This week we look at two recent Tax Court cases that dealt with contributions to charity and the values of the items donated. In one case, the item donated was a car while in the other case it was a monastery.

In both cases, actual sales of the property in question made the courts seriously question the taxpayer's appraisal--and eventually made the court decide against the taxpayer.

Materials for this podcast are available from this link. Please download those to use while listening to the podcast itself.

This week we discuss the issues surrounding the use of the mail and electronic filing to prove a filing date. The materials can be downloaded from this link and can be referred to while listening to the podcast.

There are a number of myths and misunderstandings among practitioners in this area, so we review the authority in this area. We also talk about the split among the Circuits on whether Section 7502(c) provides the exclusive method to have a presumption of timely filing if the IRS can't find the return, as well as the IRS's idea on how to solve this split. Not surprisingly, it's not by going along with those Circuits where the IRS lost.

Today Anthony Forschino, Legilsative Liaison for the Arizona Department of Revenue spoke at the Arizona Society of CPAs Arizona DOR Liaison Luncheon about legislation passed the last legislative session, and those bills the Department of Revenue plans to ask to be considered in the upcoming session.

Anthony also noted the "old" email addresses no longer work for the Department of Revenue, so you need to update your address book for any contacts you may have to their new azdor.gov address.

This podcast is based on the September 20 presentation I gave for the Arizona Society of CPAs on the changes to Circular 230 that became effective over the summer.

The manual that was distributed at the lunch session is available for download here.

Again, please post your commments on the blogsite here at http://ezollars.libsyn.com.

This week we look at two Tax Court opinions released on the same day that both dealt with whether a transaction represented a loan to the taxpayer or was income. The cases are Teymourian v. Commissioner (TC Memo 2005-232) and Karns Prime and Fancy Food, Ltd. (TC Memo 2005-233).

The results may initially appear to be at odds with most tax professional's expectation based on the fact that in the case where the taxpayer prevailed, the loan in question was with his closely held corporation and poorly documented, while in the case where the IRS prevailed the purported loan was from an unrelated third party and clearly documented as a loan.

I also briefly discuss the IRS's release of new proposed regulations to explain Section 409A that Congress put into the law last October. If your client either participates in a nonqualified plan or sponsors one, you should review these new proposed regulations, which modify the original guidance the IRS provided in Notice 2005-1.

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Comments sparked by an online discussion on Yahoo Groups Taxprofessionals group with Drew Edmundson.

I wanted to clarify that I didn't mean to be completely negative about Microsoft or the responsibilities those of us who are users have to bear for the security issues we face (especially the outbreak of ZOTOB).

I do expect Vista to become the next dominant operating system and I am cautiously optimistic that Microsoft will choose to force users and developers to pay attention to security. But we still have to be aware of the temptations that exist for Microsoft to back off of this or for users to rebel when they think Vista has "broken" their applications.

This is a recording of a presentation made on the morning of September 27 at the Virginia Accounting & Auditing Conference on the Accounting Office of the Future (or at least that's the title) from the Hotel Roanoke in Roanoke, Virginia. This presentation deals with the release of Windows Vista Beta 1 and the potential impact of that on accounting firm practitioners.

The slides from the conference can be downloaded here.

The Hotel Roanoke is known for a somewhat unusual dish served in its restaurant--peanut soup. Think of it as thin peanut butter and you've got it. It's actually quite good, though most people's initial reaction to the idea is that they want to look at something else on the menu.

I'll be doing a similar session at the Virginia Accounting & Auditing Conference held later this year in Virginia Beach, Virginia. If you are in the area, you should check with the Virginia Society of CPAs and can sign up at this link.