I’ve been beating on the State of California a bit (it’s so easy) so I thought I would switch topics to our friends in Congress.In 2001, Congress enacted estate tax reform which provided that the estate (aka inheritance) tax would expire Jan 1, 2010 for one year only. I wrote about this topic in an [...]

In the “Are you kidding me?” department, yesterday I wrote about the Use Tax reporting requirements we are supposed to comply with. Recently the BOE has provided more guidance on sales taxes collected by different districts within California and how to handle it.Because of voted indebtedness, different areas within California have different sales tax rates. [...]

Here in California, as in most states, we have a sales tax. Because of Constitutional restrictions on states, and also as a practical matter, California and the other states are unable to levy sales taxes on inbound sales from out of state retailers that do not have physical locations within the state. As a result [...]

as I write this new post its Thursday morning and here at O&S we are still working on getting the last few tax projections done for our clients who need them before year end. Its been a hectic couple of weeks, and I have not had a chance to compose anything interesting for the Blog.But [...]

It’s the Holiday Season already. I can tell because two annual-as-clockwork events have started occurring i.e. (1) Its finally raining in Southern California and (2) my mailbox is plugged with solicitations from charities. This time of year charities recognize the more generous holiday spirit of potential donors, as well as the looming December cutoff for [...]

In an effort to locate funding sources for the health care bill currently working its way through the Senate, Congress has actually proposed to create a new tax on elective cosmetic surgeries. The proposal would tax these cosmetic surgeries at a rate of 5%.The argument is that cosmetic surgeries, including Bo-tox, liposuction, tummy tucks, etc [...]