Tuesday, April 26, 2016

POTUS Meets IRS

For most of us, filing a tax return is a fairly private affair, just between us and our friends at the IRS. But for President Obama and his family, it's a high-profile event. Last week the White House posted the Obama's' return online, and it reveals a lot about how the tax laws apply at the highest levels.
The President's base pay is $400,000 per year, the same as when he took office seven years ago. When he talks about American workers not getting pay increases, he really does feel their pain! (He's not the only one in Washington with that complaint; Congressional salaries have also been frozen since then.)
Of course, the job comes with some pretty nice tax-free perks. There's a nice white house on 18 acres of prime Pennsylvania Avenue real estate, with a fenced yard, vegetable garden, and tennis court. Zillow says it would rent for about $2 million/month. There are a couple of nice private jets for trips to see foreign leaders around the world. There's a nice helicopter just to get from the nice white house to the nice jets. And there's a $50,000 entertainment allowance for hosting the friends he makes on those trips around the world.
The President also earned $348 in taxable interest, $9 in taxable dividends, and $3,000 in capital losses. Finally, he earned $56,069 in net business income from book royalties. That's way down from 2009, when Dreams From My Father and The Audacity of Hope raked in $5.2 million. Those revenues have dropped every year since he took office, and his current income is barely enough to put him in "the 1%." On the bright side, the self-employment income let him stash an extra $11,064 into a self-employed retirement account.
On Schedule A, the Obama's included $18,390 in state and local income taxes, $30,167 in property taxes, $36,587 in mortgage interest, and a generous $64,066 in charitable contributions. However, there's a phaseout on itemized deductions starting at incomes over $309,900, which limits their actual deduction to just $145,545. That isn't the only phaseout that hits the Obama's . . . their income level means no child tax credit for daughters Sasha and Malia, and the Personal Exemption Phaseout costs them $16,000 in personal exemptions they could otherwise claim.
The First Family finishes with $290,640 in taxable income and $71,440 in tax. But wait . . . there's more! The Alternative Minimum Tax wipes out those state and local tax deductions and costs the Obama's an extra $7,743. The President owes $1,502 in self-employment tax on his book earnings. He also owes $1,766 in additional Medicare tax imposed, starting in 2013, by his own Affordable Care Act. ("Thanks, Obama!")
The Obama's signed their return on April 7. Under "Occupation," Barack listed his as "US President" and Michelle listed hers as "US First Lady." So where is her income in all of this? Nowhere to be found! Realistically, the Obama's won't ever have trouble making ends meet. But fans of the First Lady's work argue that failing to pay her sends a terrible message about paycheck equality. Even former President Ronald Reagan, who probably would have opposed today's paycheck fairness legislation, once quipped that with his wife Nancy, the government "gets an employee free."
Here's what may be the most surprising fact about the Obama's taxes: they paid too much. Granted, the President is in a unique position of having to demonstrate strict compliance with the law. But his 1040s over the years reveal plenty of perfectly legal missed opportunities to pay less. Fortunately, you don't have to publish your return every year, so you can take advantage of every legal strategy. Call of for a plan and we'll show you how!

Monday, April 11, 2016

Where Are All the Americans?

Last Sunday, the International Consortium for Investigative Journalism stunned the world with their release of findings from 11.5 million files leaked from the Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca. The "Panama Papers" blow the lid off the firm's creation of over 214,000 companies, mostly in the British Virgin Islands and similar "sunny places for shady people" where financial miscreants go to hide their loot.

Most of the press has focused on 140 political figures and family members caught with their pants down. Iceland's Prime Minister Sigmundur Gunnlaugsson has already resigned. British Prime Minister David Cameron has released his tax returns to rebut claims he improperly benefited from his father's offshore investments. And Russian President Vladimir Putin, whose close cronies have been named, has denounced the leak as a U.S.-led plot to weaken Russia. But there's one question on every one's lips — specifically, where are all the Americans?

It's not like there aren't any Americans lurking in the files. Billionaire developer Igor Olenicoff, who paid $52 million to settle tax-evasion charges back in 2007, is there. He says he's been framed. (Right.) John "Red" Crim, another convicted tax cheat who sold sham trusts to hundreds of marks around the country, is there too. But those are the sorts of people you'd expect to find hiding offshore. Where are the senators, the televangelists, and the Wall Street fat cats you really want to see exposed?

