Speaker 1: Today is April fifteen, traditionally known as tax Day. Wasn't
Speaker 1: really tax day last year, not really tax day this year.
Speaker 1: But you are gonna have to have your taxes done soon.
Speaker 1: And I know lots of people have questions because practically
Speaker 1: everybody has done something different in the last year, if
Speaker 1: not a lot of things different in terms of, you know,
Speaker 1: writing off gas mileage or home offices or whatever. Right,
Speaker 1: plus the changing the administrations, changing Congress, retroactive laws, the
Speaker 1: rest of it confusing times. And for years and years
Speaker 1: we've asked our our task questions to Stephen Moscowitz, who's
Speaker 1: a tax attorney and uh former cp A. Stephen joins
Speaker 1: us now. By the way, before I forget, if you
Speaker 1: ever need to get in touch with Stephen, go to
Speaker 1: moscow It's LLLP dot com. Stephen, how are you, sir?
Speaker 1: I'm great. It's my favorite day of the year, April fifteen. Listen,
Speaker 1: we can hear this everyone, Yeah, we can hear the
Speaker 1: spring and your step that's funny. Everybody else dreads that
Speaker 1: you love it? Yeah, you know, you know I love taxes,
Speaker 1: but more importantly saving taxes. Yeah, here here, and so
Speaker 1: just a quick silly question, why did they put off
Speaker 1: the text headline this year, do you know, because they
Speaker 1: got political pressure and like everything else, they go ahead
Speaker 1: and they give something and say, hey, they've done something
Speaker 1: for you. But you have to watch out because the deadlines,
Speaker 1: you know, May seventeenth is coming up. And also there's
Speaker 1: a difference between paying the estimated payments which are for
Speaker 1: next year, which they want by today, as opposed to
Speaker 1: the taxes when you go ahead and file the return
Speaker 1: or extend the return. But on the other hand, the
Speaker 1: government has given us so much stuff and there's just
Speaker 1: so much. One of the things I want to caution people,
Speaker 1: if you go on the internet to look the stuff up,
Speaker 1: be very very careful because there's been so many recent
Speaker 1: changes that a lot of the websites are given you
Speaker 1: what was good law a while ago. But the things
Speaker 1: just change and change. For example, we had a big
Speaker 1: change on the eleventh of last month when the Congress
Speaker 1: has really given in the way of the store. For example,
Speaker 1: if you own a restaurant, bar, food truck, foodstand, or
Speaker 1: any type of business that serves food and beverage to
Speaker 1: the public, the government is willing to give you your
Speaker 1: pandemic gross revenue losses up to ten million dollars a taxpayer.
Speaker 1: That's a really big deal. Um. I know, over the years,
Speaker 1: I've known lots of people that really tried to push
Speaker 1: the whole home office thing to write stuff off, and
Speaker 1: then you try to include everything in your home office. Right, Well,
Speaker 1: I've got garbage in my home office, so I should
Speaker 1: write off my garbage. You know, I gotta have a
Speaker 1: TV in my office to keep track of the stock market,
Speaker 1: and that's why my TV is paid. But legitimately, a
Speaker 1: lot more people worked at home in the last year.
Speaker 1: Are the rules the same around that or any different?
Speaker 1: Are you have any advice for people who worked at
Speaker 1: home primarily and what they can benefit from that tax wise? Yeah,
Speaker 1: a couple of things. In order to qualify for home
Speaker 1: all this, you have to use a portion of the
Speaker 1: home exclusively for business, which a lot of people are
Speaker 1: doing now. And the bottom line is you want to
Speaker 1: take all your expenses to go along with that. Just
Speaker 1: watch out though there's a dark side to that. The
Speaker 1: dark side is that you're converting a portion of your
Speaker 1: home from your personal property to business property. So when
Speaker 1: you set if and when you sell the home, there's
Speaker 1: a difference in tax treatment on the other hand, if
Speaker 1: you say, oh, you know, I needn't keep my records,
Speaker 1: I don't know. The government also has a standard deduction
Speaker 1: for home office too, so you can check that and
Speaker 1: you can do that. Obviously, you should take the greater
Speaker 1: of the actual or the standard, but you can you
Speaker 1: can take a look at that. I didn't know that.
Speaker 1: So when you sell your house, you have to make
Speaker 1: it clear that that bedroom there that you're going to
Speaker 1: use as a bedroom with my office. Yes, because it
Speaker 1: makes a difference on your taxes. So that's one of
Speaker 1: the things that I tell people when we do the
Speaker 1: return generally to your benefit or to yourm I did
Speaker 1: not know that. Well, that's why you talk to me.
Speaker 1: And it's kind of like a doctor saying, here, I
Speaker 1: have this medicine for you. It does some good things.
