Posts

Showing posts from April, 2007

QuickBooks to End Support

Effective May 31, 2007, Intuit will no longer provide support for the 2004 versions of QuickBooks Pro, Premier and Enterprise Solutions. If you are running either of these applications, this means that your access to technical support and other business services will completely stop on May 31. Business services through QuickBooks 2004 that will be discontinued include:- Bill Pay- Credit Card Download- Employee Organizer- Merchant Service- Online Banking- Online Billing- Standard Payroll (formerly Do-It-Yourself Payroll)- Enhanced Payroll- Assisted Payroll- Support Plans and Services

Tax Extension for NY and NY

The Internal Revenue Service announced on April 26, 2007, tax relief for New Jersey and New York taxpayers in the Presidential Disaster Area that was struck by severe storms and flooding April 14-18, 2007. The disaster area consists of the following counties: Bergen, Burlington, Essex, Passaic, Somerset and Union in New Jersey and Orange, Rockland and Westchester in New York. Deadlines for affected taxpayers to file returns, pay taxes and perform other time-sensitive acts falling on or after April 14, 2007 and on or before June 25, 2007 have been postponed to June 25, 2007. In addition, the IRS will waive the failure to deposit penalty for employment and excise deposits due on or after April 14, 2007 and on or before April 30, 2007, as long as the deposits were made by April 30, 2007.

Government is Growing!

The Christian Science Monitor reports that "[s]lightly over half of all Americans – 52.6 percent – now receive significant income from government programs, according to an analysis by Gary Shilling, an economist in Springfield, N.J. That's up from 49.4 percent in 2000 and far above the 28.3 percent of Americans in 1950. If the trend continues, the percentage could rise within ten years to pass 55 percent, where it stood in 1980 on the eve of President's Reagan's move to scale back the size of government. That two-decade shrink-the-government trend now appears over, if for no other reason than demographics. The aging baby-boomer generation is poised to receive big payments from Social Security and government healthcare programs." Click Here for the full article.

U.S. GOVERNMENT SUES JACKSON HEWITT TAX PREPARATION FRANCHISES

WASHINGTON, D.C. - The United States has filed civil injunction suits against five corporations that operate Jackson Hewitt tax preparation franchises, as well as 24 individuals who manage or work at the franchises, the Justice Department and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) announced April 2, 2007. According to the four lawsuits—filed in federal courts in Chicago, Atlanta, Detroit and Raleigh, N.C.—the corporations operate under franchise agreements with Jackson Hewitt Tax Services Inc. of Parsippany, N.J., the nation’s second largest tax preparation firm. The suits allege that one of the individual defendants, Farrukh Sohail of Atlanta, Ga., wholly or partly owns each of the five corporations, which prepared and filed over 105,000 federal income tax returns last year. The five corporations allegedly operate more than 125 Jackson Hewitt retail tax preparation stores in the Chicago, Atlanta, Detroit and Raleigh-Durham, N.C. areas. According to the government complaint, Sohail and oth

Real Estate Price Slump

The New York Times reported today that State tax revenues are declining as a result of the slowdown in real estate home sales. This lowers real estate transfer tax revenues as well as income taxes. The article stated: New home sales nationally fell in February to the lowest rate in seven years, and homeowners who tapped into plentiful home equity and spent extravagantly during the real estate boom have started to cut back. Those events not only threaten revenue streams for things like building materials and labor, but also affect spending on big-ticket items like cars and furniture, which many homeowners financed with home equity lines of credit. This will result in pushes for higher tax rates

The AMT is a Killer!

The AMT will continue to hit tens of thousands of unsuspecting taxpayers on their 2006 tax returns, which are due on April 17 this year. And, as one court case illustrates, you generally can't wriggle out of the AMT at tax return time. Click Here for more information

Time for IRA Contributions

The clock is ticking down to the tax filing deadline. The good news: There may still be an opportunity to save on your tax bill. If you qualify, you can make a deductible contribution to a traditional IRA right up until the April 17, 2007 filing date and still benefit from the resulting tax savings on your 2006 return. Small business owners can set up and contribute to a Simplified Employee Pension ( SEP ) plan up until the due date for their returns, including extensions . You also have until April 17 to make a contribution to a Roth IRA. For Further Information, Click Here