Monday, July 16, 2007

Tax Ethics?

On a message board I read, I'm amazed by the number of people who incorrectly quote tax law. They claim to not pay taxes on items which I've paid taxes on in the past.

For example one man claimed to not pay taxes on his moving expenses on the company. When we moved cross country, sold a home to the company, and bought a house on their dime, we had to pay taxes on all expenses paid for by the company. Why? Because it was as though they had given us the money to pay all those expenses. Also we used a CPA and filed out tax return. The man used turbotax and deducted all of his moving expenses paid for by the company. I questioned the ethics of this and he never responded.

Second case, a woman claimed to not pay income taxes on tuition reimbursement from her company. At the IRS website I read and was told by the CPA that $5250 was not taxable but above that the reimbursement was taxable. The woman claimed it wasn't taxable because the tuition was paid by taxed dollars, thus getting the money from the company was also with taxed dollars. She didn't understand that taxed or not, it was reimbursement which would increase her income.

Third case was a person who claimed to have the still gotten the child tax credit for three children, though she claimed to have made $120k last year. Again on the IRS website it states that Married Filing Jointly incomes of over $110k have the credit phased out.

I just don't get where these people their information from? Are they using turbotax? Are they using a CPA? Why aren't they more informed about what is a tax deduction? I feel as though I shouldn't be as honest on my taxes because here we are DINKS paying a lot of taxes, yet not cheating the system at all. But others are making "mistakes".

Are you honest about your taxes? Do you use a CPA or turbotax? I wonder what percentage of people are honest while doing their taxes? Are these people just exceptions and not the norm?

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

You can be assured that the IRS agents are reading the posts also. And they can find out who is doing the posting (bragging).

Anonymous said...

We've always used TurboTax, and paper and pencil before that. This year I used a tax pro (business attorney/tax specialist) and also prepared it myself using TurboTax. Guess what? They came out within a few dollars of each other.

Living Almost Large said...

Nice, glad some people are honest.

Anonymous said...

Hey...the moving expenses thing is real!!! There are a couple stipulations, like you have to have moved 50 miles or so more from where you originally lived and you have to had moved for a career purposes, etc. But both my husband and I have claimed that one, via our accountant and confirmed by online sites (and turbo tax!).

Some tuition issues are definitely tax free via some of the newer revisions since about 2002. Too bad I make too much money for the student loan ones deduction!!!

And again, as long as that woman was single, she can claim a ton when it comes to dealing with her children, despite a large salary, as does my co-worker.

I really think you should not just summarize and judge based off some things you read!! If you dont' know all the info - you can't say it's not allowable!!

Living Almost Large said...

Um, parts of our moving expenses were deductable, but not the home sale. The exact way the man sold his house to the company is how we did it. And we moved cross country so I know it wasn't allowable. The cash given to us for living for 3 months temporary was not taxable.

We had a CPA. Also the tuition reimbursement was from 2 different companies (his old and new ones). They printed off the specific law that above $5250 is taxable income.

So not just info from companies but also from CPA. By the way our neighbors are CPAs and we ran it by them as well and they said the same thing.