How do you stack up?
Today is tax filing day, and no doubt some of you wonder how you rank with the rest of the country in the big scheme of who is paying income taxes. The Tax Foundation has released its study of 2015 income taxes (https://files.taxfoundation.org/20180117125609/Tax-Foundation-FF570.pdf) and the information is entertaining if nothing else. For example, if you have an Adjusted Gross Income (AGI) of at least $480,930 congratulations are in order! You are in the top 1% of taxpayers in the nation and collectively your tiny group pays over 39% of all income taxes. If your AGI is greater than $195,778 you...
Winners & Losers under the New Tax Act
We are racing towards the tax season finish line like the US Bobsled team in China (hopefully a bit faster), and now that we have seen a large volume of tax returns it is interesting to see what our initial projections are for who is most affected by the 2018 Tax Act. As a courtesy we calculate what our client’s 2017 tax profiles would look like under the 2018 rules, and the results can be generalized: If you don’t itemize (think: renters) and your combined income(s) are around $50k or below, you probably come out ahead. If your combined incomes...
Erroneous Blog Postings
Dear Friends and Subscribers In the last couple days you may have received three blog posts from me, one titled Yes, You Will Die, one titled Who Slid This In?, and one titled Your Tax Dollars at Work. The first one was intentional and a must read (if I do say so myself) for anyone concerned about simplifying life when you get older. The other two were draft versions of very old blogs that were inadvertently resent again. They really aren’t relevant anymore and I hope you weren’t confused by them. We are trying to transition my blogging to a...
Yes, you will die
As the saying goes, none of us get out of this world alive. And as much as we prefer to ignore this basic fact of life, we really should plan ahead for it. As part of the trust and estate work we do in our firm we see a lot of elderly clients and post-elderly clients (estates) where messes have been left to the family and/or heirs to sort out that could have been prevented had the decedents done things differently. The worst cases end up with acrimony in the family, or in court, which nobody wants. To prevent this...
New Tax Rules for Meals and Entertainment
From our CPAAI member firm H2R CPAs in Pittsburgh, “New Tax Rules for Meals and Entertainment”. The article provides a summary of the new rules regarding meals and entertainment tax deductions, signed into law with the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017. by Nate DeFilippi, CPA, MBA H2R CPA is pleased to provide a summary of the new rules regarding meals and entertainment tax deductions, signed into law with the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017. We recommend that businesses update general ledgers in accordance with these changes to plan for the 2018 tax year. In general, the Act provides…
Craft Beer Drinkers rejoice!
Another tidbit buried in the new tax law is an excise tax on beer, effective 1/1/2018. Now before you go all Boston Tea Party on this, read further. Under the new law, there is to be an excise tax on beer at the rate of $16 per barrel. This applies to domestic and imported beer producers who produce in excess of 2 million barrels annually. However, for domestic producers who produce less than 60,000 barrels annually the tax is only $3.50 per barrel. There is a $7 rate in between, but bear with me for a moment. The little guy...