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Some withdrawals are taxable.  Even worse, some can be socked with a 10 percent early withdrawal penalty tax, and this can happen even when there’s no income tax hit.  Any withdrawals from any of your Roth accounts are federal-income-tax-free qualified withdrawals if you, as a Roth IRA owner, are...

When you travel out of town overnight, you need to know the tax-home rule. The IRS defines your tax home, and it’s not necessarily in the same town where you have your personal residence. If you have more than one business location, one of the locations will be your...

As the nation suffers from the ravages of the super-contagious COVID-19 Delta variant, the federal government desperately wants all American workers and their families to get vaccinated. If you have employees, you probably feel the same way. Indeed, more and more employers are implementing vaccine mandates—a trend that will...

Do you have a question about how to apply the tax law to a potential transaction? Wouldn’t it be great if you could get the IRS to give you an answer in advance of filing your tax return? You may be able to do so by obtaining a private...

Do you own any of your employer’s company stock inside your employer’s 401(k), ESOP, profit sharing plan, or other retirement plan?  Has it gone up in value since you got it? If so, you should start thinking about what to do with the stock when you retire or leave...

As a business owner, you are in partnership with the IRS, like it or not. You share your net profits with the IRS according to your partnership agreement (known to you as the Internal Revenue Code). To make sure you are sharing fairly, the IRS can audit your tax...

Here’s good news. IRS regulations allow you to claim a prorated (reduced) gain exclusion—a percentage of the $250,000 or $500,000 exclusion in select circumstances. The prorated gain exclusion equals the full $250,000 or $500,000 figure (whichever would otherwise apply) multiplied by a fraction.  The numerator is the shorter of ...

In what clearly must be a mistake, the IRS issued Notice 2021-49 to deny the employee retention credit (ERC) on the wages paid to most C and S corporation owners. According to the IRS: Your corporation can qualify for the ERC on the wages paid to a more than...

If you buy a property, fix it up, and then sell it, is that property a dealer or an investor property? Here are five thoughts on this: Periodically buying property, fixing it up, and selling it makes it look like dealer property. But when you seldom do this, the...

Here’s a sad story of a dentist who did not file his tax returns.  Of course, as you know, the failure to file tax returns often gets the IRS’s attention. In this case, it did, and this dentist suffered accordingly. The IRS used the 1099s issued to this dentist...

It’s hard to imagine that a small business does not qualify for some or all of the employee retention credit (ERC).  And remember, this is a tax credit—one of the very best things that tax law has to offer. True, it’s not as valuable as some other tax credits,...

The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) ugly net operating loss rules, which were laid dormant by the CARES Act, reappear in tax year 2021 to limit your tax loss benefits. You’ll most often see an NOL when you have a net business loss for the tax year. You...