Cecile Barker has bad news from the Eleventh Circuit. They have upheld the Tax Court’s disallowance of his multi-million dollar net operating loss deduction (NOL) largely generated by SoBe Entertainment LLC. SoBe Entertainment is a record label that has represented numerous artists included Brooke Hogan, daughter of Hulk Hogan. The indirect Hulk Hogan connection makes Mr. Barker a tangential figure in a fascinating story you can read about in Conspiracy – Peter Thiel, Hulk Hogan, Gawker and the Anatomy of Intrigue by Ryan Holiday. For purposes of this article, we will stick to the tax story which began with a Tax Court opinion in 2018, which I covered previously.
Small Mistakes With Huge Costs for Your Client’s Tax Returns
Joshua Youngblood, EA, CTRS, CRETS, NTPI Fellow
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 mentioned, has spiraled into a five- or six-figure tax problem. In my years of practice, some of the most expensive mistakes I’ve seen weren’t the result of aggressive planning gone wrong. They were small, quiet errors. The kind that happens when a deadline slips, an election isn’t made, or a form gets overlooked entirely. The tax code is unforgiving in these situations, and the IRS has little sympathy for “I didn’t know.” This article walks through some of the most common, and most costly, small mistakes that can devastate your client’s tax situation, along with practical guidance for avoiding them.
