....It's why lawyers look forward to Friday. It's a joke, get it? It applies to CPAs (and their staff) this time of year too.
Actually, I took yesterday off. The opportunity came up to take the kids hiking up behind the reservoir, and on a day like yesterday who could say no? The boys and their two friends pretty much ran the whole four mile loop over hill and down dale and through the poison oak. Then they came home and collapsed on the sofa.
Tips gleaned so far from this tax season:
1) For non-individual clients (partnerships, S-Corps, C Corps) the telephone tax credit is soooo not worth it. Is anybody out there actually calculating it for their clients? You spend what, $100 worth of billable time to get somebody $54 back?
2) IF, hypothetically, you had a good year at the local casino, and if you have a stack of W2-G's showing withholding on your gambling winnings, don't even bother inputting them one by one, because you can't electronically file anyway if you have more than 30 of those things.
And even if your losses exceed your winnings and you deduct said losses on Schedule A, you could still wind up with more of your Social Security income becoming taxable because your gross income before deductions is higher than it would be otherwise. So you lose more than you win, and you still wind up, in effect, paying tax on your winnings. And they say the lottery is a tax on stupid people.
As always, none of the above is meant to be construed as actual tax advice.
Sunday, February 25, 2007
Sunday, February 18, 2007
Reading Aloud: Lloyd Alexander
This is the first in an occasional series with the catchy title: "Books I read as a kid and books I have since read with my own kids and what struck me about those books then and what strikes me now." First Installment: Loyd Alexander's Chronicles of Prydain (The Book of Three, Taran Wanderer and two others).
These are fantasy adventure books for grade school age kids, published in the 1960's. They have a Lord-of-the Rings-y feel and draw on Welsh mythology (characters from the Mabinogion appear in the book). SGH and I both recall reading them when we were kids. I of course liked Eilonwy, the feisty princess but even then I identified more with the main character, Taran. Eilonwy is too much of a stock character.
What I remember about these books when I was a kid was noticing that they didn't have a lot of description. I decided at the time that this must be a difference between kids books and grown-up books. (This was probably upper elementary or junior high school when I was starting to read Lord of the Rings, also Jane Eyre and various other novels off my parents' paperback shelf.) Grownup books always seemed to have pages and pages of background and description before anything moved anywhere. The Book of Three doesn't begin with any background about the main character, Taran, and only a little about the whole milieu of the story.
So reading it again within the past year, I've determined it is not just a kid book versus adult book issue, but also is deliberate to echo the style of a folk tale or a fairy tale. Something like: "And then they walked along and met a giant." As an aside, I use to wonder why we never found out much detail about the characters in fairy tales either, like what was in their closets or what color the wallpaper was. And the lack of background about Taran is a chief plot point in the whole series.
B1 was exposed to TBOT too young and avoided it for years, pronouncing it creepy even after he read much creepier stuff on his own. About three months ago SGH started reading it aloud to both boys, and we were all (me too) enthralled. SGH has a way with the voices: the self-important errant bard Fflydyr who is constantly being brought up short by his tattletale harp, the whiny ex-giant Glew, the Norn-like enchantresses Orddu, Orwen and Orgoch. B1 loves adventure, but doesn't like wierdness, and the wierdness (the enchantresses calling Taran "my little gosling" but implying they'd really much rather eat him than help him out in any way) is all over these books. B2 just wants everything to turn out all right, which it does in these books. Mostly.
Anyway, one of SGH's particularly charming traits is his the obvious enjoyment he gets from reading to the kids. Reminds me of my father reading us The Hobbit and The Sword and the Stone when we were little. And some years later I recall a sunny day in the High Sierras (the only completely sunny day out of a ten-day trek) where he read us excerpts from of Mark Twain's Roughing It. ("Horace Greeley went down this road once....")
On a not completely unrelated note, birthday salutations to Buce over at Underbelly.
These are fantasy adventure books for grade school age kids, published in the 1960's. They have a Lord-of-the Rings-y feel and draw on Welsh mythology (characters from the Mabinogion appear in the book). SGH and I both recall reading them when we were kids. I of course liked Eilonwy, the feisty princess but even then I identified more with the main character, Taran. Eilonwy is too much of a stock character.