Speaker 1: By the way, your ears will drop off if you
Speaker 1: do something, so there's some side effects. Wow. Another great
Speaker 1: thing the government did was they changed the e r
Speaker 1: C Employee Redemption Credit Retention credit. And what happens with
Speaker 1: that is when the p p P first came out,
Speaker 1: the government said, okay, you got to choose between p
Speaker 1: p P and e r C. Most people took p
Speaker 1: P P and they got the loan from the government,
Speaker 1: which you want to have forgiven. Then the I R said, well,
Speaker 1: you know that's free money, so you can't take a
Speaker 1: tax adoption, and the converse said, no, that wasn't the
Speaker 1: intention of Congress. Yes, you can take the tax adoption.
Speaker 1: Then on December last year, the government said, only kidding,
Speaker 1: you can have both as long as you don't double dip.
Speaker 1: But the fact that you have P P P doesn't
Speaker 1: stop you from getting the e r C. And they
Speaker 1: offered a max of five grand per employee a year.
Speaker 1: Then the government came out and they said, you know what,
Speaker 1: they're gonna change this for one and let you have
Speaker 1: the first two quarters. Then they changed it again last
Speaker 1: month on the eleventh and said only kidding again, and
Speaker 1: you can have all four quarters. And by the way,
Speaker 1: they're raising it from the five grand a year to
Speaker 1: seven thousand a quarter. So that means if you have
Speaker 1: an employee, that's twenty eight thousand dollars per employee, So
Speaker 1: so post you had to employees, the government's going to
Speaker 1: give you two hundred and eighty thousand dollars free free,
Speaker 1: and then you can deduct that money that you get
Speaker 1: and when somebody gives you something nice, what do you say? No,
Speaker 1: you say more. What happens is that the government said,
Speaker 1: you know, they had to with menderform three times to
Speaker 1: account for this stuff. And you say, well, okay, now
Speaker 1: what you can do if you can get back payroll
Speaker 1: taxes that you've paid. But you said, well, wait, minut,
Speaker 1: where where's my more? There's a new form Form seventy two.
Speaker 1: And what that lets you do is, rather than asking
Speaker 1: for the money back. So I suppose you've already paid
Speaker 1: the first quarters, Okay, I want to go ahead and
Speaker 1: get that money back. Fine, But if you haven't paid,
Speaker 1: let's say the next quarter. You say, you know what's
Speaker 1: supposed For example, I make up a number. You're entitled
Speaker 1: to a credit of a hundred and and this quarter
Speaker 1: I would have had to write the I R S
Speaker 1: a check for thirty. So say I R S. Instead
Speaker 1: of writing you a check for thirty, I'm going to
Speaker 1: claim thirty of my credit and you write me a
Speaker 1: check for seventy. This is trumendous stuff. The government is
Speaker 1: giving away the farm. Now later on we're going to
Speaker 1: pay for this within these taxes. At President Biden has
Speaker 1: already talked about And that's one of the things you
Speaker 1: have to watch out too. With the state planning. Right now,
Speaker 1: we have each of us has an eleven point five
Speaker 1: eight million dollar exemption, so married couples twenty three million bucks.
Speaker 1: You know most people have less than that, don't the
Speaker 1: way about state taxes. When candidate Biden was campaigning, he
Speaker 1: said he wanted to drop that to three and a
Speaker 1: half or four mil. Now President Biden says, well, we're
Speaker 1: giving away all this money. He wants to drop it
Speaker 1: to one mill. So what that means is that there's
Speaker 1: an awful lot of taxpayers who never had to think
Speaker 1: about the state taxes that now have to think about it.
Speaker 1: So I know this isn't a course and the state planning,
Speaker 1: but I'll just throw out there that there's some things
Speaker 1: you can do now to save what to behalf of
Speaker 1: your state would otherwise go in taxes. Stephen Moscow, it's
Speaker 1: is online. Stephen are longtime tax advisor started jump in
Speaker 1: their crime against humanity taking half of what you've already
Speaker 1: paid for taxes on your whole life. But that's a
Speaker 1: different topic, and they always start with a huge number
Speaker 1: than would it down down down. I want to in
Speaker 1: the time we have though, you're always so good at
Speaker 1: what are people surprised by this year? What did they
Speaker 1: fail to calculate or anticipate? And they get hammered on
Speaker 1: their taxes? Well, you know, unemployment insurance is fully taxable.
Speaker 1: So a lot of people went ahead and they paid
Speaker 1: the taxes on that. Then convers said, well, have changed
Speaker 1: our mind. The first if you otherwise qualify the first
Speaker 1: ten thousand, two hundred is not so the I R
Speaker 1: S is correcting those. Also, you can take a hundred
Speaker 1: grand out of you if you're under and a half,
Speaker 1: you can take a hundred grand out of your retirement
Speaker 1: account without paying the penalties, but you have to pay
Speaker 1: it back within three years. And what you have to
Speaker 1: do is pro rated over three years, so you pay
Speaker 1: tax on one third of it, and then if you
Speaker 1: pay it back within three years, you found amended return
Speaker 1: and you go ahead and you get the money back.
