Debt and Taxes

Working Americans like lower taxes. So do I. Lower taxes benefit all of us, creating jobs and allowing us to make more decisions for ourselves about our lives.

Whether a tax cut reduces a single mother’s payroll taxes by $40 a month or allows a business owner to save thousands in capital gains taxes and hire more employees, that tax cut is a good thing. Lower taxes allow more spending, saving, and investing which helps the economy — that means all of us.

Real conservatives have always supported low taxes and low spending.

But today, too many politicians and lobbyists are spending America into ruin. We are nine trillion dollars in debt as a nation. Our mounting government debt endangers the financial future of our children and grandchildren. If we don’t cut spending now, higher taxes and economic disaster will be in their future — and yours.

In addition, the Federal Reserve, our central bank, fosters runaway debt by increasing the money supply — making each dollar in your pocket worth less. The Fed is a private bank run by unelected officials who are not required to be open or accountable to “we the people.”

Worse, our economy and our very independence as a nation is increasingly in the hands of foreign governments such as China and Saudi Arabia, because their central banks also finance our runaway spending.

We cannot continue to allow private banks, wasteful agencies, lobbyists, corporations on welfare, and governments collecting foreign aid to dictate the size of our ballooning budget. We need a new method to prioritize our spending. It’s called the Constitution of the United States.

Divorce, Taxes, and the IRS

In Divorce, potential tax liability can frequently become the tool for one spouse to use against the other spouse. If improperly used, this tool can destroy all of the marital assets. In the worst case, tax liability can seriously impact the future financial security of either spouse and subject them to criminal sanctions.

Situation 1 - Your Spouse Owns a Business

The most common situation where taxes become an issue in a divorce is they there is a family business. The owner - spouse may have hidden cash receipts or engage in a practice of recording inflated expenses. This common practice by many business owners is a fraudulent attempt to minimize taxes. The other spouse is often aware of and approves of this practice. During the marriage, minimization of taxes results in higher household income and a better lifestyle for the couple.

This practice is illegal or borders on illegal. During the marriage it is a secret between the married couple. But during a divorce each spouse may try to use past tax behavior to gain an advantage. The owner - spouse wants to minimize past income in an effort to lower child support, alimony, or division of marital property. Of course the other spouse wants to prove the opposite.

The result is a game of chicken - with one spouse threatening to turn the other spouse in to the IRS. This is a dangerous game for all involved. Do it yourselfers will find the situation blowing up in their face. People with attorneys may find the attorney reluctant to deal with the situation.

The Potential Problems:

• Your Attorney cannot assist the owner/spouse commit the crime of tax evasion.
• The non-owner spouse may end up liable for half of the back taxes, penalties, and fines.
• The divorce court Judge may decide to turn everyone in.
• In an extreme situation, everyone can go to jail.

Situation 2 - You Make a Surprise Discovery: Your Spouse is a Tax Cheat

Another common situation in divorce: the sudden realization that a spouse is a tax cheat – and you were completely unaware until the divorce.

The Potential Problems:

• You may end up owing the IRS half the overdue taxes.
• You may end up owing the IRS the ENTIRE tax bill.
• The overdue tax bill may be double the actual unpaid taxes, due to penalties, fines, and interest.

The Potential Solution:

The IRS has a provision called Innocent Spouse Relief. This provision gives complete or partial tax forgiveness to an innocent spouse. But be aware - the definition of "innocent" is technical, elusive, and difficult to understand.

Two available forms of tax relief:

• Innocent Spouse Relief - Discharge of Liability
• Separate Tax Liability for Each Spouse

The first form of relief wipes out your tax debt in part or full. You must have not had any knowledge of the incorrect or fraudulently prepared tax returns. That means you cannot look like you were aware of any part of the return. Also, you must not have benefited from the hidden income. That means you cannot be driving a Mercedes and at the same time signing a tax return that show $200/week in income.

The second form of relief is slightly easier to get. If you qualify, the IRS will separate out the tax liability of your income from your spouse's hidden income. This type of relief may have the effect of wiping out extreme tax bills and penalties.

