Trump Accounts (or § 530A accounts) went live via app on July 4, 2026. According to the Treasury Department, over six million accounts have been opened. As of Monday, July 6, 2026, parents and guardia...

If you spend any time in the world of cross-border taxes, you start to notice a pattern: the hardest problems usually begin with a deceptively simple question--who gets to tax you? And the answer is rarely as simple as “the country where I live.” That's...

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The simplest way to reduce your taxable income from an S corporation is to take some of the gross receipts directly into your personal account without running them through the corporate books. Don't mention this to your tax preparer and make sure they d...

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We all know how messy tax returns can get when couples who used to file jointly divorce and there are children (and tax credits) involved. It’s often difficult to explain the rules surrounding Head of...

Remember the dreaded student loan “tax bomb?” For the past few years, it's been easy to forget about it. Thanks to a temporary federal tax exclusion enacted during the pandemic, borrowers who received student loan forgiveness between 2021 and 2025 gener...

A lot of client meetings still start with the same assumptions: W-2 in a U.S. state, mortgage nearby, a 401(k), maybe some RSUs, and a college-savings plan. Yet many of those “simple” clients now own ...

Consider this article your periodic reminder that, for married taxpayers, filing jointly is an election and not the default (and certainly not the only) filing status option. It is important in a busy practice to remember to offer this option to clients...

The IRS has issued a statement about a new settlement offer that is going out for conservation and historic preservation easement disputes. It is similar to previous offers, but there is one big diffe...

The IRS has issued a statement about a new settlement offer that is going out for conservation and historic preservation easement disputes. It is similar to previous offers, but there is one big difference. The partnership will not have to make a paymen...

One would think that now, with summer doldrums and vacation days planned, Tax Court operations would slow and we could all go away. Not this month; six full-dress T. C. opinions and some Memos and mis...

Astute readers of this publication may recognize that I frequently write on Cryptocurrency and also on Tax Court cases. It feels like Christmas to me to be able to write about a tax court case about c...

Recent developments in the Section 183 (Hobby loss) area have not led me to change my basic conclusions. Taxpayers who have a sincere objective of ultimately making a profit should not hesitate to cla...

Income shifting strategies address taxation at its most fundamental level by directing income to taxpayers in lower brackets or with offsetting deductions. Unlike many tax strategies that merely time ...

We’ve all said it: “Once busy season ends, we’ll fix this.” But the pressure never leaves, it just shifts. Extensions, quarter-end, planning season, and year-end come one after another. When a firm wa...

The credit for dependent-care expenses (such as daycare costs) has long been stuck at 20% for "average" taxpayers. It finally gets a permanent boost in 2026 (for returns filed in 2027). Also, the amou...

Many taxpayers have lived with a frustrating mismatch since the Section 163(j) limitation tightened after 2021 – the business may generate plenty of cash, yet its interest deductions are limited because adjusted taxable income (“ATI”) is too low, e.g., due to capex. The 2025 restoration of dep...

Two recent Tax Court opinions , both about the same transaction, reinforce the importance of a contemporaneous written acknowledgement (CWA) to solidify charitable contributions. It is a good illustration of Reilly's Fourth Law of Tax Planning – Executi...

In recognition of the 250th anniversary of the adoption of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776, let's review 250 years of tax history. Our nation's tax systems have evolved over two and a half centuries as ways of doing business and living h...

Dealing with deficiency and restitution in a tax evasion case is a minefield, but there's a good example of how it's done this month. There's architecture, both additional research credits for buildin...

Clean energy tax credits have a lot going for them. Clients buy them at a discount, apply them dollar-for-dollar against federal tax liability, and walk away paying less to the IRS. That alone makes t...

Reilly’s Sixteenth Law of Tax Planning – Being right without substantiation can be as bad as being wrong – is particularly apt when it comes to charitable contributions. The case law makes it clear th...

The Internal Revenue Service has made no secret of its increased scrutiny of captive insurance arrangements, particularly those involving the small insurance company election. For taxpayers and their ...

At some point, accounting becomes more than compliance. It's years of watching businesses evolve, owners under pressure, and consequences unfold. We soon recognize the gap between what clients ask for...

A federal district court just struck down an IRS rule that had been closing the door on a pretty compelling tax savings opportunity available to your clients today, the Section 48E Clean Electricity I...

Tax Day is finally in the rearview mirror, and if you’re like many practitioners—with the phones quieter, the inbox manageable, and the September extension wave feeling comfortably far away—the tempta...

Perhaps the most misunderstood aspect of partnership taxation relates to distributions. When a partnership distributes cash or property to its partners, the tax consequences can range from completely ...

The Jeffrey Winick tax story is about one of the simplest methods of not paying taxes. That simple method of not paying is simply not paying. Winick is a very successful real estate broker specializing in retail leases. The company he founded, Winick Re...

I'm almost nostalgic for the days of 2021-2022, the COVID-induced tsunami of Tax Court filings and cases. This month we've seen only eight T. C. Memos, of which two were routine undocumented deduction...

TOTTB proudly introduces our 2026 SUMMER EDUCATION SERIES! That’s right! Every month through September, we will be bringing you a FREE, live webinar event to help educate and inspire you on all things...

We’ve all been there. A client walks into your office and, somewhere in the conversation, you realize that a seemingly minor oversight, a missed deadline, a form nobody filed, an election nobody menti...