What I remember about these books when I was a kid was noticing that they didn't have a lot of description. I decided at the time that this must be a difference between kids books and grown-up books. (This was probably upper elementary or junior high school when I was starting to read Lord of the Rings, also Jane Eyre and various other novels off my parents' paperback shelf.) Grownup books always seemed to have pages and pages of background and description before anything moved anywhere. The Book of Three doesn't begin with any background about the main character, Taran, and only a little about the whole milieu of the story.
So reading it again within the past year, I've determined it is not just a kid book versus adult book issue, but also is deliberate to echo the style of a folk tale or a fairy tale. Something like: "And then they walked along and met a giant." As an aside, I use to wonder why we never found out much detail about the characters in fairy tales either, like what was in their closets or what color the wallpaper was. And the lack of background about Taran is a chief plot point in the whole series.
B1 was exposed to TBOT too young and avoided it for years, pronouncing it creepy even after he read much creepier stuff on his own. About three months ago SGH started reading it aloud to both boys, and we were all (me too) enthralled. SGH has a way with the voices: the self-important errant bard Fflydyr who is constantly being brought up short by his tattletale harp, the whiny ex-giant Glew, the Norn-like enchantresses Orddu, Orwen and Orgoch. B1 loves adventure, but doesn't like wierdness, and the wierdness (the enchantresses calling Taran "my little gosling" but implying they'd really much rather eat him than help him out in any way) is all over these books. B2 just wants everything to turn out all right, which it does in these books. Mostly.
Anyway, one of SGH's particularly charming traits is his the obvious enjoyment he gets from reading to the kids. Reminds me of my father reading us The Hobbit and The Sword and the Stone when we were little. And some years later I recall a sunny day in the High Sierras (the only completely sunny day out of a ten-day trek) where he read us excerpts from of Mark Twain's Roughing It. ("Horace Greeley went down this road once....")
On a not completely unrelated note, birthday salutations to Buce over at Underbelly.
Wednesday, February 14, 2007
Movin' on Up....
So far the new place is an improvement on the old, with the slight downside that I am actually expected to generate some tangible work product there. This introduces an element of stress into my life which was significantly absent from the old job. Add to this the inevitable equation: tax season = kid sick season, and by day three I am already taking advantage of my new employer's generous flex-time options ("Sure, take all the time off you want so long as those 50-odd S Corp returns are out the door by March 15").
But enough about me. The Domecon household would like to send out belated Valentine's greetings to each and every one my readers, even the ones not directly related by blood or marriage.
From B1:
Star Trek Enterprise moves at Warp Nine
To Bring to You this Valentine!
Hope everyone had a happy day.
But enough about me. The Domecon household would like to send out belated Valentine's greetings to each and every one my readers, even the ones not directly related by blood or marriage.
From B1:
Star Trek Enterprise moves at Warp Nine
To Bring to You this Valentine!
And from B2: 
Hope everyone had a happy day.
Sunday, February 11, 2007
She's Leaving Home...
Begin the new job tomorrow. Just up the street, about a mile further than the old one but still very close to home. A co-worker at the new place has a child in B2's class at school and I'm already wondering if we can collaborate on getting the requisite valentine treats to school at the appropriate time on Wednesday.
My old place never did understand the depths of my dissatisfaction and they are convinced that I left out of spite. Sigh.
And some questions simply remain unanswered. Like what is REALLY the correct way to report health insurance premiums paid for greater-than-two-percent shareholders of S-Corporations?
My old place never did understand the depths of my dissatisfaction and they are convinced that I left out of spite. Sigh.
And some questions simply remain unanswered. Like what is REALLY the correct way to report health insurance premiums paid for greater-than-two-percent shareholders of S-Corporations?
Tuesday, January 30, 2007
Can You Hear Me Now?
