Articles

Avoiding Life Insurance Tax Mishaps

Leave a Comment / By Peter J Reilly CPA

Life insurance is such a great income tax deal that it really disturbs me when people manage to create income tax nightmares with it. The build-up in value of a whole life policy is not currently taxed if the policy is properly structured. And even better, except for the insured, the proceeds are totally income tax free when paid because of the death either actual or clearly coming soon of the insured. Of course one of the greatest pieces of marketing genius ever was calling it life insurance, as it is in its pure form, actually death insurance. Here are some stories of life insurance tax nightmares and we’ll see if we can draw a moral from them.

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Remember, Influencers, the IRS Follows You Too!

Leave a Comment / By Timalyn Bowens, EA

The influencer marketing industry was able to grow during Covid as many advertisers had to adjust or cancel their marketing campaigns. This was because more people were sitting at home consuming content on social media. This new opportunity for smaller influencers has created a new group of taxpayers who need to know their new filing obligations. They’ll also be open to tax planning strategies that you have to help them reduce their tax liability.

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Hobby Loss Regulations And Loper Bright

Leave a Comment / By Peter J Reilly CPA

For me, the most exciting Tax Court opinion of 2025 was Judge Joseph Goeke’s supplement to his 2024 opinion in the case of Gary M. Schwarz. With a $1,851,878 tax deficiency, it is the largest hobby loss opinion since 2019. (The really big dollar cases tend to settle.)

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Consult, Don’t Convince: Turning Discovery Calls into Advisory Opportunities

Leave a Comment / By Marie Torossian, CPA

The most successful accountants aren’t the ones who pitch the hardest, they’re the ones who listen the most. When you ask better questions, you can diagnose problems that clients didn’t even know they had, which then helps us clarify outcomes instead of listing services. When we shift from “convincing” to “consulting,” discovery calls stop being “sales” conversations and start becoming advisory conversations. And advisory conversations naturally lead to advisory engagements.

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TAX COURT ROUNDUP – March 2026

Leave a Comment / By Lewis C. Taishoff

A short but busy month in Tax Court, with the non-shutdown, new wrinkles in law and regulation, and, as always, problems arcane and mundane; so let’s jump in.

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Contracts, Signing Bonuses, and the Substantial Presence Test

Leave a Comment / By Amber Gray-Fenner, EA NTPI Fellow USTCP

In tighter job markets, recruits are often offered signing bonuses (and sometimes moving expenses) to join a firm. Sometimes construction workers temporarily relocate to jobs in other states while they are employed by the company that hired them in their home state. This article reviews some of the foundational tax concepts to consider when evaluating sourcing of income for state tax purposes.

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Help Clients Rebuild Tax Records After Disaster

Leave a Comment / By Jeff Stimpson

Tax pros help clients with a lot of catastrophes: wrangles with tax authorities, paltry nest eggs, more wrangles with tax authorities. More frequently, your clients might face a more tangible and cinematic disaster. These days, there’s always a storm comin’. Swept away in that destruction, for many people, are physical tax and financial records. A few precautions could have prevented such loss and made life at least a bit easier for victims. Here’s how to help clients head off trouble – and recover after it hits.

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