There is hope that the plague is behind us. Pestilence is on its way either in the form of a lantern fly or the return of the cicada after 17 years of peace. For the divorce lawyer and his friend in crime, the accountant, there is another crisis emerging. It’s the war over who gets
Taxes
ARM WRESTLING OVER THE DEPENDENCY EXEMPTION?
By Mark Ashton on
There are still things to discover about the 2017 Tax Reform passed by Congress late in that year. The bar and the accounting community have spilled lots of ink over the changes to the law affecting alimony and many other lesser issues. One of those issues is the temporary disappearance of the longstanding dependency deduction/exemption. …
Defining Net Income for 2020 is Going to Be “A Problem”
By Mark Ashton on
I attended a seminar offered by accountant, Mitchell E. Benson, CPA, MT, CFF (Savran Benson LLP), Brian C. Vertz, Esquire (Pollock Begg) and Aliah Molczan (Savran Benson LLP) on July 9, 2020. One of the topics discussed was the Payroll Protection Plan (PPP) loans, which were distributed in the second quarter of 2020 to allow…
CARES Act Check Garnished if Child Support Owed
By Aaron Weems on
Pennsylvania has a host of ways to recover delinquent child support ranging from seizure of bank accounts, gambling winnings, personal injury awards, and the sale proceeds of a home, to intercepting tax refunds, suspending professional, occupational, or recreational licenses. The worst or most consistent offenders will also be thrown in jail.
FINANCIAL INFIDELITY: CHAPTER 2
By Mark Ashton on
As I started this, it occurred to me that I had been to this topic before. Last April 19 I reported on a story published by PBS about spouses who accumulate debt in secret and then want to “share” the debt when the marriage collapses. The February 2020 issue of The Magazine of the American…
TAX REFORM + 2: WHAT DOES IT MEAN & WHERE DOES THE AVERAGE JOE STAND?
By Mark Ashton on
Since the most recent tax reform was adopted in December 2017, this writer has been wondering what it really meant to average people. My averages will be a bit on the high side, but when I ran across a 1995 tax table I decided to try running some tests. Here are the results and I…
Countdown for Tax Reform: How It May Affect You
By Mark Ashton on
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…
The Tail that May Not End
By Mark Ashton on
Every year, both in April and in October, divorce lawyers face a dilemma. While April is the official tax deadline, just about everyone knows that “complex” returns are almost never complete when spring rolls around and many filers defer to October. But, when couples split they often ask for the first time whether they should…
YOUR 1040 JUST TURNED INTO A POST CARD; BUT TAXPAYERS BEWARE
By Mark Ashton on
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…
TAX REFORM IS GOING TO YIELD SOME REAL ESTATE “BLUES”
By Mark Ashton on
Lots of electronic ink has been spilled this week on winners and losers coming out of the Tax Reform Act passed on December 20. Much of this is fairly speculative but some is simply common sense.
If you are a homeowner, take a look at last year’s bill for real estate taxes, then calculate what…