On Sunday, October 30, 1938, Mercury Radio Theatre fans, who were listening to Ramon Racquello and His Orchestra, were interrupted by a news broadcast reporting an odd explosion on the planet Mars. Soon after, they learned that a cylindrical object had fallen on a farm in Grovers Mills, New Jersey. The radio audience listened in horror as a pulsating Martian emerged from the cylinder and obliterated the crowd with heat rays. Soon, an entire army of Martians had invaded New York, and very real panic had spread across the country.
Last week, something a bit similar happened in the tax world. (Well, except for the Martians, heat rays, and destruction of Gotham.) After just six weeks of consideration, the House and Senate passed the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017, the biggest restructuring of the tax code in 31 years.
We don't usually use these emails to discuss "hard news" like the new tax bill. It's much more fun to walk through the "Twelve days of Taxmas," or how celebrities use offshore tax havens, or harken back to taxes in the 1980s as we enjoy Season Two of Netflix's Stranger Things. But this new tax bill is simply too big to ignore. And so we interrupt our usual broadcast of fun tax stories for something a bit more serious.
We shouldn't need to tell you much about the nuts and bolts of the new law — the lower tax rates, lower deductions, and new "qualified business income" rules for pass-through businesses. The news is already full of those discussions. Over the coming days and weeks, we'll be putting together material explaining how the new bill could affect you.
But we're going to do things a little different from everybody else. Most of those news outlets will be writing about how much you're going to owe under the new law. And that's important. But we're going to focus our effort on how you can pay less. And in the end, that service is even more important. Most tax professionals do a perfectly good job of putting the "right" numbers in the "right" boxes on the "right" forms. But then they call it a day. Our real value comes from delivering the proactive concepts and strategies that most tax and financial advisors simply overlook.
Of course, we'll also be highlighting some of the more absurd aspects of the new law. For example . . under the old law, you could exclude a whopping $20 of income per month for expenses related to riding your bike to work, so long as you weren't getting other pretax transit benefits. The new law lets the air out of that benefit. And how much will putting a nail in that benefit save the Treasury? Austin Powers fans, channel your best Dr Evil voice and say it with me . . . "one . . . million . . . dollars." A rounding error, at best.
Here's another one you might like a little more. Under the old law, Code Section 162 said that members of Congress could deduct up to $3,000 per year for their living expenses while they’re away from their districts. At this point, though, Congressional net worths are hitting all-time highs (Montana Rep. Greg Gianforte, who started two software companies, is worth $315 million). And congressional approval ratings are hitting all-time lows, hovering somewhere around 11%. So the new law eliminates that little boondoggle.
This is the last time we'll be writing to you in 2017, and 2018 promises to be a busy year, full of opportunity and promise. So count on us to help you navigate the new rules, as you ring in the New Year. And don't forget, we'll be here for your family, friends, and colleagues, too!
Tuesday, December 26, 2017
Monday, December 18, 2017
The Twelve Days of Taxmas
Every year, PNC Bank publishes their "Christmas Price Index" to track the cost of the Twelve Days of Christmas. For 2017, it's a hefty $157,558. (And you thought your holiday spending was out of control!) The index may not be completely accurate — for example, the ten lords-a-leaping are valued using the cost of male ballet dancers, rather than actual lords, and the eight maids-a-milking don't include eight actual cows. But still, it got us wondering . . . what sort of taxes are we looking at on the whole affair?
•Twelve drummers drumming and eleven pipers piping make quite a racket every holiday season. Hiring all that help will stir up a cacophony of payroll taxes!
•Ten lords may look perfectly happy while they're leaping. But surely they must pay a king's ransom in income taxes — after all, they are lords!
•Nine ladies dancing make a lovely sight at Christmas time — especially if they're Rockettes. They also pay a cabaret tax for the privilege of displaying their talent.
•Eight maids-a-milking help make sure we have plenty of tasty eggnog to drink. Good thing so many states offer dairy tax credits to spur the cows on to higher holiday production!
•Seven swans-a-swimming? Six geese-a-laying? If we accept the rule of thumb that two birds per acre of pond is a manageable number, then we're looking at some serious property taxes to host our holiday flock!
•Who doesn't want five gold rings under the tree? But selling those rings can be an expensive proposition. Remember, jewelry held for personal use is still subject to 20% tax on long-term capital gains, plus an extra 3.8% "net investment income tax"!
•Four calling birds use a lot of cell phone minutes over twelve days. (They're calling birds, so unlimited texting won't help.) Naturally, that means a 5.82% federal excise tax, plus state and local sales tax too.
•Three French hens add a sophisticated "continental" touch to any one's holiday festivities. But don't forget the import duties you pay to bring foreign livestock into the country!
