Articles

In a historic piece of legislation the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act (“CARES Act”) was put into law to help combat the economic havoc that Coronavirus is doing to the economy. The CARES Act provides $2.2 trillion in economic aid to individuals, and businesses of all sizes. The question for small business owners….

Whether you call it COVID-19 or Coronavirus, there is no deny that this global pandemic has begun impacting all of our lives in ways predictable and unpredictable. One predictable impact is the stress on employees and employers as they try to juggle work and taking care of their own health needs and care of family….

Every New Year brings a bevy of new state laws into effect, and 2020 is no different with over 250 new Illinois laws taking effect. The vast majority of these may have little impact on the daily life of most in Illinois, but there are always a handful that loom larger over Illinois residence. Here….

Many people operate their own businesses. Many of those businesses are sole proprietorships, partnerships or LLC’s. Separately, many businesses are looking to get their workers “off the payroll” by treating them as independent contractors rather than as employees. These factors make it increasingly important to be aware of the Self-Employment Tax (“SE Tax”) rules.  ….

When the neighborhood kids set-up a lemonade stand on the corner, no one expects to see an IRS agent stop by for a drink, let alone on official business. Do the kids have to report the income from sales? Can they take a tax loss if their costs exceed their income? Should there be a….

In the first issue the IICLE “Tax Law Explained” FlashPoints (May, 2009) I showed how the Federal Tax laws are designed to encourage or discourage certain behaviors, not just raise money. Sure, the Federal government needs money, but they would not need thousands of pages of Federal Statute and Regulations to accomplish that goal. There….

My wife, Maurine, and I will be “celebrating” our 25th wedding anniversary next month, in October, 2010. In honor of this milestone, I decided to explore the Federal Income Tax aspects of divorce in this installment of Tax Law Explained. Generally accepted statistics show that, in the United States, roughly 50% of first marriages end….

Information Returns (Part 2 of 2) Common Information Returns were discussed in the October, 2010 edition of Tax Law Explained . This is the second part of that discussion and covers Schedule K-1’s issued by Partnerships, Limited Liability Companies (LLC’s) taxed as Partnerships, S Corporations, Estates and Trusts. For sake of discussion, in this article….

Information Returns The Federal Income Tax system depends upon voluntary compliance. That is, the government depends upon taxpayers to prepare complete and accurate tax returns and then go on to file them and pay the taxes due on a timely basis. However, just because the IRS depends upon compliance does not mean that there are….