Here is a very amusing and outraged report on “payday lenders” from John Oliver, the British reporter who apprenticed with Jon Stewart and Steven Colbert. He’s accurate in presenting the problem Read more >>
August 29, 2014
Bankruptcy works in unexpected ways. That’s how a colleague sells his potential clients on hiring him to get a discharge in bankruptcy. And he’s right. My client opened a fast-food. Read more >>
July 30, 2014
Most people know that they can’t claim losses incurred by a hobby – say, for instance, their side hobby of breeding and raising Great Pyrenees dogs. No profit motive, no deduction Read more >>
July 10, 2014
My mother-in-law, Margret, is in a nursing home. She knows who she is, but not much more than that. My wife does her taxes every year. Read more >>
June 6, 2014
I heard a radio ad about solving IRS problems. “It’s a fact that when you owe $10,000 or more, the IRS can take your car, your house . . . even your freedom.” Read more >>
June 6, 2014
My clients were nurses at a local hospital. They’re immigrants and English isn’t their first language. They worked hard and bought a house. One day, Read more >>
October 28, 2013
I had a bankruptcy client a few years ago. He owned two office buildings with mortgages totaling more than the buildings’ values. They were going to be foreclosed, triggering personal guarantees, and the client would owe millions of dollars to the lender. If he somehow got out of the personal guarantees, he would owe hundreds of thousands of dollars of tax on the imputed income from canceling his debt. Read more »
September 12, 2013
A few months ago, the US saw the political theater of Congress outraged at the IRS’s alleged targeting of Tea Party political organizations for scrutiny on whether they qualified for tax-exempt status. It looked like the IRS was politically-biased against conservative causes. Read more »
September 7, 2013
IRS has sent out tens of thousands of letters to small businesses asking them to explain the difference between the businesses’ receipts reported on the tax returns and reported by third parties. Read more >>
August 21, 2013
A well-to-do friend called me for some planning. He invited me to his beautiful, five-bedroom home in the hills above Westlake Village. We sat at poolside as he described his predicament. Read more >>
June 20, 2013
