Does anyone else hate taxes?

[firstdown]

Originally Posted by mlmdub130

taxes are the bain of my existance, running your own bussiness is a real bitch when it comes to taxes, last year i had to wire a check to the state of va for $1, one fucking dollar, it had to have cost the state over $500 to process my $1, the government blows my mind sometimes

I have sent checks to Va Unemployment for less then the stamp used to mail them. About twice a year i get a letter tellin me I owe them like $5,000 because they screw up and apply my payroll taxes to the wrong quarter. I then have to spend 1/2 hour on hold for them to say OK we found our mistake and will get it corrected. Then there is a good chance I will receive another bill saying I owe a interest on this mistake. So there goes another 1/2 hour on the phone with them. I will give my CPA credit she explain to us how we could have a board meeting in Mexico. Your allowed one a year and we both are the only two board members so why not and we did talk about business a few times. Her saying is "The IRS might not like it but there is nothing they can do about it". Another words it pushing the rules but its within the rules so ther is nothing they can do about it.

[SmootSmack]

I don't care for the Cowboys, and I think Houston's traffic is awful...but as for the rest of the state...oh, wait, nevermind.

[GMScud]

Originally Posted by firstdown

I have sent checks to Va Unemployment for less then the stamp used to mail them. About twice a year i get a letter tellin me I owe them like $5,000 because they screw up and apply my payroll taxes to the wrong quarter. I then have to spend 1/2 hour on hold for them to say OK we found our mistake and will get it corrected. Then there is a good chance I will receive another bill saying I owe a interest on this mistake. So there goes another 1/2 hour on the phone with them. I will give my CPA credit she did write off our honeymoon as corporate board meeting. Your allowed one a year and we both are the only two board members so why not and we did talk about business a few times. Her saying is "The IRS might not like it but there is nothing they can do about it". Another words it pushing the rules but its within the rules so ther is nothing they can do about it.

Umm, maybe too much info?

[dmek25]

isnt that fraud?

[MTK]

+1 for tossing one's self under the bus

[FRPLG]

donkey idiot.

"The IRS might not like it but there is nothing they can do about it"

Yeah the IRS has no balls at all. They won't nail your ass for that if you get audited. Sure. I'd get a new CPA pronto and amend before you owe 10k for late penalties and interest. That's the exact type thing they look for when they audit.

[firstdown]

Not fraud at all as your allowed one corporate board meeting a year it just happened to be a few days after we got married. Your just required to have so many meetings and ours happened to be on the beach. When your married or date and own your own business together its natural to talk about business. My wife had her own office and we merged them together when we got married. So we did actually talk and work out some details of how we would run the joined office. Is it pushing the rule a little. Yes, but its their rule not mine and it just happened their rule worked to my deduction.

[FRPLG]

Originally Posted by firstdown

Not fraud at all as your allowed one corporate board meeting a year it just happened to be a few days after we got married. Your just required to have so many meetings and ours happened to be on the beach. When your married or date and own your own business together its natural to talk about business. My wife had her own office and we merged them together when we got married. So we did actually talk and work out some details of how we would run the joined office. Is it pushing the rule a little. Yes, but its their ruke not mine and it just happened their rule worked to my deduction.

They argument won't float man. I'm telling you. The IRS doesn't leave a lot of room for interpretation. You tell them some of your "meetings" were on the beach and they will actually laugh at you. Seriously they will. Simply having an off-hand conversation about "business" won't be considered a meeting. They'll want receipts for meeting rooms and so forth. You know, actual proof of a meeting. You have no proof of "beach meetings".

[MTK]

Pushed the rule? C'mon FD just admit it, you scammed it.