The Bottom Line: Always be aware of these types of tax situations. The financial effect can be far worse than the divorce. If you believe this type of problem is in your future, start preparing immediately. Do not sign a joint tax return for your upcoming tax filing. File married-filing-separately. The moment you suspect a potential tax liability, begin to separate your financial life from your spouse's financial life and then promptly file for divorce.

Child Custody Agreement and Taxes

A child custody agreement can have serious implications on your tax filing and your taxes overall. This issue should be addressed with your attorney or with your accountant while you are going through the process of negotiating or litigating child custody or a divorce agreement. Waiting until after you have finalized a child custody agreement to investigate the tax impact is not adviseable.

State law on child custody does not dictate who gets the tax deductions. If your child custody agreement is entirely silent on this issue, the parent with primary residential or sole custody will have all of the tax benefits available through the children. That party will be able to claim the children as deductions, and so forth. This can be a significant issue. There are parents who simply assume that if they are paying thousands of dollars per year in support, they will be able to take the children as deductions. Not so. This is incredibly important when you consider that all child support payments are not tax deductible to the payor and they are not taxable to the recipient parent.

Thus, when negotiating your child cusody agreement, you must address the issue of how custody will be structured and who will recieve the tax benefits. This negotiation should be a part of an overall financial scheme that encompasses a consideration of all issues, including child custody, child support, property, alimony, and tax impact.

The ability to claim head of household instead of married filing separate or even filing single can be incredibly important to your overall tax scheme. You can claim head of household if you have your children for more than 50% of the time. Thus, a head of household tax filing should be a part of the overall negiating outline in a divorce or separation situation. A child custody agreement that is silent on this issue is really not a well negotiated or written agreement.

Your child custody agreement can address this issue in a number of ways. If your child custody agreement provides for joint shared custody, it must state who has the children for 50% of the time. If you have two children, you can divide that up so that each parent has the possibility of fiing for head of household. If you simply have joint custody and one parent has residential custody, you can still provide a head of household deduction to the other parent by wording the agreement in a way that allows for that filing.

There are other tax benefits available to parents that have to be considered when negotiating a child custody agreement. Many or most of those tax benefits are variable depending upon your income level ad whether or not you can claim the child or children as deductions. If you are really thinking through your child custody agreement, you will negotiate all of these benefits. The objective should be to maximize all available benefits for both parties, thereby providing an overall highly advantageous tax impact for your child custody agreement.

Taxes and Divorce

The truth is, most family law lawyers don't have a firm grasp on the tax consequences of divorce. One reason we went to law school instead of to medical school was because we didn't want to take the extra math classes. Instead, hoping to leverage our talents for writing, negotiating and public speaking we decided to enter into one of the most litigation intensive specialties within the law.

Still, these lawyers can provide effective representation for their clients. The reason is that most opposing attorneys are of the same mindset. This mindset is; "I am a family law attorney and if my client needs tax advice they should seek the advice of a tax professional." This is good advice, but seldom clients actually abide by it.

The tax consequences of a divorce can have a tremendous impact on the actual (as opposed to stated) value each side receives in a property division or support order. This leaves those lawyers with an understanding of tax law in a superior bargaining position. The following article will discuss a couple areas where family law and tax law intersect.

Support Orders

The bargaining chips here are the exemptions and filing status. Exemptions are a tax deduction so they are a benefit for the spouse receiving them. Two ground rules to keep in mind is that a custody split should never be 50/50, (because neither party will get the exemption) and the court can't order parties to take a particular filing status.

The advantages of taking certain tax positions can be analyzed by the DissoMaster software. Once the exact benefits to both sides are calculated, the negotiating begins. Generally, the tax deductions should be negotiated towards allocating them to the higher earning spouse. In that way both spouses collectively pay fewer taxes. Another result is that the higher wage earning spouse has a higher net income which will result in a larger order of support to the receiving spouse. All of this is, of course, is negotiable and can even be conditioned on certain events. For example, an agreement might have a provision that Wife sign the IRS form allocating the exemption to husband by January 15th each year, provided that she receive increased spousal support of a certain amount. These tax aspects can have a major impact on a client's future finances and should be a point of negotiation.

