The notion of bartering may conjure an image of a crowded, bustling medieval bazaar. Dusty travelers, famers perchance, haggle with merchants over textiles or metal tools. Live chickens are exchanged for handspun cloth and, eventually, everyone goes home happy. Although usually less dusty, these types of transactions continue to occur in today’s high-tech modern world. [...]
With kids back in school, it’s a good time for parents (and grandparents) to think about college funding. One option, which can be especially beneficial if the children in question still have many years until heading off to college, is a Section 529 plan. TAX-DEFERRED COMPOUNDING 529 plans are generally state-sponsored, and the savings-plan option [...]
If you own a profitable, unincorporated business with your spouse, you probably find the high self-employment (SE) tax bills burdensome. An unincorporated business in which both spouses are active is typically treated by the IRS as a partnership owned 50/50 by the spouses. (For simplicity, when we refer to “partnerships” we’ll include in our definition [...]
The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) didn’t eliminate the individual alternative minimum tax (AMT). But the law did draw a silver lining around it. Revised rules now lessen the likelihood that many taxpayers will owe substantial taxes under the AMT for 2018 through 2025. PARALLEL UNIVERSE Think of the AMT as a parallel universe [...]
Maybe QuickBooks does everything you need. But if you outgrow parts of it, don’t worry, you’ll have options. What do you do when an application you’re using stops meeting your growing needs in a specific area? You can: a.) find a workaround, b.) switch to different software, or, c.) resign yourself to living without that [...]
The limited liability company (LLC) and limited liability partnership (LLP) business structures have their advantages. But, in years past, the IRS treated LLC and LLP owners as limited partners for purposes of the passive activity loss (PAL) rules. This could be a tax negative. Fortunately, LLC and LLP owners can now be treated as general [...]