As has become usual practice, Congress passed some meaningful tax legislation as it recessed for the holidays. In one of the new meaningful laws, enacted on December 20, you will find the Setting Every Community Up for Retirement Enhancement Act of 2019 (SECURE Act). The SECURE Act made many changes to how you save money for your retirement, how you use your money in retirement, and how you can better use your Section 529 plans. Whether you are age 35 or age 75, these changes affect...

Happy New Year, Welcome to 2020!  Like many of us, I’m sure you’ve made a whole host of resolutions for the New Year.  I did, too.  Today, though, I wanted to reach out to ask you – were those resolutions specific enough?  Did you fall back on the old “lose weight, be a better friend/spouse/parent, make more money…” routine or did you get crystal clear on what you were going to accomplish? “I’m going to fit into a size 6.” “We’re going to buy a house.” “I’m...

Good Morning and Happy New Year! Now that the collective holidays are past us and we’re plunging into 2020, I wanted to reach out to not only welcome you to the next decade, but I also wanted to try to get a sample of what entrepreneurs like you were thinking. Are you optimistic about the coming year?  Worried?  What plans are you making so far as investment and growth in your business?  Of course, all of these are being asked and reflected on in business periodicals...

Congress let many tax provisions expire on December 31, 2017, making them dead for your already- filed 2018 tax returns. In what has become much too common practice, Congress resurrected the dead provisions retroactively to January 1, 2018. That’s good news. The bad news is that we have to amend your tax returns to make this work for you. And you can relax when filing your 2019 and 2020 tax returns because lawmakers extended the “extender” tax laws for both years. Thus, no worries until...

Know this: the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) permanently eliminated federal income tax deductions for alimony payments required by divorce agreements executed after 2018. On the other side of the coin, recipients of such non-deductible alimony payments do not have to include the alimony in gross income. So, under current law, alimony payments are no longer deductible for payers and alimony payments are no longer taxable income for recipients. This development is an expensive game-changer...

Before you start getting bombarded by New Year’s Resolutions (that’ll be next week for us 😊), I wanted to reach out and ask you to add one to the list. I want you to not worry about weight, or looks, or even money.  I want you to make the effort, this year, to be better.  Maybe you’ve noticed, in our social-media-driven world, how we’ve forgotten how to have a rational discourse with the “other” side?  If you’re liberal, you might simply mock the conservative and vice...

First things first, this isn’t one of those sappy “New Year’s Resolutions” emails.  I’m saving THAT gold for new month.  What this is, though, is a quick email about your own goals.  I’d like you to take some time this week to think about them: ·         What went right in 2019? ·         What didn’t go so well? ·         What would you change? ·        ...

The IRS recently issued new cryptocurrency guidance and is hot on your trail if you bought and sold cryptocurrency and didn’t report it on your tax return. Here are the tax basics. You’ll treat cryptocurrency as property for tax purposes: If you receive bitcoin in exchange for your services, then your income is the fair market value of the bitcoin received. Your basis in the bitcoin received is its fair market value at the time of receipt plus any transaction fees incurred.If you receive...

Good Morning,  We’re getting SUPER close to the end of the year and, just like every year, we’re getting tons of calls about what accounts can be contributed to after December 31st and which ones will remain open for contributions until April 15th. Here’s the rule of thumb – If you have a 401(k), ALL contributions end at midnight, December 31st.  An IRA – Roth or traditional – can be contributed to up until April 15th.  So how much can you actually tuck away each year?  If...

As with all financial transactions, divorce comes with tax consequences. And those consequences have changed for tax years 2018 and later thanks to the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA). General Rule The general tax rule in a divorce is that you can divide up most assets, including cash, between you and your soon-to-be ex-spouse without any federal income or gift tax consequences. When an asset falls under the tax-free transfer rule, the ex-spouse who receives the asset takes over its existing...