Plastic Power To Pay Taxes

Every last one of us dreads the arrival of the tax man. However, taxes have to be paid whether we like it or not. Taxes are our obligation to the country and there should be no evasion of this expense. Small businesses are especially affected when the tax authorities come calling. First of all, they may not have hands-on accounting staff on their rolls. Second, they may not be in the position to provide adequate cash to meet their burden of taxes. Being a small business in the modern world may make one feel insecure. However, it does not have to make you feel permanently insecure.

These days, large numbers of smaller businesses are choosing to make tax payments through their business credit cards. If you thought that credit cards were only good for clothes and groceries and buying products online, it is time you changed our views. Credit cards are rapidly moving on to becoming the favored mode of payment for everything -- from mortgage and house rent to electricity, necessities, and taxes. Small businesses are especially blessed by this expansion. Even if they do not have enough cash on hand to fill in their taxes, they can depend on their credit cards to pay for that expenses. Later when they recover their cash from their various debtors, the credit card bill can be paid off.

One of the scariest things about defaulting on your taxes is that you might end up having to pay quite a large fine. However, paying by card is a solution to this problem. The business still has to pay the credit card company, but at least it will not get the tag of a tax defaulter. It is true that the tax authorities charge a relatively low interest on defaulting payments. However, the interest amounts accumulate. If you want to avoid paying exorbitant amounts of interest on your credit card bills, make sure you make an attempt to find some really cheap credit cards. In fact, even on my credit card searches, I have on occasion found credit cards that charge no interest for up to fifteen months. If that is not a steal, what is?

The power of plastic has been rising greatly in the past few years. Of late, even governments have realized that it has an important role to play. Credit cards are clearly on their way to becoming the currency of the future. Let us all ready ourselves for this. Maybe it is time for us to recognize the power of a credit card, and start using them more frequently than we already do.

Death & Taxes

Have you ever owned a stock, or piece of real estate that you wanted to sell? You felt the time was right to take your profit and run. Did you then not follow through with the sale because “the taxes would kill you?” This is what I call “making a decision based on taxes.” It is not “Good Horse Sense.” What is horse sense? This is where the horse knows that a certain spot is dangerous and it will not step there. The rider, not seeing the danger, sometimes pushes the horse to move forward, but the horse refuses. People quite often will not trust their “sense.” Women are known for their “instincts” about people. Men are not always as “sensitive” of their instincts as women are. Lets get back to business instincts.

In the stock market the smart money always says, “Bulls make money. Bears make money. Pigs lose money.” What does this mean? It means, “Never be afraid to take a profit.” If it is time to sell, sell! Take your profit and wait until the time is right to get back in. Taxes sometimes make this very difficult. If you sell, the taxes may eat up 30-50% of the profit.

Then again, if you do not sell, when you think the timing is right, you may lose 100% of the profit and some of the principal. It is always smarter to make your business decision first. It is also very important to not consider the tax consequences while making this sound business decision. After you have decided what you want to do based on sound business strategies, then you see your tax accountant and figure out how to do the deal, so as to pay the lowest possible taxes. Do not do it the other way around. Which means, selling when you have a tax loss or a real loss because there would be no taxes to pay.

Many an investor, because of the fear of taxes, held an investment all the way up and then all the way down. The economy runs in 7 to 10 year cycles of boom and bust. Sell in the booms and buy in the busts. If you do not sell at the top, there is no money to buy at the bottom. If your accountant is worth his fee, he will figure out how to shelter the sale. Do call him before making the sale, so he can tell you how to structure the deal. If he can’t help you, get a new accountant. An accountant’s job is not to do your tax return. It is to advise you how to pay the least taxes using all of the legal tax avoidance techniques, allowed by the IRS.

