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Un-lurking for the jury discussion to add my anecdote to the pile; got called twice thus far. First pool was mainly for a suit that got settlement right as I entered the building, so unsurprisingly I and most of the other people never even made it into a courtroom to be chosen. Second time was last year, did actually get dragged into the courtroom and they even had me seated in the jury box before I was dismissed (never actually HEARD any discussion between the judge and lawyers, just got called up to the box and a few minutes later was told I was dismissed; I presumed they were doing it electronically maybe and I couldn't see?). Really glad considering that case was for somebody accused of raping their 6 year old daughter, I was pretty much in "let this cup pass me God" mode when I hit the jury box  . Kind of depressing how many people had to immediately beg off for what wasn't said but I suspect was being all too familiar with that kind of crime... Not sure what got me removed really; I didn't say anything apart from what was on my form.
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Feb 1, 2020 08:08
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blarzgh posted:As far as I'm aware, the primary distinction between a tax preparer and tax attorney is that the latter is able to represent people in tax court Speaking as a tax preparer who lurks this thread, a very important distinction is I do not have any attorney-client privilege to hold up with regard to discussions with me. I'm not expected to go running to the IRS telling them you asked me about doing X bad thing (though I'm obviously ethically required to tell you X thing is illegal and the consequences for doing it, and if I help you do X I'm on the hook as well) and I am legally required not to hand out your tax info to most people on pain of criminal consequences, but if I get a subpoena I have to answer questions. Enrolled Agents and CPAs can both represent you before IRS audits as well as tax attorneys, but in general most tax preparers in my experience are more about preparing returns and answering general questions than audit work. I do some since I work offseason usually, but as a non-EA my powers are limited and even the EAs in my office don't tend to have lots of audits beyond mail ones. I will say you have to basically be doing fraudulent activity to get criminal issues with the IRS, they can do a lot of nasty civil actions if you owe money, but they can't generally throw you in a jail cell for anything that's a reasonable mistake. Just don't ever lie to them, it doesn't end well no matter what the original problem was. I would say my usual defining line for telling someone to go to a tax attorney is when you have criminal fraud issues or if your tax problem is less questions of fact and more actual legal arguments, but it's kind of hard to tell outside a potential criminal accusation (where I immediately say "see an attorney, do not pass Go, it's probably going to be a lot more than $200"). Also be aware if it's a state tax agency or IRS issue, the rules obviously can vary there.
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May 25, 2020 02:19
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Thomamelas posted:Even if you do make it illegally, the IRS has a form for reporting that income. Though for the record you can't generally claim expenses against the income like regular business income does. Not as theoretical a question as you might think either since the IRS treats marijuana growing/selling the same way even where it's legal because it's not federally legal, though for selling if memory serves you can deduct the base purchase price of the actual MJ product you're selling. (On a side note, the continuing ed class I took on the subject was titled "Blazing a Trail With Clients in the Legal Marijuana Industry" and several other similar puns/references in the examples and such; I love it when even the people who write all the bone dry tax stuff I have to learn can't resist being a little silly about their subject  ).
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Aug 27, 2020 03:15
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VanSandman posted:Is there a way to properly threaten violence? If we're talking "legally" as opposed to "more effectively", be a cop seems to be the answer there.
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Sep 16, 2020 22:37
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pseudanonymous posted:I'd be pretty loving shocked if a hospital didn't have a way to give someone a bonus in their payroll systems. Healthcare accounting systems have to be fairly robust. What they did looks fairly sketchy. A gift card is basically always a taxable benefit unless it's something like "you get a $10 gift card if you work more than 10 hours in a day so you can buy lunch", that doesn't mean it's wages. Truthfully it's more like a bonus, which is taxed at a different rate than your marginal tax rate. Bonuses are taxed just like regular income, there’s just a general rule of withholding at a higher rate on them in case the bonus kicks the employee into a higher bracket for the bonus income. And non-cash payments are considered as taxable income of their FMV at time of transfer, so people can’t sneak around taxes by paying in barter basically. So the gift card would be counted on a W-2 as income usually, nothing stands out here as wrong here.
