The Tax Shelter Over Your Head Is Still a Good Idea For 2013

Home prices, which had been on a tear, have leveled out and even fallen in places. The housing “bubble” definitely appears to be over. So, the question becomes: Is real estate still a good place for your money?

Despite uncertain real estate prices, buying a house is still a smart choice for most families. Buying, rather than renting, replaces nondeductible rent with deductible mortgage interest. You can borrow tax-free against your home’s growing equity. And you can still sell your home for up to $500,000 profit, tax-free. This particular capital gains tax break isn’t likely to disappear in 2013, despite all the rhetoric about classic tax breaks disappearing.

Mortgage Interest

Tax-deductible mortgage interest is a cornerstone of tax planning for many families. You can deduct interest on up to $1 million of “acquisition indebtedness” you use to buy or substantially improve your primary residence and one additional home. You can deduct interest on up to $1 million of construction loans for 24 months from the start of construction. (Interest before and after this period is nondeductible.) Plus, points you pay to buy or improve your primary residence are generally deductible the year you buy the home if paying points is an established practice in your area. This deduction, while discussed as one that could get the axe by Congress, is too politically sensitive to actually be taken away from American voters in 2013.

Home Equity Interest

You can deduct interest you pay on up to $100,000 of home equity loans or lines of credit secured by your primary residence and one additional residence. Using home equity debt to pay off cars, colleges, and similar debts lets you convert nondeductible personal interest into deductible home equity interest.

Make sure you compare after-tax rates before you refinance consumer debt with home equity debt. If you can buy a car with a special interest rate, your nondeductible personal interest may still cost less than deductible home equity interest. If you can transfer a credit card balance to a new card with a low introductory rate, you could save money and avoid the paperwork needed to refinance your home.

If you pay points to refinance your home, you can’t deduct those points immediately. However, you can amortize them over the life of the loan. If you pay off the loan before fully deducting your points (including refinancing with a new lender), deduct the remaining balance the year you retire … Continue reading

8 Questions To Ask When Choosing An Accountant

The vast majority of small businesses could use the services of an accountant. The number of ways in which it is possible to introduce errors into your business through accounting practices is staggering. Your accounting includes issues related to payroll, monitoring profitability, inventory control, avoiding penalties and interest on taxes, and much, much more. It is wise to select a competent professional in this field to help you navigate the minefield of accounting pitfalls. Selecting such a professional can be difficult, especially since not all accountants are created equal.

Here are some questions to ask to help ensure that you are selecting the best accountant you can for your business.

1. Do they have any complaints with the Better Business Bureau?

When many individuals decide to take action and make a complaint against a firm, they often think first of the BBB. Check with your local division, or look them up online, and make sure that the company you are considering hiring has a good record with the BBB. If they have a Gold Star award from the BBB, then you’re on the right track to working with a company that is reputable and stands by their word. The BBB’s new letter grading system can also help you in selecting a good firm.

2. Have they ever been investigated by your state Attorney General’s office or state board of accountancy?

This is another place to do your own due diligence. Complaints with the state AG or Board of Accountancy is an automatic red flag and should be highly considered before selecting a firm.

3. What services do they provide, and what services do you need?

Think about exactly what you’re looking for in a service provider. Do you need full service accounting, outsourcing all functions to another person or firm? Or do you just need year-end tax preparation? Knowing the answer to what services you need will help you pick the best person to do what you need, and will affect your budget for getting it done. For example, if you just need tax preparation, then you might be better off with an experienced tax preparer instead of a CPA firm that mostly does auditing and general accounting. If you only need payroll services, then you might want to hire a payroll company rather than a bookkeeper that does payroll on the side. If you need the books updated weekly or monthly, most communities … Continue reading

New video series: “Inside the IRM”

I’m very excited to announce the launch of a new video series, Inside the IRM.

I’ll be providing commentary and insight into interacting with the IRS, based on a guided tour through the Internal Revenue Manual. I’ve decided to start with IRM Part 5: Collections, simply because that is the section of most interest to myself and, I’m sure, to most of you.

The purpose of each video will not be to simply read you the IRM. Rather, I think it’s worth dissecting the IRM as a means of learning how the IRS thinks and, more importantly, how they’re supposed to act. My goal is really to provide you with a better understanding of how the IRS works, and make sure you know what the IRS really can and can’t do based on their own procedures.

Most important of all, however, I hope to show you how to use the Internal Revenue Manual to better represent your clients. I will be pointing out provisions of the IRM that could be applied to your advantage in certain situations, and discussing how Revenue Officers and other IRS personnel are supposed to act in specific circumstances, so that you can know when things are going right and when a Revenue Officer is abusing their authority or not properly treating a taxpayer. Correlating the Service’s internal procedures with specific client situations and sharing my experience in working with Revenue Officers as it relates to the IRM will hopefully benefit you as a fellow practitioner.

I’ll most likely do these several times per week, and post them along with each day’s marketing update. I didn’t think I could go on about one little section of the IRM for an entire hour, but in this first video I managed to do that (I’ve long known that I have the gift of gab, I guess now I just found another way to embrace it beyond just the written word!). I’ll definitely try to keep them shorter in the future.

These will be posted on YouTube, so feel free to collect them all and trade them with your friends!

Please provide feedback, comments, and even criticisms on these so that I can make them more applicable to your practice.

Here is the first edition, covering IRM Section 5.1 and the basics of how the IRS is supposed to work collections cases.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iM0xXJ0HaB4[/youtube]… Continue reading