Today TaxMama® hears from LiveMusic, with this interesting question. “I have expenses related to “studying the competition” so as to (hopefully) improve my own business profits. How would I categorize that?” Dear LiveMusic, If the expense

Today is the last day of the tax season for filing 2011 returns. TaxMama® would like to give you some last minute tips. Dear Family, Time is up. Are you still sitting there waiting for someone to give you some promised numbers? Forget it. Youâ

Today TaxMama® hears from Kelly in the TaxQuips Forum, who is confused. Let me summarize. “Kelly’s father died, leaving the house to the children. But the value is less than $5 million, so no estate tax return needs to be filed. Why do they need to f

Today TaxMama® hears from Mark in the TaxQuips Forum, who is bewildered. Let me summarize. “Mark received a post-doctoral fellowship that covered his salary to do research. It came with insurance and other employee benefits. The income was reported to

Today TaxMama® hears from Grace in the TaxQuips Forum, with this charming question. “We have a friend that is dying of terminal cancer and is expected to pass away within 6 months. We will use a web-site that easily allows fund gathering. But we need

Today TaxMama® hears from Robert in the TaxQuips Forum, who has this tale of woe. “My car was parked in front of the house and was hit by a hit and run driver. The car had about $10k in damage that my insurance took care of. I had a professional repor

Today TaxMama® hears from various people in the TaxQuips Forum, with a variety of questions about illegal activities or very private information. Dear Family, TaxMama.com is a public website. We set it to require a log-in in order to help us ident

Today TaxMama® hears from Susan in the TaxQuips Forum, with an interesting twist. “I am an analyst with a high-tech firm and I teach one course a year at the University Extension in our area. While the course topic is related to my field, I don’t co

Today TaxMama® hears from Dave in the TaxQuips Forum, with an excellent question (let me summarize). “His friend’s daughter bought a home in 2008 subject to the First Time Homebuyer Credit repayment. During 2011, she was deployed to Iraq for 11 mon

Today TaxMama® hears from Jeanne in the TaxQuips Forum, with a sad question. “My husband passed away in May 2012. Could I file as head of household? And can I claim him for the full year? He had income from SSI which had no taxes taken out.” S