LOOKING FOR LEGAL WAYS
TO REDUCE TAX?
New tax reduction strategies carefully explained and exhaustively researched every two weeks. Receive breaking news updates on tax law changes. Members only monthly AMA with TOTTB.tax.
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FEATURED CONTENT
Who You Gonna Call? Not the IRS – A Guide to IRS Online Tools
You don’t have to be a tax geek to know the IRS has trouble picking up the phone. Old habits die hard. If you have a tax question, what do you do? You call the IRS. Good luck with that. You’ll be on hold for a long time if you can get through at all. The IRS initiated a call-back feature, but it’s not always available. The hold music is uninspiring; sometimes, after holding for hours, you get the dreaded “courtesy disconnect.” Yikes! Let’s face it. The IRS has a full plate; years of doing more with less have crippled the agency. Congress is quick to excoriate the IRS for poor service but keeps piling on more tasks (without necessary funding). Luckily, the IRS is working hard to provide more and better online applications and resources. There’s a lot out there, some well-known, some not so well-known, click here to take a tour and discover which shortcuts will help you most.
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CURRENT EDITION
Tackling Taxes On an Inherited HSA
The Health Savings Account (HSA) is a first line of defense tax strategy. Contributions are deductible and earnings are tax-free if used for qualified medical expenses. There are numerous features to the HSA that secure maximum tax benefits. Structured properly, an HSA can provide serious tax-free money to beneficiaries as well as the account holder. Before we review the implications of inheriting an HSA, let’s review some of the powerful features an HSA has that increases the value of the account.
Kadau v. Commissioner and the Line Between Effective and Broken Captives
Captive insurance remains one of the most closely examined tax planning strategies in use today, not because it is inherently flawed, but because small missteps can carry outsized consequences. Many taxpayers assume that careful formation and proper documentation are enough to protect the intended tax outcome. A recent Tax Court decision, Kadau v. Commissioner, serves as a reminder that those assumptions deserve closer scrutiny. The court’s analysis did not hinge on whether captive insurance can work, but on how a specific arrangement actually functioned in practice. For tax professionals advising clients who rely on micro-captives, the case raises important questions about where structures tend to break down, why some arrangements attract IRS attention while others do not, and what really separates a defensible captive from one that invites challenge.
Not Every Client Is a Keeper: When Saying Goodbye Protects Your Practice
Bad chemistry with one client can disrupt the flow with everyone. That one client who doesn’t follow your processes and messes up the workflow during tax season. The client who never turns things in on time but then wants results from you immediately when they do. These things affect how you interact and work with your other clients as well. As the firm owner we should do whatever we can to protect good chemistry within our business. As a tax advisor the people we work with become our family. We help them make decisions that impact them and their families. That is why firing clients can be a delicate matter when you are doing the firing.
SIMPLIFIED TAX STRATEGIES &
PRACTICAL IMPLEMENTATION
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.