So now that we've gotten over our puzzlement at the PMI Deduction (sounds like the PMS deduction - now THAT would be a tax break), we can turn our to attention to the telephone tax credit. You have to be a little leery of any tax credit that comes under the scrutiny of Snopes.com. But in fact: Snopes confirms that the crazy urban legend circulating these days, the one alleging that on 2006 tax returns the US government will give at least $30 to every household that files an individual (non-dependent) tax return, no questions asked, even if the filer had no tax taken out of his or her paycheck....Yeah, that rumor. It's absolutely true!
But suppose you have been lying awake at night, mentally totting up the amount you have unfairly paid out in federal telephone excise taxes between February 28, 2003 and August 1, 2006 and, dang it, you're sure you paid more than $30 (or $40 if you're married filing jointly, or $60 if you have 2+ teenagers yacking on the phone all the time). Well yes, you can claim a refund for the actual excise tax paid. Just follow the rules, using the simplified method, which is anything but simple. Or just take your $30 (or $40, or $60) and shut up.
But (and this is actually causing me problems), for businesses we don't have a $30 safe harbor, which means we have no choice but to follow the simplified method. Well, we have a choice, which is to use the regular method, which is (not surprisingly) more complex than the simplified method. Which is simple, because you only have to look at your April 2006 and your September 2006 phone bills. Oh wait, that is just to calculate an estimated average refund percentage. Don't Mess With Taxes, who has given this concept way more thought than I have, concludes that just figuring out your refund percentage is a brain-bender in itself. Then you need to apply that percentage to the total phone expenses on each of your phone bills dated from February 2003 through July 2006. Then you have to look at all of the phone bills in between to determine the actual telephone charges on which this average refund percentage applies. Oh, but you are allowed to use the telephone expense on a prior year return. But you need to prorate it for the months in question, so you actually need to look at more than once calendar year of tax returns. And this assumes your tax preparer didn't get sloppy and put telephone expense under "utilities" or didn't go the other direction and lump internet service fees under "telephone".
My brain hurts.
But suppose you have been lying awake at night, mentally totting up the amount you have unfairly paid out in federal telephone excise taxes between February 28, 2003 and August 1, 2006 and, dang it, you're sure you paid more than $30 (or $40 if you're married filing jointly, or $60 if you have 2+ teenagers yacking on the phone all the time). Well yes, you can claim a refund for the actual excise tax paid. Just follow the rules, using the simplified method, which is anything but simple. Or just take your $30 (or $40, or $60) and shut up.
But (and this is actually causing me problems), for businesses we don't have a $30 safe harbor, which means we have no choice but to follow the simplified method. Well, we have a choice, which is to use the regular method, which is (not surprisingly) more complex than the simplified method. Which is simple, because you only have to look at your April 2006 and your September 2006 phone bills. Oh wait, that is just to calculate an estimated average refund percentage. Don't Mess With Taxes, who has given this concept way more thought than I have, concludes that just figuring out your refund percentage is a brain-bender in itself. Then you need to apply that percentage to the total phone expenses on each of your phone bills dated from February 2003 through July 2006. Then you have to look at all of the phone bills in between to determine the actual telephone charges on which this average refund percentage applies. Oh, but you are allowed to use the telephone expense on a prior year return. But you need to prorate it for the months in question, so you actually need to look at more than once calendar year of tax returns. And this assumes your tax preparer didn't get sloppy and put telephone expense under "utilities" or didn't go the other direction and lump internet service fees under "telephone".
My brain hurts.
Into the Fray
Taxmom has been preoccupied lately with an effort to boost the gross domestic product. This has entailed stuffing her corn-ridden feet into painfully tight dress shoes and shimmying her post-holiday hips into the staid-yet-not-dowdy houndstooth interview skirt. All this effort appears to have achieved the desired results, and within a few weeks taxmom will be singing the blues in a new venue. Since Taxmom would never, ever blog from work, and is scrupulously vague about her situation, the status of this blog should not change.
Sunday, January 21, 2007
Remember the Good Times....
Nothing spells nostalgia like reading about your first "real" employer....on the front page of the WSJ for its alleged involvement in an elaborate Ponzi scheme. Here it is, reprinted in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: http://www.pittsburghpost-gazette.com/pg/07018/754861-28.stm
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