TaxEsqBlog -by Ronald J. Cappuccio, J.D., LL.M.(Tax)

Tax season for individuals starts January 23, 2017 for the 2016 return. Unfortunately, most individuals are facing increasingly complex and confusing tax laws. It is not just businesses that are suffering. The National Taxpayer Advocate has called for Congress to simplify the Internal Revenue Code which takes individuals and businesses more than 6 billion hours a year to comply with filing. The idea espoused by the Taxpayer Advocate the Congress was to have a neutral Tax Code and cut individual tax rates as well as business tax rates. This means that many of the exclusions, exemptions, deductions and credits would be eliminated as the trade-off for simplification and rate reduction.The recommendation is that Congress start with the tax code without any reductions and then only add back deductions, such as exclusion of capital gains on home sales, if the benefits outweigh the complexity of the provision. The idea is to have a simpler compliance mechanism and use tax is for collecting ...

More Taxes – Time after Time Wake up and smell the coffee!  Its political season again and unfortunately it appears most candidates for State Governors and Congress are advocating a “tax the other guy” approach. “We need more money for the schools!”-Tax the Rich. “We need more money for the poor!” – Tax the oil companies. “We need more money for the seniors!”-Increase sales tax. “We need to fight Ebola!”-Tax the pharmaceutical companies. We need money for good clauses so therefore we need to increase taxes?  Does that really makes sense?  When a politician advocates increasing taxes they always try to make it sound like they are not going increase your taxes but somehow your taxes will be increased.  Has any country ever taxed themselves and prosperity?   The fact is if you tax something you get less of it.  That truth is immutable and is not difficult to understand.  Politicians just simply ignore that and try to get voters to forget abou...