Dear Family,
You’ve heard the old Chinese (or is it Jewish) curse – may you live in interesting times!
This week, I am.
One of the things I write about in the very first chapter of Small Business Taxes Made Easy is failing because of success. It’s a warning to business-owners to make provisions in case the business suddenly spikes and sales go through the roof. I also warn about having contingencies in place in case website activities spike and go through the roof.
So I keep monitoring my sites and activities to watch for just that eventuality. Even so, sometimes, you’re just not prepared. That’s what happened to our EA Exam class this week. Due to the overwhelming enthusiasm of the class, we overloaded the server! Our host is in the process of moving it to a bigger, better, faster, brighter, prettier server. It should be ready by Sunday, perhaps sooner.
Depending on your perspective, that’s either a good thing or a bad thing. If you have a sense of humor, it’s a funny thing. Considering chapter 1.
Do you want to know the most terrific thing that I’ve learned during this trying move?
People can be wonderful. Everyone at our host company has been going out of their way to be helpful. Even more so, the students who have been inconvenienced have been (is there a better word than wonderful?) SENSATIONAL! Patience, consideration, and trust. I can’t thank you enough.
Naturally, I have fallen behind on everything else I had planned to do this week, working on this project and working through the arrangements. But, by next week, life will be running smoothly and we’ll have forgotten all about it.
Meanwhile, today’s IRS News alerts us that IRS has revoked the exempt status of 275,000 exempt organizations – that means charities to which you may have made contributions, counting on the deductions. You will want to look at the list to see if you’re affected. If you are, you may not have totally lost those deductions just yet.
IRS has provided guidelines giving them instructions on how to get reinstated. Light a fire under your charity and get them to file the missing paperwork!
And you’ll find information about this summer’s National Tax Practice Institute® courses put on by NAEA. They are held in conjunction with the NAEA National Conference. This is THE best program in the country to train someone to represent taxpayers before the IRS. And for folks looking for a live, in-person EA Exam Review class, you’ll find one of those there, too.
In today’s Money Funnies we learn why Texas ladies feel pretty safe!
A Week of TaxMama’s TaxQuips
We start the week with Tawfiq, who was smart enough to use the tax benefits offered by using a Health Savings Account – but how does he set up the insurance component? Richard’s dad left quite a valuable baseball card collection to Mom. But since Richard is selling it for her, how does he get out of paying her taxes? SB had to kick back some commissions to a homebuyer recently – and didn’t want to get stuck paying taxes on the $4,000 he never got to keep. We end the week with Susan who makes people laugh uproariously with her question about taking care of her son’s class’ pet snake for the summer.
