2015: A Tax Odyssey

On July 23, NASA announced the discovery of Kepler-452b, the first potentially Earth-like planet within the "habitable zone" of a star like our Sun. Kepler-452b is 1,400 light-years away, meaning the New Horizons space probe that just passed Pluto should get there in another 26 million years. (Mom, are we there yet?) It's 60% bigger than Earth, with a "better than even chance" of having a rocky composition, and takes 385 of our days to orbit its sun. Reporters instantly dubbed the planet "Earth 2.0," and scientists from the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence Institute have already begun targeting it for signs of intelligent life.

Ironically, at the same time, officials in Washington are searching for signs of intelligence in the tax code. (So far, they're not doing any better than the astronomers at NASA.) So we got to wondering . . . is there any way that our search for extraterrestrial life might help us out of our current budget jam? In plainer terms, can we tax it?

Let's start closest to home. Our own astronauts are subject to U.S. tax on all of their worldwide income, regardless of where they live. (They get an automatic two-month extension to file if they're outside the U.S. on April 15. We'd assume "off the planet" counts.) Astronauts pay regular tax on their salaries, which range from $64,724 to $141,715 per year. So, while our astronauts might escape earth's gravity, there's no escaping the IRS. On the brighter side, they also get a tax-free "dwarf" per diem for their time on the space station. (Seriously. Former astronaut Clayton Anderson reported he had $172 in his account after 152 days in the International Space Station.)

Further outside Earth's orbit, asteroid mining might lead to some nice new tax gains. Our home planet is running out of key elements like phosphorus, antimony, zinc, tin, lead, silver, and gold. So companies like Planetary Resources are working to expand Earth's dwindling resource base by mining asteroids. While their "cost of goods sold" will be higher than for comparable land-based minerals, the profit will be taxed as ordinary income at rates up to 35%. That's a pretty sweet deal for the IRS, considering the asteroid miners just find this stuff drifting out in space.

The real tax jackpot comes when extraterrestrials join us here on Earth. U.S. resident aliens — presumably including space aliens — are generally taxed the same way as U.S. citizens, which means their worldwide income is subject to U.S. tax. While we don't know anything about the economy on Kepler-452b, it's safe to assume that a civilization advanced enough to travel 1,400 light years has created high amounts of material wealth — and as sure as the sun rises in the east, our federal, state, and local governments won't hesitate to ask for their cut. (While we're at it, when E.T. phones home, the telephone excise tax alone has to be pretty phenomenal.)

Finally, there's one unsettling possibility we can't ignore. What if we do find intelligent life somewhere out there, and they don't like us? Famed physicist Stephen Hawking suggests we're safer not waving too hard to attract alien attention, simply because if they can find us and reach us, they can probably destroy us, too. "If aliens ever visit us," Hawking says, "I think the outcome would be much as when Christopher Columbus first landed in America, which didn't turn out very well for the American Indians." If that's the case, the only tax worth collecting will be the estate tax — if there's anyone left to collect it!

Our friends at the IRS may be yearning to boldly tax where no man has taxed before. But they can't ever count on it, which means squeezing more and more revenue out of us here on Earth. The best way to beat them, without fleeing the planet, is a plan. So count on us to give you the "right stuff" — and remember, we're here for your friends, family, and capsule-mates, too!

Toxic Deductible Sludge

Back in 2010, British Petroleum's Deepwater Horizon drilling rig exploded and spilled millions of barrels of oil off the Louisiana coast. Countless small business owners, including fishermen, hotel operators, restaurants, rental companies, and seafood processors, suffered and went bankrupt. State and local governments lost billions more in tax revenue. Lawyers, who may be some of the few people to actually profit from the disaster, are still fighting over compensation and claims, and will probably still be fighting until long after anyone reading these words is still alive.

BP has been gushing cash ever since the spill to clean up its mess and restore its reputation the damaged environment. The total includes $20 billion for a trust fund to settle financial claims, $4.5 billion in criminal fines and other penalties, and $18.7 billion to settle federal and state claims. But there's good news for the company, too — they'll be getting billions in help from their friends at the IRS!

