Remember all the experts reminding us the aggregate housing market had never declined since the Great Depression? That myth was shattered by today’s Case-Shiller 20-City Index showed a huge 14.4% decline in the March 2008 compared with March, 2007 prices. This is average of the...
Increasing Foreclosure Rates Foreclosures were up 57% from March of last year. Approximately 1 in 538 houses in the U.S. are in foreclosure. Nevada has the worst rate with 1 in 139 homes in foreclosure. California has a 1 in 204 foreclosure rate.Nevertheless, since the...
IRS is Increasing Audit RatesThe IRS is greatly increasing the rate of tax audits on higher income taxpayers and businesses. The audit rate started dropping in 1998 because of restructuring at the IRS. It bottomed in 2000, when just 0.5 percent of individual tax returns...
IRS Warns of Scams by Tax Return Preparers!The IRS Reports:"Dishonest tax return preparers can cause many problems for taxpayers who fall victim to their schemes. These scam artists make their money by skimming a portion of their clients’ refunds and charging inflated fees...
New Jersey Government at the BottomThe Pew Center reports that New Jersey has an extremely poorly run government. Except for Rhode Island and New Hampshire, New Jersey government scored among the worst in the US. That is no surprise to taxpayers who have suffered years...
Housing Sales Drop 13%House Sales for 2007 fell 13%, to mark its biggest yearly decline in 25 years. Also, median prices FELL by 1.8% nationwide. That was the first national decline in the 40 years that home sales have been tracked! Many economists say that...
The Courier Post published my commentary about Ron Paul:Saturday, January 5, 2008Re: "Republican Ron Paul offers a different choice and new ideas" (Perspectives, Dec. 28).U.S. Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, is the only candidate running who actually represents the America of our founding fathers. He promotes...
Lottery Winners Lose!The 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta ruled Dec. 19 that Bertucci and the others around the country who sold their winnings to investment companies must pay income taxes on the lump sum they received instead of lower capital gains taxes....
Congress passed a new law increasing nuisance penalties against businessees:Failure to File Partnership Returns Will Be More Costly. The new law extends the period for charging the monthly partnership return failure-to-file-penalty from 5 to 12 months and increases the monthly per-partner penalty from $50 to...
Everything is taxable in California. The California Franchise Tax Board (FTB) takes a very agressive position on when a LLC needs to be registered in California. Their view is if a member of the LLC makes one decision for the LLC, writes or signs one...