Being on the telephone all day, taking calls from persons who have questions about their taxes is an interesting pastime with moments of levity thrown in for good measure. Here in the gist of a recent interaction, “Where is my tax refund?”...
The IRS has 7,000 fewer full-time employees now than it had at the end of 2010, and this fact represents good news and bad news for the 1 percent of taxpayers that get routinely hit with full blown tax audits.
I was perusing the latest edition of Fortune Magazine, checking out the latest Fortune 500 listings, when I stumbled across a terrific article by Scott Cendrowski.
Someone in Congress or the administration must be enamored with these distributions from IRAs. First, they went away at the end of 2009 but were resurrected by the Tax Relief, Unemployment Insurance Reauthorization, and Job Creation Act of 2010. They were...
In the realm of estate planning, there are a myriad of tools available to the planner to facilitate the transfer of property to children and grandchildren, not to mention techniques to reduce the size of a person’s estate, and, thus, mitigate the...
Roth IRAs have gained significant traction since their introduction in 1997 as part of the Taxpayer Relief Act of that year. Their namesake was Sen. William Roth, a five-term senator from Delaware, who was the last Republican senator from that bastion of...
Now that the dreaded April 15th tax filing deadline is behind us, most of us are breathing sighs of relief, but more than a few of us may have missed some tax deductions we could have claimed if we had only known. Others of us will have claimed deductions...
In a recent interview, two investment gurus, Burton Malkiel and Charlie Ellis, shared three investing guidelines for those of us who are building or maintaining their retirement nest eggs.
The decision to retain the services of an investment adviser – someone who could be investing your hard earned retirement assets – is more important than many of us realize. Naturally, you want to like the person, but more importantly you want...
The definition of a family has changed dramatically from the halcyon days of “Ozzie and Harriet” or “Father Knows Best.” By the way, here is a piece of trivia. What was Robert Young’s occupation in that series? Would you...
The Earned Income Tax Credit provides a much-needed financial helping hand for Americans who work hard to make ends meet. Millions of workers may qualify for this credit in 2012 due to changes in their marital, parental or financial status. President Ronald...
The Life Insurance Marketing Research Association is an industry research organization, and its members include virtually every life insurance company of any size, not just in the United States, but around the world. LIMRA gathers information from...
Since the tax increases that Congress recently enacted won’t solve all of the country’s financial woes, it seems very likely that many popular tax deductions that have been around for as long as I can remember may be on the way out. With any tax...
In order to be a successful investor, one must, first, be adept at researching various industries and the companies within those industries; and then selecting those companies that have competitive advantages over the other companies within their industries.
A viatical settlement is a financial transaction in which a terminally ill policy owner sells his life insurance policy to a third party for cash and can then, in turn, use that cash to pay medical expenses. Provided that the person selling the policy is...