•Two turtle doves are known among bird watchers for forming strong "pair bonds," which makes them a symbol of devoted love. (That's why they're in the song.) Too bad that means they pay that pesky marriage penalty that hits high-income couples who file jointly! (Okay, we know this this one's a stretch. But we've got twelve days of taxes to fill here, so what can we do?)
•Nothing says "Christmas" like a partridge in a pear tree. And our tax code is full of juicy incentives for growing pear trees. You can deduct operating expenses associated with your crop; you can depreciate equipment and land improvements you use to manage your groves; and you can even take generous charitable deductions for rights you give up for conservation easements. Why, the tax savings alone should be more than enough to pay for the partridge!
Yes, even Twelve Days of Christmas just means twelve more opportunities for the taxman. So here's wishing you and your family the best this holiday season. We'll be back in 2018 to make sure you pay as little tax as possible, not just during the holidays, but all year long!
•Twelve drummers drumming and eleven pipers piping make quite a racket every holiday season. Hiring all that help will stir up a cacophony of payroll taxes!
•Ten lords may look perfectly happy while they're leaping. But surely they must pay a king's ransom in income taxes — after all, they are lords!
•Nine ladies dancing make a lovely sight at Christmas time — especially if they're Rockettes. They also pay a cabaret tax for the privilege of displaying their talent.
•Eight maids-a-milking help make sure we have plenty of tasty eggnog to drink. Good thing so many states offer dairy tax credits to spur the cows on to higher holiday production!
•Seven swans-a-swimming? Six geese-a-laying? If we accept the rule of thumb that two birds per acre of pond is a manageable number, then we're looking at some serious property taxes to host our holiday flock!
•Who doesn't want five gold rings under the tree? But selling those rings can be an expensive proposition. Remember, jewelry held for personal use is still subject to 20% tax on long-term capital gains, plus an extra 3.8% "net investment income tax"!
•Four calling birds use a lot of cell phone minutes over twelve days. (They're calling birds, so unlimited texting won't help.) Naturally, that means a 5.82% federal excise tax, plus state and local sales tax too.
•Three French hens add a sophisticated "continental" touch to any one's holiday festivities. But don't forget the import duties you pay to bring foreign livestock into the country!
•Two turtle doves are known among bird watchers for forming strong "pair bonds," which makes them a symbol of devoted love. (That's why they're in the song.) Too bad that means they pay that pesky marriage penalty that hits high-income couples who file jointly! (Okay, we know this this one's a stretch. But we've got twelve days of taxes to fill here, so what can we do?)
•Nothing says "Christmas" like a partridge in a pear tree. And our tax code is full of juicy incentives for growing pear trees. You can deduct operating expenses associated with your crop; you can depreciate equipment and land improvements you use to manage your groves; and you can even take generous charitable deductions for rights you give up for conservation easements. Why, the tax savings alone should be more than enough to pay for the partridge!
Yes, even Twelve Days of Christmas just means twelve more opportunities for the taxman. So here's wishing you and your family the best this holiday season. We'll be back in 2018 to make sure you pay as little tax as possible, not just during the holidays, but all year long!
Tuesday, December 12, 2017
A Different Kind of Holiday Party
Your kids have finally finished eating their Halloween candy, which means that the real holidays are right around the corner. But before you sit down to open presents, December 16th marks the 244th anniversary of an important holiday in tax history — a pop-up costume ball in Boston Harbor called the Boston Tea Party.
From 1698 through 1767, Britain's Parliament passed a series of laws giving the East India Company a monopoly on the British tea trade, forcing the colonies to buy their tea from British wholesalers, and slapping hefty taxes on it all. But Dutch traders, who paid no tax, could sell their tea for less, costing the East India Company a fortune. (If you remember Miami Vice in the 1980s, try picturing a colonial-era Crockett and Tubbs, dressed in fly white buckskins, chasing Dutch bootleggers in a sleek Italian brigantine.)
In 1767, Parliament passed the Indemnity Act to lower the tax on tea to compete with the Dutch. (Earl Gray was just three years old, so he didn't vote.) But they needed a "payfor" to make up the lost revenue, so they brewed up the Townshend Acts taxing colonial imports, including tea. (Hmmmm . . . sounds like the sort of horse-trading today's Congress is up to right now with the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.) Five years later, the Indemnity Act expired, and everyone was back where they started. (Sort of like what happened in 2013 when the Bush tax cuts expired . . . . )
The Tea Act of 1773 brought things to a head. The new law actually lowered the price of tea to undercut the smugglers. But the colonists still hated Parliament taxing them without their consent. They hated how England used those taxes to pay colonial governors and judges, thus insulating them from local influence. And that's where things stood in November, 1773, as the tea ship Dartmouth sailed into a Boston Harbor steeped in resentment and controversy.
