When Your Client’s Business Fails: Easing the Tax Pain

Business Strategies

The Internal Revenue Code provides several meaningful tools to ease the tax pain when a business fails. The problem is that many of these provisions require advance planning, timely action, or both. If you’re not looking for them, you’ll miss them, and your client will pay for it. In this article, we’ll look at net operating losses, Section 1244, worthless stock and bad debts, the hobby loss rules, cancellation of debt, and key opportunities to look back at prior years.

Subscribe to Read the rest of the article

Think Outside the Tax Box provides tax reduction strategies along with practical implementation advice in order to reduce your clients’ federal tax bill with ease.

Already have an account? Sign in

CURRENT EDITION

Lessons Learned from the Tax Court: An Olive Branch in Tax Court

Matt Metras, EA

“Everything is deductible until the audit” is an adage frequently repeated in the tax preparation industry. Generally, it’s mentioned tongue-in-cheek, but today’s taxpayer (and her tax pro boyfriend) may have taken it a bit too literally. Additionally, cutting corners may seem like a time-saving strategy in the moment, but the potential to backfire can’t be ignored. In this case, the taxpayer is about to learn things the hard way.

Two Tax Systems: The Fundamental Divide That Shapes Every Client Strategy

Kim Larsen

As tax professionals, we must recognize a profound truth that most Americans never fully grasp: The United States doesn’t have a single tax system, it has two fundamentally different systems operating in parallel. Understanding this dichotomy is perhaps the most important insight you can share with your clients, as it forms the foundation for virtually every advanced tax strategy.