Just before Christmas last year, Congress passed and the President signed a major tax reform package that contained a surprising wrinkle. It abandoned a decades long provision that permitted payors of alimony or spousal support to deduct their payments from income and required recipients to report the payments and pay tax on them.
The effective
A couple weeks ago this writer was asked to sit on a panel discussing the future of family law almost forty years after the no-fault and equitable distribution schemes were adopted and the federal government began promoting guideline based child support. One of the concerns I expressed to the Family Law Section of the state
Congress has been crowing about tax simplification for years. They had a one-page income tax return in 1913 when the first modern return was published by the IRS. But even then, a one-page return was a written “sleight of hand” as the first line stated Income and the second said only “Deductions” before calling the
As this is written, the House and Senate this week are scheduled to vote upon a conference report of both houses of Congress which will “reform” tax law in a major way for the first time since the Reagan administration. In order to secure passage, Congress needed to find some revenue enhancements to offset the
We have still not seen a copy of the Senate bill although PBS Newshour reports that the final version adopted by the Senate was not circulated in the Senate until late Friday evening and about 5 hours before the vote. However, it appears that the Senate bill does not change existing alimony rules. As noted
Any American with a pulse knows that 2017 was to be the first overhaul of U.S. Tax Law since 1986. Until this week, what was circulating through Washington was an 18 page executive summary. That changed yesterday when the House Republican Tax Policy Committee circulated a draft bill that specified exactly what changes were being
On October 5th of this year, the Superior Court disposed of an alimony modification request that was decided by the trial court in October, 2014. The facts and the ruling present a tale of how divorce practitioners need to pay heed to language when modifying an order of alimony.
Egan v. Egan, 2015 Pa. Super.
Yes, it is tax time once again and the struggles over who got Christmas morning in December now give way to “who gets the deductions and credits” associated with the minor child. Here is the primer which is offered subject to the advice of income tax preparers.
In ancient times, which is to say, before
The general rule is that personal expenses are almost never deductible by taxpayers on Schedule “A” (Itemized Deductions) of their personal returns. But all rules have exceptions and almost everyone is familiar with the deductions available for medical and dental expenses. These are great deductions but with this hitch. You only get to deduct the
A very interesting opinion recently came down from the Pennsylvania Superior Court awarding attorney’s fees in a divorce case. This case is a non-precedential opinion, meaning it cannot be cited as establishing law on the issue, but it is emblematic of the risk one runs