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Innocent Spouse Relief
"I knew he was a crook when I married him." Come again? And you still married him? That's what I said in my head as it took every muscle in my face to keep my forehead from scowling. But instead, I said, "What do you mean?" "We always had good money and nice things, but we never paid taxes. I always owed when I was single. But when we got married, I stopped working and we never owed." Let me take a moment to rewind and get you up to speed. This taxpayer, let's call her Mrs. Bonnie for the purposes of this story, reached out because she needed to file last year's tax return. She was recently widowed, and her husband typically handled the tax filing. So, she was already feeling overwhelmed and lost when it happened. She went to the mailbox and pulled out mail from the IRS. It was a CP3219A , notifying her that credits claimed on a previous tax return were being disallowed by the IRS. Not only did she owe taxes, but she also owed accuracy related penalties. She only had 90 days to respond if she disagreed and didn't know what to do. When she reached out to me, she inquired about whether I could review previous year returns. Mrs. Bonnie wanted to make sure that they were "done right". This isn't a strange request. I told her that I would review the prior year to have a baseline and if I saw anything fishy, I'd bring it to her attention and perhaps look at another year. I didn't even make it to the signatures before the fishiness leaped off the page. I set up a meeting with her via Zoom to review my findings. As I begin to ask about some of the credits claimed and her husband's business her answers did not match what was on the return. That's when she let me know that she knew her husband, Mr. Clyde, was a crook when she married him. Mrs. Bonnie didn't know much about taxes, but she did a bit of research. She read about something called Innocent Spouse Relief and thought she may be eligible. Let's look at what Innocent Spouse Relief is and why Mrs. Bonnie was not eligible, but your client may be.
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2025 Tax Surprises You Shouldn’t Overlook
There are a few tax rules new for 2025 that may catch some individuals and their tax advisers by surprise. These changes have not received lots of attention either because they are overshadowed by related changes that are more significant, or they were enacted a few years back with a future effective date that arrives in 2025. This article covers changes for 2025 that you will want to be sure to share with clients to avoid surprises at a later date.
Leaving the United States, Part I: Expats
When Americans speak of leaving America, they generally are expressing a desire to live elsewhere in the world for cultural reasons or due to cost of living. These people are called expatriates, aka expats. For clarity, a mere visit to another country does not make you an expat. To be an expat, the move needs to be long-term and often includes working or retiring in the new country. Expats live somewhere outside the U.S., but still have a tax obligation to the U.S. and possibly the country they move to. That will be the focus of this article.
Tax Preparer Hit with Stiff Sentence
John Anthony Castro is a colorful character. He entered several Republican primaries seeking the Presidential slot after failing to win the primary for a Senate seat representing Texas. He sued to have our once and future President Donald Trump be removed from the ballot on Fourteenth Amendment Section 3 grounds. As we can easily infer, those suits went nowhere. But more than anything, John Anthony Castro was a tax guy with a virtual practice with locations in four cities. Not anymore. Now he is resident in a Bureau of Prisons facility – the Federal Medical Center Fort Worth. On October 30, 2024, Judge Terry Means sentenced Castro to 188 months in prison, followed by one year of supervised release and restitution of $277,243, following his conviction on 33 counts of “Aiding and Assisting in the Preparation and Presentation of a False and Fraudulent Return.” Does the sad story of John Anthony Castro hold any lessons for us? Perhaps.
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