Here's how that little plot twist works. Section 162(f) of the Internal Revenue Code states that "no deduction shall be allowed . . . for any fine or similar penalty paid to a government for the violation of any law." But defining exactly what makes up a "fine or penalty" isn't as obvious as you might think (and it gives those lawyers we just talked about the opportunity to bill a lot of hours arguing about it). Payments that aren't considered fines or penalties are deductible just like any other business expense. So let's take a look at exactly how BP will be structuring this final settlement:

• $5.5 billion goes towards a Clean Water Act penalty. This amount should be nondeductible. However, the press release announcing the settlement states that 80% of the penalty "will go to restoration efforts in the affected states pursuant to a Deepwater-specific statute, the RESTORE Act." That should give a clever lawyer more than enough rope to argue for deductibility!
• $8.8 billion goes towards natural resource damage and funding Gulf restoration projects. Since it's not explicitly designated a "fine" or "penalty," BP will probably deduct it.
• $5.9 billion goes towards state and local governments to settle their claims. Again, since it's being paid to "settle" claims, BP will likely deduct it.
• $600 million goes towards "other claims," including "unreimbursed federal expenses due to this incident." (Sounds like the sort of "slush fund" favored by Louisiana politicians of yore, doesn't it?) And really, how much fun is a slush fund if you have to pay tax on it?

We may never know exactly how much BP writes off because deductions on settlements are confidential business information. But we know the company's federal tax rate is 35%. So that means, if BP writes off, say, $20 billion of the payments, they'll save $7 billion in taxes. That money, of course, comes out of all of our pockets. So pat yourself on the back for playing your part in cleaning up the Gulf.

Nobody ever plans to suffer through a disaster like the Deepwater Horizon spill. But it's worth remembering that how you clean up your mistakes can make a real difference. So think of us as your financial "911," and don't hesitate to call if trouble strikes!

Click!

Nina Olson is the most important person you've never heard of at the IRS. She's the "National Taxpayer Advocate," and she heads up an organization created to cut through the red tape when the Service can't get the job done itself. If you're stuck between cogs in the IRS machine, Olson and her staff of 1,400 Case Advocates are poised to pull you out. She's like the Lorax, except she speaks for the taxpayer instead of the trees.

Last week, Olson released her mid-year report to Congress. It's hundreds of pages long, full of dense bureaucratese and government jargon, all leading to one inescapable (and rhyming) conclusion: the IRS is a mess. Olson likened the situation to Charles Dickens' Tale of Two Cities. "For the majority of taxpayers who filed their returns and did not need IRS assistance," she writes, "the filing season was generally successful. For the segment of taxpayers who required help from the IRS, the filing season was by far the worst in memory."

Take a look at some of the "customer service" statistics Olson revealed, and you'll see why we put the term "customer service" in quotes:

• The IRS answered just 37% of the phone calls taxpayers made to customer service representatives, with an average hold time of more than half an hour. That's down from 71% for the 2014 filing season.
• Olson's own unit did barely better, answering just 39% of calls made to the National Taxpayer Advocate Toll-Free Hotline. (Hint: a toll-free number won't save taxpayers much money — and really, it isn't much of a "hotline" — if nobody answers the phone!)
• Tax professionals have always been able to "cut the line" by calling the Practitioner Priority Service line. Surely they get better service, right? Not so much. The IRS answered just 45% of those calls, with an average hold time of 3/4 of an hour.

Where do all those unanswered calls go? Here's a clue: the number of "courtesy disconnects" jumped from 544,000 last year to 8.8 million this year. "Courtesy disconnect" is the ironic term the IRS uses when the phone lines get so jammed there's no hope you'll ever reach an actual human being anyway — so the system just says "peace out" and hangs up on you.

Why are things so miserable? The problem, of course, is money. The IRS budget is down 17% (adjusted for inflation) from 2010. Yet even as Congress has gleefully slashed funding for everyone's least-favorite agency, they've stuck the IRS with the responsibility of riding shotgun over big chunks of both the Affordable Care Act and the new "FATCA" rules designed to sniff out hidden offshore accounts. The end result is a "customer service" experience that makes a trip to the DMV look like a beach vacation.