Speaker 1: Another thing is there's an awful lot of how excited
Speaker 1: to get about this stuff? That really is if a
Speaker 1: lot of people have said, hey, I never got my
Speaker 1: stimulus payment, what's up with that? That's so widespread. The
Speaker 1: I R S actually added a line to the ten
Speaker 1: forty line thirty where if you didn't get your stimulus payment,
Speaker 1: you can go to line thirty of your tax return
Speaker 1: and make up for it there. So there's an awful
Speaker 1: out there. I could go on and on and on,
Speaker 1: and we're talking. We're talking with Stephen Moscotz. Yeah, we're
Speaker 1: talking to Stephen Moscowitz, tax attorney who we've talked to
Speaker 1: for years. And so I know because we have talked
Speaker 1: to for years that the pendulum swings back and forth
Speaker 1: on enforcement. Now you want everybody to follow the law.
Speaker 1: I don't care, but is it is it? Is it
Speaker 1: swinging towards they're really cracking down or away from that?
Speaker 1: Right now? They're cracking down a lot of things. For example,
Speaker 1: the I R S just launched a new program called
Speaker 1: Operation Hidden Treasure. That sounds ominous, That sounds like it's
Speaker 1: be an accident venture movie. Right, they're going after crypto people.
Speaker 1: So what's happened is, remember for years we talked about
Speaker 1: how the government's going after people are feign bank accounts.
Speaker 1: They've now changed the emphasis. Now their number one priority
Speaker 1: is hunting down crypto people. And a lot of people
Speaker 1: mistakenly think that, oh, if you do crypto it's hidden.
Speaker 1: The government can't know, So forgive the pun I'm going
Speaker 1: to use. The RS has successfully mind and you know
Speaker 1: what that is if you're in crypto, they have mind
Speaker 1: the information. And now the government is going after people
Speaker 1: both criminally put you in prison and civilly civil fraud
Speaker 1: penalty stacks plus interest for not reporting crypto or reporting
Speaker 1: it improperly. So the bottom line, like so much else
Speaker 1: in tax, now is the time where if you said oops,
Speaker 1: maybe you you inadvertently overlook something, is the time to
Speaker 1: fix it before the government comes knocking on your door
Speaker 1: with a heavy hand. Stephen, Moscow, it's online, Stephen. We
Speaker 1: gotta have you on again before the new deadline. But
Speaker 1: it's great to talk. Thanks for the advice. And if
Speaker 1: you need Stephen services or you just want to get
Speaker 1: in contact Moscow. It's LLLP dot com. Stephen. Always great
Speaker 1: to talk. Thanks, thanks so much. I always loved doing
Speaker 1: your show. You we got to do a podcast with
Speaker 1: him or something, so we have lots and lots of time.
Speaker 1: One of my favorite things he's ever said, and he's
Speaker 1: done it a couple of times. He did it last
Speaker 1: time we had lunch. But he poses this to people
Speaker 1: a lot, and it sticks in my mind. Uh, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna give you a choice. Do you want to have
Speaker 1: two million dollars from this guy? Orould you have to
Speaker 1: have this guy give you four million dollars? And you know,
Speaker 1: if you haven't thought about it a lot, or you're
Speaker 1: younger or whatever, you'd say obviously the four million dollars.
Speaker 1: No, no no, No, I need to know what the tax
Speaker 1: implications are. That's the whole ball game. What what is
Speaker 1: the entity or whatever situation I'm getting the two million
Speaker 1: verses of the formula, because one might be free and clear,
Speaker 1: one might be you know, the tax at six you'd
Speaker 1: end up with less with taking a four million than
Speaker 1: the two million. And that applies to every single dollar
Speaker 1: you get in your life. And you know I didn't
Speaker 1: used to think that way the way way you have
Speaker 1: to now. The tax implications are everything on every bit
Speaker 1: of money you get, which is twisted. I have more
Speaker 1: thoughts on that topic, but you know I'll hold back
Speaker 1: for the moment. Yeah, I mean that's why I You know,
Speaker 1: I used to be a hardcore. If you're a tax cheat,
Speaker 1: you're a bad person. I'm pretty flexible on that. It depends.
Speaker 1: There are tax cheat that I think you are a
Speaker 1: bad person. There tack Texas where I think, yeah, they're rapacious,
Speaker 1: on that they made it too complicated, whatever, Yes, at
Speaker 1: some point the King has so abused as subjects they
Speaker 1: should not be asked to comply with his laws art.
Speaker 1: And yet