Many individuals or families (particularly those with school-age children), use personal loans or credit cards to buy cars or vans, finance private schooling, take vacations, etc. If you are making significant payments on these kinds of debts, you know you can’t deduct the “personal interest.” That means you are paying the interest portion with after-tax

As a parent with college-bound children, you are concerned with setting up a financial plan to fund future college costs. If your children are already college age, your goal is to pay for current or imminent college bills. I’d like to address both of these concerns by suggesting several approaches that seek to take maximum

A person may claim another person as an exemption providing they are either your child uner 19, or is in school & under 24, or is permanently disabled and that person is a member of the household and is living with the taxpayer. In other words while you can get an exemption for someone who

It used to be any mortgage interest you paid was deductible. Not true anymore. Now if you have a mortgage in excess of $1,000,000  for marrieds or singles, or $500,000 if married filing separate. Any interest expense paid on indebtedness over this amount is non-deductible on your tax return per the IRS. Hence this is the

If you invest in mutual funds or stocks which pay dividends and you keep the funds re-invested, then the basis in these stocks will increase. So you want to be careful to include all dividends in your adjusted cost basis to prevent overpaying on your taxes and your stocks sales. These individual stocks are often

Normally you don’t get to write off a loss on the sale of residence, as it is personal property and is well personal. The government taxes all gains and refuses to give us many personal losses. They are a bit one sided in this area. But if you are willing to forego deducting your mortgage

The law allows you to use indirect or third party proof except in the case of entertainment and travel to validate your expense. So for example if charitable, secure a letter from the church instead of copies of your checks to the church to validate charitable, or in the event of medical secure copies of

The IRS has a number of tests. 1) The most important of which is who controls the worker?  Does the worker control his own work or where he/she has to go or does the business owner.  2) Does the business control the financial aspects of the the worker or the worker himself? 3)  Are there

Actually no. The only times one has to report discharge of indebtness income is when the taxpayer is actually solvent. If you are insolvent and hence bankrupt, no income is recognized. The amount excluded from income must reduce the tax attributes, NOL carryovers, basis etc., so that income is not excluded twice.  You are insolvent

Tax season is in full swing, and with it comes a wide range of tax questions from filers. 1. What documents do I need to do my taxes? There are two common tax forms that taxpayers receive in the mail: a W-2 from your employer or a 1099-INT for bank interest from a savings account. There