Hemisphere, of summer. And I'm not even counting things like today's National Doughnut Day and all the June weddings that will be special calendar dates for those happy couples. And yes, there are some tax connections to all those days. They are duly noted over in the ol' blog's right column, just under... Read more →
Happy National Doughnut Day! If you live near a military facility, consider dropping a box of the sweet fried treats off there for the enlisted men and women. Or take some to your local veterans' meeting hall. This isn't, a la some politicians who will remain nameless (but linked to!), a blog version of pandering to patriotism. Doughnuts actually are inextricably linked to our armed services. Last year, National Doughnut Day fell on June 6, D-Day. As I noted in my post then, Salvation Army officers who went to Europe during World War I to comfort U.S. troops did so... Read more →
It's been more than a year since hackers were able to get into the Internal Revenue Service's online database of taxpayer transcripts. The agency initially thought that cyber crooks got data on around 104,000 filers when they broke into the Get Transcript tool. The hack, which apparently started in February 2015 and was made public three months later, was accomplished by criminals using personal information that they got from sources outside the IRS. By August, the IRS investigation revealed that the hacked tax account tally was closer to 334,000. Your tax life in an alternate form: Tax transcripts aren't just... Read more →
Mother Nature got a jump on the 2016 storm calendar, creating Hurricane Alex back in January and Tropical Storm Bonnie four days before today's official start of the Atlantic hurricane season. Seasonal forecast for the Atlantic Hurricane Season from Colorado State University (CSU), the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and The Weather Channel. The forecast from CSU includes Hurricane Alex and Tropical Storm Bonnie. The Weather Channel and the NOAA forecasts include Hurricane Alex. Does that mean we'll have more storms this year than the dozen or so that are predicted? Maybe. Maybe not. Weather prognostications from a variety... Read more →