With Tax Season Upon Us, Only Take Deductions That Can Be Substantiated

With the filing deadline for individuals to file their income tax returns approaching and people becoming more acutely aware of how much in taxes they will pay for the last year, now, perhaps more than other times of the year, I receive comments from people about “starting an LLC to reduce taxes,” or “having expenses…
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Alternative Dispute Resolution in Estates and Trusts in Mississippi

Litigation involving estates and trusts, while sometimes impossible to avoid, is usually exhausting to all parties involved, especially given that such litigation is often among family members and/or is following the death of a loved one. Alternative dispute resolution (“ADR”) is an alternative to traditional litigation, encompassing various methodologies, including mediation and arbitration, aimed at…
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Another Untimely Filing Leads to Dismissal of Taxpayers’ Case

As I have written about previously[1], if a Tax Court petition is not timely filed, the Tax Court will generally[2] lack jurisdiction to hear such petition.[3] In the cases mentioned in my previous article, taxpayers’ petitions were dismissed for lack of jurisdiction despite the taxpayers having good excuses, such as (1) the taxpayers mailed their…
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Practice Help: Making Late QSST and ESBT Elections

Small business corporations, aka S corporations[1], have been much more common than their C corporation counterparts since 1997.[2] S corporations are taxed much differently than their C corporations, with the defining characteristic being that S corporations are flow-through entities, as they are not taxed at the entity level and avoid the widely known “double taxation”…
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Taxpayer Loses Theft Loss Deduction Case

In a recent Tax Court opinion[1], the taxpayer Michael Shaut (“Mr. Shaut”), representing himself, contested the IRS’s determination of a tax deficiency. The court had to decide on several key issues, including whether Mr. Shaut was entitled to deductions for theft loss, legal fees, and net operating losses, as well as whether he was liable…
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Provisions to Consider When Using an LLC for Asset Protection

Holding property in a limited liability company, or LLC, can provide a certain level of asset protection to individuals as opposed to holding such property in their individual capacity. However, that is not to say that a good asset protection plan is as simple as transferring property to a formed LLC and calling it a…
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Will Contests in Mississippi

As previously written upon by my colleague[1], probate is the process of proving a decedent’s Will to be his or her true Last Will and Testament. But, what happens when a decedent executed a Will when he or she lacked mental capacity? Or while under pressure from a certain beneficiary? Or the Will was not…
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The Often-Overlooked Benefits of Qualified Small Business Stock

If you started a business organized as a C corporation, you may be able to avoid some, and possibly all, tax liability when you sell the stock of the C corporation. As previously written upon by Gray Edmondson,[1] Section 1202 of the Internal Revenue Code (“Code”) provides for the exclusion of gain on Qualified Small…
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Yet Another Proposed Listed Transaction – CRATs and Annuities

On March 25, 2024, the IRS issued Prop. Reg. Section 1.6011-15[1], which designates certain transactions involving charitable remainder annuity trusts (“CRATs”) in tandem with single premium immediate annuity (“SPIA”) products as listed transactions[2]. Last year, I wrote an article in which the Tax Court decided against a taxpayer couple who undertook this exact transaction.[3] Now,…
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The 2024 Dirty Dozen – The IRS’s Annual Warning

Every year, the Internal Revenue Service (“IRS”) releases its “Dirty Dozen.” The Dirty Dozen, as written previously about by my colleague, Devin Mills,[1] is a list of twelve prevalent scams the IRS bodes taxpayers to be weary of during tax season, as they “put taxpayers, businesses, and the tax professional community at risk of losing…
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