Here's one possible explanation that House of Cards fans might appreciate. Clifford Gaddy, a former Russian finance ministry advisor, suggests that Putin himself may be behind the leaks. The Russian strongman is popular enough in his own country to withstand exposure, and most critics already assume he and his billionaire henchmen are looting "the Motherland" blind. Gaddy's hunch is that Putin may be holding back information on Americans to blackmail them. (Is Gaddy really serious? Or is he just trolling the Kremlin?)

But the real reasons are disappointingly less suspicious. The surprising truth is that we Americans don't get any tax benefits simply by moving our income offshore. That's because U.S. law taxes us on everything that moves we earn no matter where in the world it moves we earn it. Titling businesses and investments offshore doesn't save tax unless we just "forget" to report them.

We also don't have to go offshore to cloak our ownership. We can incorporate anonymously in business-friendly places like Nevada (where Mossack Fonseca kept an office) or Delaware, and stay nearly as far under the radar as if we had spent our money on a Caribbean vacation.

Even when we do go offshore, there's nothing inherently improper or unlawful about it. For example, Hollywood billionaire David Geffen used a Cayman Islands company to hold title to a $300 million yacht he bought from a Russian billionaire's ex-wife. Juicy? Sure! Illegal? Sorry, move along . . . nothing to see here.

Here's all you really need to know. The Panama papers remind us that the global elite really do have ways to hide their money from threats, including taxes. But here in the U.S., you have plenty of legitimate deductions, credits, loopholes, and strategies you can use to accomplish those same goals — without hiding or cheating. All you really need is a plan. So call us for strategies that won't risk exposure to muckraking reporters and front-page headlines!

Monday, April 4, 2016

Start Warming Up Your Texting Thumbs

If you're not already one of the millions of Americans with a smartphone glued to your hands, this story may make you reconsider . . . . Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders has fired up the progressive left with his long-shot White House run. Sanders describes himself as a "democratic socialist," and asks Americans, "What's wrong with being more like Scandinavia?" Naturally, his platform includes Scandinavian-style higher taxes on America's wealthy.
Texas Senator Ted Cruz may be Sanders' complete and polar opposite, an unabashed conservative who appears biologically allergic to anything related to government. Naturally, his platform slashes taxes for nearly everyone. If that's not enough, he wants to abolish the IRS entirely, and replace them with taxes we can file on a postcard.
So what do you think would happen if you locked Sanders and Cruz in a room and forced them to come up with a tax system they both could support? Well, it probably wouldn't be pretty. (Seriously, can you imagine?) But those two unlikeliest of bedfellows just might come up with something to make April 15 look like any other day.
Our current system couldn't be much uglier. In January, your mailbox fills up with W-2s, 1095s, 1098s, and 1099s. Starting in February, you'll get your K-1s and your corrected 1099s. (It's enough to make you suspect the tax code is a conspiracy put together by paper and printer manufacturers.) Then it's time to compile all that information and crunch those numbers on brain-numbingly obtuse federal forms. In 2010, a White House panel estimated Americans spend 7.6 billion hours and 140 billion dollars keeping the IRS off their backs. (Hey now, we know what you're thinking, and don't blame us.)
But what if we could avoid all that hassle? What if the IRS could do you taxes for you — then send you the forms, all ready to approve? In millions of cases, they already have all the information they would need to do that. (Computers, too, if they could just protect them from hackers.)
That's already reality in eight countries, including Sanders' favorites Norway and Finland. In nearby Estonia, most taxpayers file online in less than five minutes.
But the gold medalist in speed-filing gold may be everyone's favorite sub-arctic socialist paradise, Sweden. In Sweden, most taxpayers just wait for the government to send their return, already filled out. But some of them actually get it by text message. And if everything looks good, they text "yes" and they're done. (That's one Swedish policy that even Ted Cruz might be able to get behind!)
Unfortunately, there are too many groups with vested interests in the current system to make that a reality here. But there is a silver lining, if you look hard enough. (Harder!) And that's the fact that complexity creates opportunity. Every deduction, credit, loophole, and strategy that Washington throws into the code gives us a chance to help you pay less. And all you need is a plan. So whip out your smartphone — or even, god forbid, your landline — and call us!