Tax News

When you receive a distribution from a qualified retirement plan or IRA, you have 60 days from receipt to deposit the funds into another qualified retirement plan or IRA. If you don’t, you will be t...

While the Bernie Madoff scam came to light in 2008, there continues to be a seemingly unlimited number of fraudulent investment schemes afoot. Those promoting these schemes can be very convincing, and...

The bad news: it’s all too easy to trigger tax penalties. The good news: A number of penalties can be waived if you have a good excuse. Here are three common penalties and the excuses that can resul...

With summer vacation approaching and mortgage rates low, some taxpayers may be thinking of buying a second home. Others who already own a vacation home may be renting it out for part of the year. How ...

With spring in the air, many homeowners are fixing up their homes. Some projects may be minor; others are major. Homeowners do these activities to improve their living conditions and raise the value o...

While about half the states have laws requiring adult children to provide financial support for indigent parents, most adult children feel a moral obligation to provide needed support with or without ...

Crowdfunding is the practice of raising small amounts of money from a large number of people to fund specific projects or ventures. These activities can be personal, charitable, or business-related. A...

Americans are the most generous people on earth, giving $335.17 billion to charity in 2013 (the most recent year for statistics). Uncle Sam, however, doesn’t give you tax breaks for every good actio...

While many tax limits and threshold amounts are fixed by the Tax Code, a great many others are adjusted annually for inflation by law or IRS discretion. Despite the fact that the rate of inflation has...

There are many current needs—health care premiums; mortgage payments—that use up our hard-earned dollars, making it challenging for many people to save money for future needs. Fortunately, Uncle S...

Whether you prepare your return yourself (on paper or electronically) or use a paid preparer, you need information to input. Hopefully, you’ve kept great records throughout the year to simplify your...

With the real estate market heating up in most locations across the United States, a personal residence is again an important tax shelter for homeowners. You can garner tax breaks when you buy, while ...

The Affordable Care Act (ACA) imposes an individual mandate starting in 2014: carry minimum essential health coverage for you, your spouse, and dependents under age 18 or pay a penalty. The penalty do...

Each year the IRS announces cost-of-living adjustments to dozens of tax items, including standard deductions, personal exemptions, and retirement plan contribution limits. But there are some dollar am...

More than 50 tax breaks that expired at the end of 2013 were extended for 2014 and can be used on 2014 tax returns. Many of our readers have expressed confusion about which breaks have been extended, ...

A new tax year is set to dawn shortly and recently released cost-of-living adjustments can help you plan for 2015. Due to low inflation, increases in the tax brackets and other tax items are minimal; ...

As a holiday gift to the nation, Congress passed the so-called extender bill. This extends retroactively to January 1, 2014, nearly all of the 55 provisions that expired at the end of 2013. The extens...

The Social Security Administration announced the 2015 wage base used for figuring the Social Security portion of FICA and self-employment tax. For 2015, this wage base is $118,500, up from $117,000 in...

The IRS reports that 13 million taxpayers are on extension for filing their 2013 returns. If you are one of them, don’t miss the filing deadline of October 15, 2014; returns filed after this date ar...

IRS interest rates are unchanged for the fourth quarter of 2014 (October 1, 2014, through December 31, 2014). These are the rates changed on underpayments and overpayments: 3% for overpayments (2%...