British law required the shipper to unload and pay the tax within 20 days. But colonists, who gathered by the thousands, were determined to prevent that. On the night of December 16, the final deadline, a group of 30 to 130 of them boarded the Dartmouth and two more ships. A few of them sported elaborate Mohawk warrior costumes to hide their faces and show their loyalty to American identity. They spent three hours dumping 342 chests of tea into the water. The next day, future President John Adams wrote in his diary:
"There is a Dignity, a Majesty, a Sublimity, in this last Effort of the Patriots, that I greatly admire . . . . This Destruction of the Tea is so bold, so daring, so firm, intrepid and inflexible, and it must have so important Consequences, and so lasting, that I cant but consider it as an Epocha in History."
The Tea Party set all sorts of consequences in motion besides the obvious "American Revolution" thing. (Does that remind you of Taylor Swift's song, "We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together"?) If you're a coffee drinker, for example, you should know that coffee first became popular here as an alternative to "unpatriotic" tea. (Sort of like renaming french fries "freedom fries" during the Second Iraq War . . . . )
244 years later, we still resent paying taxes we don't have to pay. The good news is, you don't have to don a Mohawk headdress and row out into the middle of the harbor for three hours of creative vandalism to pay less. You just need a plan. So call us when you're ready to save, and let us give you something to celebrate!
From 1698 through 1767, Britain's Parliament passed a series of laws giving the East India Company a monopoly on the British tea trade, forcing the colonies to buy their tea from British wholesalers, and slapping hefty taxes on it all. But Dutch traders, who paid no tax, could sell their tea for less, costing the East India Company a fortune. (If you remember Miami Vice in the 1980s, try picturing a colonial-era Crockett and Tubbs, dressed in fly white buckskins, chasing Dutch bootleggers in a sleek Italian brigantine.)
In 1767, Parliament passed the Indemnity Act to lower the tax on tea to compete with the Dutch. (Earl Gray was just three years old, so he didn't vote.) But they needed a "payfor" to make up the lost revenue, so they brewed up the Townshend Acts taxing colonial imports, including tea. (Hmmmm . . . sounds like the sort of horse-trading today's Congress is up to right now with the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.) Five years later, the Indemnity Act expired, and everyone was back where they started. (Sort of like what happened in 2013 when the Bush tax cuts expired . . . . )
The Tea Act of 1773 brought things to a head. The new law actually lowered the price of tea to undercut the smugglers. But the colonists still hated Parliament taxing them without their consent. They hated how England used those taxes to pay colonial governors and judges, thus insulating them from local influence. And that's where things stood in November, 1773, as the tea ship Dartmouth sailed into a Boston Harbor steeped in resentment and controversy.
British law required the shipper to unload and pay the tax within 20 days. But colonists, who gathered by the thousands, were determined to prevent that. On the night of December 16, the final deadline, a group of 30 to 130 of them boarded the Dartmouth and two more ships. A few of them sported elaborate Mohawk warrior costumes to hide their faces and show their loyalty to American identity. They spent three hours dumping 342 chests of tea into the water. The next day, future President John Adams wrote in his diary:
"There is a Dignity, a Majesty, a Sublimity, in this last Effort of the Patriots, that I greatly admire . . . . This Destruction of the Tea is so bold, so daring, so firm, intrepid and inflexible, and it must have so important Consequences, and so lasting, that I cant but consider it as an Epocha in History."
The Tea Party set all sorts of consequences in motion besides the obvious "American Revolution" thing. (Does that remind you of Taylor Swift's song, "We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together"?) If you're a coffee drinker, for example, you should know that coffee first became popular here as an alternative to "unpatriotic" tea. (Sort of like renaming french fries "freedom fries" during the Second Iraq War . . . . )
244 years later, we still resent paying taxes we don't have to pay. The good news is, you don't have to don a Mohawk headdress and row out into the middle of the harbor for three hours of creative vandalism to pay less. You just need a plan. So call us when you're ready to save, and let us give you something to celebrate!
Tuesday, December 5, 2017
Area Actress to Wed Ex-Soldier
Two hundred and forty one years ago, we declared our independence from Mother England — over taxes, of course. But here on our side of the pond, we've never completely lost our affection for all things British. We applauded as the Queen celebrated her 70th wedding anniversary. Netflix fans who just finished binge-watching Stranger Things are eagerly awaiting Season Two of The Crown. And now we've learned that Prince Harry and his longtime girlfriend, actress Meghan Markle, are getting married in May.
Now, Harry may be just fifth in line for the throne, and about to be bumped down to sixth when Princess Kate gives birth to her third child next spring. But a royal wedding is still a Very Big Deal. There's going to be lots of work to keep the couple knackered out for months to come. That includes a guest list, a gown, and flowers. And of course there will tax questions, too.
