Worker, Homeownership, and Business Assistance Act of 2009

The CCH summary of the new tax bill signed by the President today is now available.
For small businesses (with gross receipts <15 million), the most important news is that the 5 year NOL carryback is now extended to 2009.  For those businesses over $15 million, the 5 year NOL carryback is available for 2008 OR [...]

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Oregon Income Tax Increases – Sales Tax in Disguise?

Recent articles in The Oregonian laid accolades on the Oregon legislature for all they have done for us during this last session–really important things like banning puppy mills, making it illegal to “top off gas tanks when filling,” requiring calorie counts on chain restaurant menus, and raising the cost of higher education, which, by the way, has increased tenfold in [...]

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Oregon 2009 Individual Income Tax Increases

In our previous post, we discussed the Oregon business tax increases resulting from House Bill 3405, which passed the Oregon Senate last Thursday.  Coupled with HB3405 is the sister bill regarding individual tax increases – House Bill 2649.  This bill is also headed for Governor Kulongoski, who has already made a statement of support for [...]

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Oregon Business Tax Increase Update

As many of you may already know, there was a bit of drama last Wednesday in the Oregon Senate when House Bill 3405, which increases taxes on corporations and businesses in Oregon, was derailed by just one vote.  However, Thursday the vote changed and bill passed the Senate,  and now it is on its way [...]

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Making Work Pay Credit & New Withholding Tables

If you are a small employer that calculates your payroll manually – please be advised that new withholding tables have been released and any payroll on or after today, April 1st, 2009, have to be calculated using the new tables.
Withholding Tables
IRS IR-2009-13 – Information on the change
For those of you who use QuickBooks, be sure [...]

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American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, Part 2

As promised, below are some highlights of the individual tax changes from the Recovery and Reinvestment Act.  If you want to read the CCH Summary, here is the pdf:
CCH Summary
1) First-Time Homebuyer Credit – the new law increases the existing credit to a maximum of $8,000, but best of all it no longer needs to [...]

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American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, Part 1

Obama signed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 into law on February 17th, 2009 and gave us a ton of tax law changes right in the middle of tax season.  As you can imagine, there is nothing we as CPAs like better than learning new tax laws as we are working 60 hour [...]

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S-Corporation Failure to File Penalty

Back in December of 2007, the 110th Congress passed HR4351 or the “AMT Relief Act of 2007″, which was the aftermath of the showdown regarding alternative minimum tax that I posted about at the time.  The bill had a lot of small print regarding new revenue raisers – one in particular: Sec 223 regarding failure [...]

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New Bicycle Commuter Fringe Benefit

I was scanning the ever-popular Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 (aka The Bail Out Bill) and going through all the tax provisions they buried in with it, and I stumbled upon a small new fringe benefit that I figured would be interesting for Portlanders.
The Act allows employers to provide employees who commute to work [...]

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Housing Assistance Tax Act of 2008 – Part 2

Well, here is the bad news I promised on the Housing Assistance Tax Act of 2008 and that is the closing of a “loophole” that was a great piece of tax planning for clients with rental properties.  I fail to see the “assistance” in this tax act…
Under current law, you can take a property that [...]

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