Estate And Tax Planning Law Firm
We are back to discussing what the average taxpayer should do if the mails brings an audit notice from the IRS. In our May 16 post, we talked about the odds of being audited -- very slim for someone with an average paycheck -- and the types of things on a tax return...
When we wrote in early April (here) about Mickey Rooney's death, we briefly touched on the situation with his estranged wife, Jan. The couple had been married for 36 years, but when Rooney passed away at age 93, Jan told the press that she had not seen her husband for...
As we said in our May 2 post, the average American taxpayer has a 1 percent chance of being audited by the IRS. The chance increases to 3.26 percent, though, for taxpayers earning $200,000 in 2013. If you earned more than $1 million -- not unheard of in the Bay Area...
An individual is planning on selling their rental home that they have kept as an investment for ten years. They paid $400,000 on the property and have sold it for $500,000. They have also made no capital improvements upon it and are not paying for closing costs or...
Although most Americans have already filed their 2013 taxes and are waiting to hear back from the IRS, there are still some who have yet to submit their returns. One of the thoughts on many taxpayers’ minds after submitting their tax return is, “I hope everything was...
Here in California and in a majority of states across the country, the state government no longer charges an estate tax to residents. Estate tax, often referred to as the “death tax” by critics, is sometimes considered a redundant tax since the assets in...
A form that was supposed to be an easy and inexpensive way to create a will turned out to be anything but that, according to a recent state court decision. The court wrote that the case provided a cautionary tale to others about estate planning and noted that some...
Now that this year’s tax season is official over (hopefully) for most California readers, tax and law experts know that it is time to start looking ahead and planning for what is to come. This might seem like an unwelcome task at the moment when you thought it was...
The practice of estate planning is as old as civilization itself and the issue of what one leaves behind and to whom remains as relevant and complicated as ever. Laws in this area have evolved somewhat with the changing times but the basic issues remain the same...
In our last post we discussed some different possibilities for how the Internal Revenue Service might tax the virtual currency known as bitcoin. The new type of currency has generated a lot of controversy and exists in a legal grey area because people are trading it...