If you've never gotten a dreaded "CP-2000" notice, you might not see the connection between IRS "service" and what we do. But here it is, in a nutshell: the sort of tax planning we offer doesn't just save you money, it helps protect you from IRS bureaucracy to save you time. So make sure you've got a plan in place before you file your next return!

Forensic Filings

We tend to think of the Internal Revenue Service mainly as Uncle Sam's "collections department." But it's also a true law enforcement agency. Special agents from the Criminal Investigations unit take on obvious crimes like tax evasion and tax preparer fraud. They also partner with local police, the FBI, the DEA, and even foreign governments to combat public corruption, money laundering, drug trafficking, and international terrorism. The tax cops are good at what they do — the IRS boasts the highest criminal conviction rate of any federal law enforcement agency (93.4% in 2014).

But sometimes the IRS plays a surprising role in more ordinary crimes . . . which brings us to today's story.

On May 17, 2005, 38-year-old Amy Bosley frantically called 911 to report a break-in and shooting at her family's holiday cabin in Alexandria, Kentucky, just across the Ohio River from Cincinnati. Police arrived to find her 41-year-old husband, Bob, dead on the bed with at least seven bullet wounds. The cabin had been ransacked, and the couple's terrified sons, ages six and nine, were huddled in their room.

Local authorities were stumped at first. There were no witnesses and no DNA evidence. The Bosleys were well-liked in their community. They owned a million-dollar roofing business, along with all the grown-up toys their success could buy: sports cars, horses, an airplane, and a 50-foot yacht.

But officials soon learned there were secrets beneath the Bosley's successful facade. Bob had made enemies in his business. And he would disappear for days at a time to his boat on nearby Lake Cumberland, where he entertained women who weren't his wife.

Then came the call that cracked the case wide open. It seems that Amy, who served as the roofing company's accountant, had been as cavalier with the business's taxes as her husband had been with his wedding vows. The company owed a whopping $1.7 million in back taxes. Amy had hidden the investigation from her husband and even impersonated him on the phone.

Not being able to talk to Bob had the IRS smelling a rat. So they demanded an in-person meeting with the couple that was scheduled to take place . . . the morning after the murder! And that morning, the "grieving widow" was even so bold as to call the IRS and say they wouldn't need to meet because Bob was dead. Given the astounding coincidence on top of all the suspicious behavior, the IRS agent called local police and suggested a suspect and motive they might want to look into.

You can probably guess where the story goes from here. Investigators focused their attention on Amy and began to pull apart her story. They found hundreds of checks to the IRS, unmailed, in the back of her car. The coup de grace came from the children, who told interviewers they heard gunshots first, then breaking glass. Ten days later, Amy was in custody. She pled guilty to protect the children from having to testify, and now she's serving a 20-year sentence.

Campbell County Prosecutor Michelle Snodgrass told the court that Amy set out to destroy the business to get even with Bob for the cheating. She even thought killing him would make the tax problems go away. And where did all the money go? Snodgrass says, "I think that there's money buried, and when she makes parole, one of the first stops she makes is to go get that."

When we work with couples, we make sure both spouses are on board with the plan. And while we probably couldn't have saved the Bosleys, wecan help eliminate financial conflicts that threaten relationships. So don't wait to reach out to your better half. Call us today for a plan to help bring you closer together!

A Tax in a Pineapple Under the Sea

You know what's even worse than paying tax on money you make? Try taking a loss on money you lose. Make $100, pay a 40% tax, and you've still got $60 left. But lose $100, take a tax loss, and you're still out your $100. Yeah, you can deduct it against future income. But it's kind of like those "mail-in" rebates you get when you walk out of Staples with a new printer. It sounds good when you're still in the store. But in the back of your mind, you realize you'll probably never actually mail it in.

It's no fun if you lose money in a bad investment. It's no fun if you get ripped off in some sort of fraud. It's even worse if you get ripped off in an investment fraud! And that brings us to this week's story, which starts out in the underwater city of Bikini Bottom.

