Entries Tagged 'California' ↓

I’m adding a new category of posts to the site. This category will contain brief descriptions of recent interesting projects we’ve worked on. Interesting to all of us, at least. And usually interesting to our clients–by definition when we’re solving problems we’re minimizing the tax man’s bite.

The IRS has new rules in effect (”Circular 230″) Government regulations inexorably introduce bureacracy and risk-avoidance into business. A business will over time change from an entrepeneurial activity creating value for its customers into a risk-avoidance paper factory. We’re seeing a little of this happen right now in the tax realm.

After the jump you’ll find a copy of a letter that will be going out to all of our clients in the next few days. Continue reading →

In the past I have been pummelled by comment spam and trackback spam. This comes mostly from purveyors of online card games that begin with the letter “P” and end with “oker.” Some, however, crudely offered various prescription pharmaceuticals by mail.

Those weeds were not welcome in my garden, and required vigorous work to remove the hourly crop of spam. So I turned off comments (your way to talk back–see the little link at the bottom of every post) and trackbacks (see the little link below that says “Permalink” and that’s what you use).

Now comes Spam Karma, a surprisingly intelligent piece of software that intercepts and throttles the offending spam, tossing it aside in the digital compost heap without any intervention on my part. Stunningly easy to install and configure. Amazingly effective.

Thank you, Dr. Dave.

And you, dear reader–comment away. :-)

OK. The website’s moved to a new server. I’ve converted it from Movable Type to Wordpress. The layout is spiffy but not the end result desired. That will change. For the moment, we’re live.

The State of California needs money. Lots of it. This means our friendly friends at the Franchise Tax Board and Board of Equalization are going to be even more hard-nosed than usual in their collection efforts.

As a jump-start to this New Era in Friendly Government, we have a tax amnesty (that’s a link to the Franchise Tax Board’s website with information on the amnesty). In a nutshell, it wipes out penalties, but leaves the tax and interest for you to pay. Better yet, if you were at risk of criminal tax evasion charges, you won’t be anymore.

Continue reading →

As of October 10, 2004, I have been appointed to the 15-member Executive Committee of the Tax Section of the State Bar of California.

The Tax Section is California’s only statewide specialty bar association for tax lawyers. It has over 3,000 members.

Unfortunately, as of today the Tax Section’s website hasn’t been updated yet to show the new members (me included).

This is a 3 year commitment. I’m looking forward to it.