Small Business
The Master Archive!
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Whenever I attend a conference I look for things the crowds miss. The mainstream information is still absorbed, but there always seems to be something most people pass that contains a lot of potential.
Last year at FinCon such an opportunity screamed to me. Several companies were offering 5% on savings with few strings attached. One was geared toward military people, but had some fees and restrictions I felt uncomfortable with.
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You might notice the bloggers spouting the same gibberish get picked up by mass media outlets while your favorite blog (that had better be this one!) gets nary a mention. The reason for this is people prefer the familiar to an honest answer that could make a real difference.
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The tax profession is aging. Attracting new people to the profession is difficult because it lacks the glamour of other professions. But sit in any public forum and mention you are a tax professional and you will be inundated with tax questions and offers to take them on as new clients. The tax profession is a good field with ample opportunity to do good, but few even consider accounting or tax as a career option.
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Regardless how experienced or educated you are you will still make financial mistakes, some of them humdingers. Personal finance blogs and media outlets frequently share basis financial mistakes to avoid: spend less than you earn, invest in index funds, avoid debt and so forth. All this is good advice, but it goes a lot deeper than this.
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Healthcare is taking center stage once again as the political arena heats up. This will not be a political treatise. Instead, we will focus on the long-term problems in the U.S. healthcare system and potential solution to be found in the tax code.Medicare for all is something that appeals to me. When the politics are stripped there is a lot to like in the idea of expanding Medicare to everyone. Currently about half the people get some form of Medicare benefit. The old, very young and poor qualify for the Medicare program. Unfortunately, the Medicare system is set up backwards. The people who pay for it are not the people receiving benefits and the people receiving benefits don’t pay for it (with the exception of people age 65 and older).Even the elderly who pay a Medicare premium for some parts of the program are still subsidized by those earning a wage or salary, the very people who don’t qualify for benefits. The inefficiency of the U.S medical system has created the most expensive healthcare system in the world by far with sub-par results. For most illnesses it is better to travel for treatment if you want better odds at living.
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Frequently we look for political solutions to income inequality and the wealth gap. While the issues can be improved slightly from political action, there are two additional ways to close the wealth gap and level income.
Politics is the messiest way to fix these problems and history offers ample warning for those who seek answers from this source. One need not look further than Mao’s China or Stalin’s Russia to see how abysmal political leveling can be. North Korea is a modern example of how not to level the playing field.
Let’s turn our attention to the second way income inequality can be reduced. Walter Scheidel in his book The Great Leveler provides what he calls the “Four Horsemen” of leveling: war, revolution, collapse and plague. Historically these four horsemen have been the leading cause of leveling income and wealth.
Once again this is not a comforting thought. You can read Scheidel’s work for an in-depth review of his research. The record is clear, however; it takes great dislocation, pain, suffering and death for income and wealth to level naturally.
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The IRS released final regulations on 199A. The Kiplinger Tax Letter said it best: “Final regulations provide limited guidance, but IRS gives a safe harbor.”
In this post we will discuss the safe harbor as it relates to “trade or business” with special emphasis on application with rental properties. The safe harbor doesn’t apply to all taxpayers and the trade or business designation is still possible without meeting the safe harbor parameters.
The final regulations run 248 pages. I will follow this post with a detailed post on 199A tiers with several decision trees. Due to the length and complexity of the regulations we are forced to remain focused on one aspect of 199A. Taxpayers with a sole proprietorship, partnership, S corporation or investment property may wish to seek the services of a competent tax professional until more clarification is reached through more regulations or from the Tax Court.
Links are provided at the end of this post to the entire 248 pages of regulations released and Notice 2019-07 (only 10 pages!) dealing with the trade or business safe harbor for real estate issues for your further research.
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Blogging is a business. Sometimes it’s hard to believe, but it is true. Along with podcasting, speaking and every other form of training and education, blogging is a business. Sometimes a really big business. And businesses take work to manage and grow.
It is easy to forget that those friendly bloggers you communicate with work some serious hours to bring you information and perhaps a laugh or two. Most people don’t realize bloggers are sweating it out at the keyboard in the wee hours of the morning to get a post out on schedule.
And then there is the invisible work. It seems like blogging is about the cheapest hobby going until you realize that every part of the platform demands a fee and usually loads of time. And that is where this blogger enters.
I originally planned a detailed post of the coming collapse of China when the IRS released another 249 pages of regulations on Section 199A. The ink wasn’t dry before the calls flooded in for a brief post on the IRS release. The good news is we finally have a definition for a trade or business as it applies to 199A. The bad news is those 249 pages contained a lot of material and one simple post wasn’t going to cut it. A series was in process before the next hammer fell.
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