SpongeBob SquarePants is a kids' cartoon chronicling the adventures of a sponge named Bob, who lives with his pet snail Gary in a pineapple on the ocean floor. (If you're a parent of a young child, you can just skip ahead to the next paragraph.) SpongeBob has become Nickleodeon's most popular series, squeezing up a boatload of awards, and spawning two movies. In 2011, mycologists working in Malaysia even discovered a new species of fungus in the Bolotaceae family which they named spongiforma squarpantsii.

With a franchise that successful, every huckster within 20,000 leagues wants a SpongeBob tie-in to promote their business. One of those hucksters was a company called SpongeTech. Don't let the "tech" fool you; these guys were in the decidedly low-tech business of selling soap-filled sponges, including a SpongeBob SquarePants model filled with baby soap. But their real business was soaking investors — and after all the hype was washed away, SpongeTech was just another penny-stock scam. Scratch that — as one reporter put it, "SpongeTech was no ordinary pump-and-dump penny-stock scheme; it was, to play on Churchill's famous definition of Russia, a fraud wrapped in a stock-market rig inside a money-laundering conspiracy."

Robert and Penny Greenberger were two of those unlucky investors who watched their "investment" in SpongeTech circle down the drain. By the time the company filed for bankruptcy, the Greenbergers had lost $569,220. In 2010, they wrote the capital loss off on their taxes. Which was fine, except for one thing. They can carry that loss forward to absorb future gains. But they can only deduct $3,000 per year against their ordinary income. At that rate, they'll still be writing it off in the 23rd century.

But theft losses are deductible against ordinary income. Right now! So, in 2012, the Greenbergers amended their 2010 return to claim a theft loss, and asked the IRS to send them a refund for $177,102. The IRS said no, and everyone sailed off to court. Last month, Judge James Gwin ruled that, to prove theft, the Greenbergers had to show two things: 1) that SpongeTech's "nauty" scammers acted specifically to take their money through fraud, and 2) that the Greenbergers had transferred their property to the thieves. Unfortunately for our losing investors, they had bought their stock on "the open market, without any knowledge of who was on the other side of the transaction." And with that, he sank the Greenbergers' case.

Remember when you were a kid and your mom told you not to buy something just because there was a cartoon character on it? She was right, and she would tell you the same thing about your portfolio. The most important lesson here may be to make the right financial decision first, then find the most tax-efficient way to do it. So call us for help — we're here to help you clean up your messiest financial mistakes!

What Goes Around Comes Around

Ask anyone what makes them happy. (Go ahead, see who's around and ask them.) We're pretty sure they didn't say "paying taxes." Most of us just grumble and pay up. But millions of citizens from all walks of life express their unhappiness by choosing not to pay. The IRS currently has over 12 million accounts in collections, with state and local governments managing millions more. That's a lot of money not getting paid.

Of course, tax collectors are hardly powerless to collect those debts. They can garnish wages to pay back taxes. And they can seize property. Usually, this means financial assets like bank accounts, investments, and retirement accounts. But it also includes physical assets like houses, cars, and boats they can sell to raise cash. The IRS has seized less obvious assets, too, such as the contents of an Alabama scofflaw's hair salon, a pair of Boston parking spaces that sold for $280,000 each, and even $2 million worth of annuity payments that used to be New York Mets slugger Darryl Strawberry's deferred salary.

Now we've learned that a Florida tax collector is taking aim at an even bigger target. Last month, Escambia County Tax Collector Janet Holley filed suit to seize the 200-foot-tall Skyview Ferris wheel, which has thrilled riders since 2013 near Atlanta's Centennial Olympic Park.

The Ferris wheel features 42 climate-controlled gondolas, including a VIP car with leather seats and glass floors. And it's enjoyed a scenic ride of its own. It originally opened in Paris, across from the famed Louvre museum. Then it moved to Bern, Switzerland. Then it crossed the Alps and the Atlantic for a year-long stop in Pensacola, Florida before finally settling in "the ATL."

Here's where taxes step aboard. When the wheel landed in Pensacola, it became subject to Escambia County property tax. The county assessed the wheel's value at $11.4 million, then billed the ride's operator $237,000. That company, Expo 60 Ventures LLC, has since gone out of business and dissolved. However, Florida law lets the tax on tangible property follow the property, in addition to the owner, which makes the wheel itself still subject to seizure. What's worse, interest and penalties have rolled the bill up to $350,000!

