Banana Republic status!

Recently, a survey of the nations CEO’s that ranked all states in terms of their business environments listed California dead last. Actually, we came in 51st out of the 50 states since they included the District of Columbia. According to Chief Executive Magazine, California has become “the Venezuela of North America”. Maybe that’s why Governor Arnold wears white suits in his TV spots promoting the state. The reason this is tax newsworthy is because previously I wrote (see previous blog entry California Tax Freebie dtd Jan 7, 2010) about an obscure tax credit available to California businesses who hired new...

Back to the Real World

Right after the April 15th crunch subsided, I took a few days to test the wild trout population in the Eastern Sierras. They are still there, and it was good to get away and detox without cell phone coverage or any other electronic devices screaming for my attention. There is absolutely nothing more therapeutic than cooking fresh caught trout and a dutch oven dessert over a mountain campfire! My kids disagree, but sometimes the low tech way is the best way. You may have noticed that in the last few weeks my blog submissions have been kind of sparse. That’s...

Time is running out!

Many years ago I toiled as a staff accountant at a local CPA firm in Rolling Hills, CA. The senior partner, whose name was Marty, was known to occasionally go out of his way to aggravate the office staff purely for entertainment. Example: many of the staff struggled to keep their weight under control. Marty had his own issues there, but having conquered them via draconian dieting, you would think that he would be sympathetic to those who still fought the “battle of the bulge”. Not so, and at least twice weekly we would arrive to the office and be...

Do it for you, not for the country.

Its springtime and two annual phenomena will be reoccurring like clockwork as they have for years: 1) Trout season opens soon in the Eastern Sierras (yaay!) and, 2) lots of people are now flush with cash from tax refund checks. The IRS has said that the average tax refund this year has been around $3,000, and that means all those folks who have been lending money to Uncle Sam at zero percent interest all year finally get their money back. The big question is, what will they do with the money? In the past, consumers were hammered with waves of...

Dylan was right!

I’ve refrained from blogging for awhile as most of my spare time seems to have disappeared due to workload. Don’t get me wrong – I’m happy to have the work, its just that nowadays when I get a free moment I usually end up pondering a rising trout on a particular eastern sierra stream rather than thinking of current tax issues. However there are some really important happenings going on that you should be aware of. Notably, the Health Care legislation being kicked about in Washington has some important changes in taxation included in it. For the first time interest,...

Red flags and white flags

Often we get asked: “If I claim (fill in the blank), is it a red flag?” Our response is usually a long winded explanation ending with, “it depends”. The truth is, the IRS’s formula for selecting returns to audit is a well kept secret. Some returns are selected completely by random, and others are scored for audit based on an internally developed rating system. The returns that score highest are reviewed and if they look like good candidates, they are sent to either a regional office for an audit by mail, or a local office for a face to face...