[redsk1]

Originally Posted by mlmpetert

It was my junior year at VCU, I had to take a tax accounting class as part of my major. Sec. 183 Hobby Loss Rules. Basically the IRS doesn’t want people to have “businesses” that are in fact hobbies taking the deduction from their other income sources. Example. You make 150k at your sole crushing job. Your spouse runs a “business” like a nursery, farm, craft making, car restoring, painting or something else that takes up time but doesn’t earn money. People used to call these hobbies business so they could deduct the losses against the income their spouse earned. I think in the 70’s the IRS put a stop to this by adding in the Sec 183 Hobby Loss Rules. Basically you can take losses (cost of business) against the income your hobby earns, but you cant take it against the other income earned in your household unless your hobby makes more then it losses in a 3 out of a 5 year period. This is true for all but one exception. If your hobby involves horses (breading, racing, showing, ext). If horses are your hobby you are in luck; you only have to earn a profit for your hobby in 2 out of 7 years for it to be considered a business to take a tax deduction.

I remember my teacher telling me the details around this. I think there was a senator that had family members with horses so he put in this earmark. It was at that point that I lost a lot faith in government and despised our tax system not only because of its complexity but now also because of its “unfairness”. Don’t fool yourself into thinking our code is progressive, its not. Only rich people own horses.

Back when I was 15 and had my first W2 earning job I quickly learned to dislike taxes like most everyone else. Back then it was not just because of the decrease in what you take home but the complexity surrounding them. I think it took me a good 3 or 4 jobs before I could finally fill out my withholding forms (W-4) without help, because of the terminology. I did 1040EZ's until 3 years ago and the first time I remember doing it I thought it was complicated as all hell (the 1040EZ!). Ive always done my taxes the old fashion way, because im somewhat of a masochist and it keeps me fresh on knowing limits and stuff, but this year I have a complex tax situation and I might break and use turbo tax. I haven’t decided yet. I am also a procrastinator.

My other big beef is capital gains. Why should capital gains be taxed? If you told a Founding Father his after tax money (money he already paid taxes on) that he used to invest in someone or something would be taxed again on any gains it earned, he would challenge you to a duel. He really would. Taxes on capital gains is almost as absurd as taxes on interest.

I work with a CPA and his big beef with taxes is the intellectual property America has that’s tied up in tax code. As of 2006 there were 1,274,000 accountants. Most accountants out there, particularly ones with credentials, are pretty smart people. Imagine if they were all doctors, entrepreneurs, teachers or something better then bean counters.

Now that most of us are officially tackling tax season, what do you guys hate about taxes the most?

Good to see a fellow VCU grad.

[Schneed10]

Originally Posted by saden1

I don't mind paying my taxes...even with all my deductions it doesn't take me more than 1 hour to e-file. Seriously, half of my form is auto filled from the previous year. Last year I forgot to report some stocks I sold, IRS send me a letter telling me their is discrepancy and to send them a new Schedule D...I did, and a month later they sent me $100 check back.

I don't understand all the hate, it really is easy.

Well the more dependents you have, the tougher it gets. When I was single it was super simple. When I got married it was still simple. When I bought a house it got a little more complicated because I had to start itemizing deductions. When I had a kid it got a little more complicated, because now you have child tax credits, credits for dependent care expenses, stuff like that. The making work pay credit, while awesome, added another form to the mix this year.

Once you get into owning your own business then you pretty much need either a degree in accounting, 40 hours of free time to spend pouring over the massive instructions, or pay someone to do it. For small business owners the code is a nightmare.

Of course for big businesses it's even worse, they have giant departments devoted solely to tax accounting.

[Monkeydad]

FD - It's fraud like that that makes the decision for the thieves in DC to raise the taxes on us even higher. You're stealing from their stolen pot of money, so they need to steal more from the rest of us when you steal from the money they're stealing from you!

Wow...

[MTK]

Yeah taxes suck, but that's why I've got people.

[Schneed10]

Actually firstdown is right, the IRS can't really do much about it as long as you're telling them that it was a business meeting. Now if they saw this thread and noted that the meeting really was a honeymoon, they will have a problem with it. But if you represent to them that the meeting was about business, the locale's not going to matter, they won't be able to meet the burden of proof to get you on tax fraud.

Not like the IRS would ever link you to your warpath screen name, but I still wouldn't go around advertising that you wrote off a honeymoon on the pretense of a corporate retreat!

[Monkeydad]

Yeah, this IS a public place...people HAVE screwed themselves with online posts.