Here's the issue: Markle isn't a Brit. She's a Yank. Buckingham Palace has already announced that Markle will become a British citizen, which involves passing a test with questions like "What did the Statute of Rhuddlan in 1284 lay the basis for?" and, "Who or what is Vindolanda"? But that transition will certainly complicate her finances, and possibly the rest of the royal family's, whether she says cheerio to her American citizenship or not.
Giving up her U.S. passport would be a simple but possibly pricey proposition. There's no magic to it: you make an appointment at the nearest embassy, sign some forms, and take an Oath of Renunciation. There's a $2,350 fee to process the paperwork, but that's low enough that she could probably add it to her wedding registry and count on a generous Member of Parliament, or maybe a lesser Marchioness, pick it up for her.
The real problem with expatriating is the bloody exit tax. If your net worth is over $2 million, or your average annual income for the five years before you leave tops $162,000, you'll owe tax on any appreciated assets you own, calculated as if you had sold them on the day you leave. That could make it frightfully expensive to move into a palace!
Things get more complicated if Markle keeps her U.S. citizenship. She'll still owe U.S. tax on her worldwide income. And she can't hide foreign holdings from the IRS. If she keeps more than $300,000 in assets abroad, she'll have to file Form 8938 reporting them. (And, really, what's the point of being "Her Royal Highness Princess Henry of Wales" if she's not going to have more than $300,000 in assets?)
If Her Royal Yankee Highness hold anything jointly with Harry, those U.S. filings could reveal assets the Crown prefers keeping confidential. We know that Harry inherited half of his mother, Princess Diana's £21.5 million estate (roughly $28.5 million), and he shares a £3.5 million allowance with his brother. But the royals work hard to keep the bulk of their finances private. The recent "Paradise Papers" leak revealed that Harry's grandmum the Queen benefits from investments the Duchy of Lancaster holds in the Cayman Islands and Bermuda.
You probably thought that marrying a royal would solve your financial problems, not create new ones. But life is full of surprises, even for princesses. So let us propose a jolly good solution: a plan for paying the legal minimum, no matter who you marry! Call us when you're ready to save, and take a few quid to treat the queen to a cuppa!
Now, Harry may be just fifth in line for the throne, and about to be bumped down to sixth when Princess Kate gives birth to her third child next spring. But a royal wedding is still a Very Big Deal. There's going to be lots of work to keep the couple knackered out for months to come. That includes a guest list, a gown, and flowers. And of course there will tax questions, too.
Here's the issue: Markle isn't a Brit. She's a Yank. Buckingham Palace has already announced that Markle will become a British citizen, which involves passing a test with questions like "What did the Statute of Rhuddlan in 1284 lay the basis for?" and, "Who or what is Vindolanda"? But that transition will certainly complicate her finances, and possibly the rest of the royal family's, whether she says cheerio to her American citizenship or not.
Giving up her U.S. passport would be a simple but possibly pricey proposition. There's no magic to it: you make an appointment at the nearest embassy, sign some forms, and take an Oath of Renunciation. There's a $2,350 fee to process the paperwork, but that's low enough that she could probably add it to her wedding registry and count on a generous Member of Parliament, or maybe a lesser Marchioness, pick it up for her.
The real problem with expatriating is the bloody exit tax. If your net worth is over $2 million, or your average annual income for the five years before you leave tops $162,000, you'll owe tax on any appreciated assets you own, calculated as if you had sold them on the day you leave. That could make it frightfully expensive to move into a palace!
Things get more complicated if Markle keeps her U.S. citizenship. She'll still owe U.S. tax on her worldwide income. And she can't hide foreign holdings from the IRS. If she keeps more than $300,000 in assets abroad, she'll have to file Form 8938 reporting them. (And, really, what's the point of being "Her Royal Highness Princess Henry of Wales" if she's not going to have more than $300,000 in assets?)
If Her Royal Yankee Highness hold anything jointly with Harry, those U.S. filings could reveal assets the Crown prefers keeping confidential. We know that Harry inherited half of his mother, Princess Diana's £21.5 million estate (roughly $28.5 million), and he shares a £3.5 million allowance with his brother. But the royals work hard to keep the bulk of their finances private. The recent "Paradise Papers" leak revealed that Harry's grandmum the Queen benefits from investments the Duchy of Lancaster holds in the Cayman Islands and Bermuda.
You probably thought that marrying a royal would solve your financial problems, not create new ones. But life is full of surprises, even for princesses. So let us propose a jolly good solution: a plan for paying the legal minimum, no matter who you marry! Call us when you're ready to save, and take a few quid to treat the queen to a cuppa!
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