Here are your remaining tips on How to Choose a Tax Preparer: Make sure the tax preparer is accessible. Questions can arise at any time. Make sure you will be able to contact the tax preparer after the return has been filed, even after the April due date. Questions can arise several years after you… Read More
“The hardest thing in the world to understand is the income tax.” – Albert Einstein According to the IRS more than 80% of Americans use a tax preparer or tax software to prepare their income tax returns. As tax laws become more complicated, taxpayers need help from professionals to help prepare their returns. A taxpayer… Read More
On January 1, 2014 about 50 tax-reducing provisions expired. Tax extender bills to reinstate these provisions for 2014 have been sitting in Congress all year. On December 16, 2014, Congress finally passed the tax extenders bill. Here we are in December, and Congress has now acted to extend the expired provisions for one more year,… Read More
After identifying and adding up all available medical expenses and subtracting 7.5% of Adjusted Gross Income (AGI), the next step is to add other itemized deductions from the categories we discussed last week. Here are the remaining categories: Gifts to charity. A charitable contribution is a donation or gift to, or for the use of,… Read More
For the past two weeks we’ve focused on medical expenses, especially for senior taxpayers, that are deductible and may well make a better tax result for those seniors to itemize their deductions instead of taking the standard deduction. Many senior taxpayers claim the standard deduction on their annual income tax return instead of itemizing deductions.… Read More
Many senior taxpayers claim the standard deduction on their annual income tax return instead of itemizing deductions. Often seniors pay little or no mortgage interest, and they usually don’t owe much for state and local income and property taxes. Most of the common itemized deductions don’t add up to much for seniors. Add to that… Read More
What can you do to make sure your power of attorney will be honored? Ask your bank, brokerage house, IRA or other retirement plan provider, and insurance companies if they will honor your power of attorney and ask for their response in writing. If they say they will only honor powers of attorney on their… Read More
Sometimes banks and other financial institutions, such as brokerage houses and insurance companies, refuse to honor a power of attorney when they think the document is “stale,” that is, a significant amount of time has passed since the POA was executed. This refusal means that an agent may have a useless document if it was… Read More
A power of attorney (POA) is a standard part of every estate plan. In this document the client appoints an agent to take care of the principal’s finances, bills, investments, taxes and other financial matters. It used to be that the authority of an agent acting under a power of attorney was not questioned. Now,… Read More
Questions about the capacity of the testator can be resolved by direct testimony of the testator. The testator is there, thus able to answer questions, explain his or her intentions, correct misapprehensions and eliminate ambiguities. Beneficiaries would have to consider carefully their complaints or contests. In some jurisdictions, guardian or conservatorship proceedings are used in… Read More