The wheel's current operators are quick to defend Atlanta's newest overpriced tourist trap scenic attraction. A spokesman says "This is a vendetta by a public official who's up for re-election in Pensacola, Florida. Pensacola has always been angry that this wonderful icon left their city and came to Atlanta." Having said that, they also paid $50,000 towards the debt. "Our only contention is that they're charging some ridiculous penalties and interest and things like that on the taxes, and we're willing to pay those as soon as the court tells us that that's what we have to pay," he added. (Doesn't exactly sound "willing" when you put it like that!)

Of course, the county doesn't really want to take possession of the Ferris wheel, not any more than the IRS really wanted a couple of parking spots in Boston. They just want their money. (We can just imagine Pensacola's roughest, toughest repo man gulping in disbelief when he getsthis assignment!)

Ferris wheels are fun, but in the end you just wind up back where you started. That's fine for a scenic ride, but it's not good enough when it comes to your taxes. What you need is a plan. Whether you're running a business, managing a portfolio, or just raising a family, we can give you that plan — and you can save the thrill rides for the amusement park, not the IRS!

Little Tax Lien on the Prairie

Us Weekly is one of those glossy tabloid magazines you see in the checkout line at your local supermarket. Every week, they run a photo feature called "Stars: They're Just Like Us," with revealing, slice-of-life gems such as a Bachelorette throwing a ball to her dog in the park, a former supermodel cheering at her kid's soccer game, or Matt Damon adjusting his fly while he waits in line to renew his driver's license. (We're explaining this because we know you would never read anything so frivolous.)

Here's another way that stars are just like us . . . they deal with the tax man! (Except when they don't, as the case sometimes may be.) Granted, it's not great television, watching the Kardashians pay their kuarterly estimates. Still, taxes are just a much a bane of their existence as they are of yours. So let's take a look at some celebrity tax stories making the rounds:

• Melissa Gilbert, who starred as Laura Ingalls in the family drama Little House on the Prairie, is facing a $360,000 lien for unpaid federal income taxes. While we can't be privy to the exact circumstances, the actress, who has since served as President of the Screen Actors Guild, reports that the recession had hit her hard. "That, plus a divorce and a dearth of acting opportunities the last few years, created a perfect storm of financial difficulty for me." Gilbert, her husband, and their two boys currently live in a log house in Michigan, which she refers to as "our own Little House in the Big Woods," and says she has negotiated a plan with the IRS to make good on her debt.
• Presidential candidate Carly Fiorina may be barely cracking 1% in the polls, but she's jumped to an early lead in the financial disclosure race — she won't be accused of hiding anything in her tax returns. The former Hewlett-Packard CEO had already released her federal returns, along with a 503-page financial disclosure pegging her net worth at $58,954,494.88 (because $60 million would just be vulgar). But last week, she opened up her state tax returns as well. While Fiorina lives in Virginia, her various business and investment interests force her to file tax returns in a total of 17 states. We're not talking a lot of money here — for example, she earned $946 in investment income attributable to Michigan, which meant filing a 58-page return and paying $40 in tax (which Virginia credited back to her on their return). The end result with her state tax returns is a 1,000-page stack of paper that ought to keep her former company 's printers humming profitably for years.
• Former House Speaker Dennis Hastert is in hot water following revelations that he paid $1.7 million in hush money to conceal "former misconduct." Prosecutors have indicted him for failing to report cash transactions and lying to the FBI. It's been an incredible fall for Hastert: a decade ago, he was two heartbeats away from the Presidency, and now his life is an episode of theMaury Povich show. But will the IRS have a problem with it? Almost certainly not! In fact, Hastert can plausibly claim a theft loss deduction for payments exceeding 10% of his adjusted gross income. The indictment doesn't tell us if Hastert's blackmailer reported the payments as income, and we can safely assume Hastert didn't issue a 1099! Still, this is one case where the IRS might actually make a celebrity's troubles easier.

Celebrities are famed for supporting entourages of publicists, agents, and managers that you probably don't need and can't get. But they also have tax planners — and you can have one of those right now. Just call us for the plan you need to keep your taxes to a legal minimum and outof the headlines.