Entries by Mike

Short-Term Rental, Special Treatment

With the advent of online sites such as Airbnb, VRBO, and HomeAway, many individuals have taken to renting out their first or second home through these online rental sites, which match property owners with prospective renters. If you are doing that or are planning to do so, there some special tax rules you need to […]

How Does QuickBooks Online Handle Mobile Expenses?

If you purchase several items and services away from the office, QuickBooks Online can help you record them while you’re out and about. QuickBooks Online’s mobile app, available at the Apple App Store and Google Play, can do many of the same tasks that it performs on your office desktop. You can, for example: Check […]

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Increased Business-Vehicle Deductions Due to Tax Reform

TheTax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2018 and other tax reforms have brought about significant changes in the way that vehicle use is deducted for business purposes. Before getting into these changes, it is appropriate to first provide a review of the two methods for deducting the use of a business vehicle. It is important […]

Vacation Home Rentals: How the Income Is Taxed

If you have a second home in a resort area, or if you have been considering acquiring a second home or vacation home, you may have questions about how rental income is taxed for a part-time vacation-home rental. The applicable rental rules include some interesting twists that you should know about before you begin renting. […]

Several Ways to Defer the Tax on Gains

When a sale of a business or investment property results in a gain, the seller is typically taxed on that gain during the year of the sale, even when the gain was generated over many years. However, the tax code provides opportunities to spread this gain over several years, to postpone it by deferring the […]

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Don’t Overlook Tax Credits

Tax credits are a tax benefit that offsets your actual tax liability, as opposed to a tax deduction, which reduces your income. Congress provides tax credits to individual taxpayers for a number of reasons, including as a form of assistance for lower-income taxpayers, to stimulate employment, and to stimulate certain investments, among other things. Tax […]

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Are You an S Corporation Stockholder? Are You Taking Reasonable Compensation in the Form of Wages? Article Highlights:

S corporation compensation requirements are often misunderstood and abused by owner-shareholders. An S corporation is a type of business structure in which the business does not pay income tax at the corporate level and instead distributes (passes through) the income, gains, losses, and deductions to the shareholders for inclusion on their income tax returns. If […]