I have a friend who owned millions of shares of Microsoft. He was worth millions of dollars. Microsoft was the only thing he owned. He was an employee of the company and received stock options. He came to me worried about the company and asked me what to do. I suggested that he sell some of the stock and buy real estate. He was afraid to change horses and paying income taxes worried him. He decided to stick with Microsoft. Two months later Microsoft lost a court case and the stock price crashed. He now tells me “After it goes back up I might diversify.” How much do you want to bet on him doing anything? “After the horse is out of the barn, it is too late to close the gate.”

I met a man who owned an apartment building in the worst part of San Bernardino. In 1991 he was offered $600,000 for his building, but he refused it because of his concerns for capital gains taxes that he would have to pay. Over the next 8 years, the San Bernardino economy went down hill along with the real estate prices. His building became so vandalized that it was eventually boarded up. He sold the building to one person who thought he could repair the building. He couldn’t and our man foreclosed and took the building back. Again he sold the building, for $280,000 this time.

This second buyer also couldn’t make it work and today the second buyer stopped making the payments. He is also going to give the building back. Our man has had lower cash offers but he keeps trying to get as close as he can to that old $600,000 price. Therefore he keeps selling and financing that property so as to get a better price. He hasn’t learned that sometimes it is better to take the money and run.

Never bet the farm on a sure thing. The only sure thing is death and taxes. Also remember that the bank is not going to be nice if you get in trouble. Always have enough cash reserves, and keep your expenses down so you can always have money for food, insurance, gas, etc, and the low house payment. Accountants may give good tax advice but it may not be good business advice. So, NEVER MAKE A BUSINESS DECISION BASED ON TAXES.

Debt Settlement And Income Taxes

A very large number of people find themselves owing thousands of dollars to credit card companies and as a result, searching for viable options to successfully eliminate their debt in order to avoid a bankruptcy filing. Debt settlement has become a very popular alternative to bankruptcy amongst scores of individuals – especially since the bankruptcy laws changed back in October 2005. As you may know, debt settlement is a process which enables debtors (consumers) to negotiate a reduced pay-off balance (normally 50% or less) with their creditors. When the agreed-upon settlement amount is paid, the remaining balance is forgiven, and no further debt is owed.

When creditors agree to settle an account for less than what is actually owed, they are required by the IRS to report any forgiven debt over the amount of $600 on Form 1099. The potential of facing a tax liability resulting from debt settlement can be unnerving to a good many people, including consumers, as well as some debt counselors. On the other hand, an equal amount of people have difficulty understanding this train of thought, and feel that the possible tax consequences of debt settlement shouldn’t play a major role in whether or not one should choose debt settlement to free themselves from debt.

If you should owe taxes on the amount of your forgiven debt, it’s simply due to the fact that you saved a significant sum of money. Because of this it seems that it would be common sense to realize that the total amount of money you paid to your creditor, in addition to the income tax liability, would still be a great deal less than what you would end up paying if you were to continue making the minimum monthly payments on your accounts each month. As a matter of fact, it’s more than likely that the interest you would end up paying to a creditor over a period of years would easily exceed the taxes for which you may be liable, as a result of settling your debt.

There’s also a strong likelihood that you may not be required to pay taxes on your forgiven debt if you’re able to prove that you were “insolvent” at the time you settled your debts. In order to be classified as insolvent it is required that have a negative net worth, meaning your liabilities must exceed your assets.

Now, if this is not the case, and you don’t qualify for an insolvent classification, obviously you may owe at least something to the IRS. If you believe this to be so, it’s important to talk with a tax professional prior to the April 15 tax deadline so that you may obtain proper advice pertaining to your particular situation. If you simply don’t know where you stand regarding the insolvency rule, it’s a good idea to carefully review IRS Publication 908 for additional information.

In the end, it’s your bottom line that should matter most. If you’re buried in debt and considering debt settlement to eliminate your financial struggles, the possibility of a tax liability shouldn’t be a deterrent. You see, if your ultimate goal is to be debt-free, it’s crucial to do your homework so you can better understand that the positive end result of settling your debt may easily outweigh any taxes for which you may be liable.