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Feb 19, 2021 23:09
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pseudanonymous posted:Factually incorrect. A bonus is taxed as supplemental income at 22% fit. Tell you what, if you don’t believe me and the rest of the folks here, feel free to ask in the US tax thread where I and several other people who do taxes for a living are  . As mentioned, secondary income is generally withheld at a higher than standard rate under the rules to ensure enough is withheld, but it’s taxed at the regular ordinary income rate in the actual return. Withholding in general does not always match the tax needed (much to the annoyance of myself and my clients occasionally).
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Feb 20, 2021 23:28
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pseudanonymous posted:What I meant by fit was federal it withholding. I did use the wrong terminology. But that’s how i think of it when I’m reviewing payroll. Ah, that does make sense if you’re used to thinking in payroll terms, you certainly are required to withhold at that higher rate by law.
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Feb 21, 2021 15:37
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Bad Munki posted:It’ll reproduce in conjunction with any host, a la Alien. I mean it would, if it existed. Because this is a hypothetical. Haha. Is there a "if it breaks you, you bought it" legal clause out there that might apply? Nonexistence posted:We do whichever is cheaper, which normally shakes out to doing it in house for rote filings over one or a few years and farming out more complex stuff or if nothing/crap was filed by the trustee/executor for years before they approach us, or if we're in/anticipating litigation and want to use them as an expert. Speaking from the other end, most of the ones I've seen are "Here, take care of this yourself Mr. Executor, here's the info a tax preparer would need" (the second part of that statement varying in accuracy of course). MadDogMike fucked around with this message at 21:49 on Feb 21, 2021 |
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Feb 21, 2021 21:47
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Outrail posted:Who would win in a lawyer fight: Dog Law or Tree Law? Dog Law (quite literally) pisses on Tree Law!
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Feb 25, 2021 05:45
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VanSandman posted:Here's a fun horse law: Thoroughbred racehorses cannot be conceived through artificial insemination and also compete as racehorses. So there are people who's job it is to watch horses gently caress, because otherwise the foals don't sell for as much. Wonder if the stallions lobbied for that law (or maybe Mike Pence).
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Feb 26, 2021 16:27
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Nice piece of fish posted:Don't listen to this idiot, OP murdered the entwives! Hmm, would Ent murder be the fullest evolution of the mighty Tree Law? God only knows the price on chopping down a tree that gained sentience in the dawning of the First Age of Arda; probably the real reason Saruman lost Isengard and wound up fleeing in abject poverty. Zero VGS posted:Speaking of, I want to settle an argument. If I got a laser so powerful that I could project an image of a giant dong onto the moon, can anyone take legal action? Pretty sure at that level of laser power law enforcement generally involves manly heroes in costumes breaking in to stop your mad schemes.
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Jun 29, 2021 21:18
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Then the system randomly crushes their dreams for no reason or for a bad reason and they look around them and they see that the system is very clearly rigged, but they don't have the education or intellect to figure out how it's rigged -- and anyway "being rich already" isn't an answer that can help them -- so they latch onto alternate explanations that feel believable and help them believe, ok, the system isn't fair, but at least if you say the right set of magic words it can be unfair in your favor for once. Put simply, “magic words” is literally what they’re doing, they see the practice of law as some kind of spell craft and they think if they follow these rituals they learned online from some wise sounding law magician, they too will have Power. In another era they’d be laying curses on their neighbors or trying divinations to figure out the weather - hell, wonder how many of them follow things like astrology as is. I kind of suspect for a lot of people any legal activity is just wizardry; God knows a lot of my tax prep clients I’m certain almost literally think I’m a sorcerer who can command the IRS demons to obey and turn paperwork to gold. While I can’t really mock the logic in regards to the IRS, nobody seems to recognize the demons are the ones calling the dance here, I just chant along to them  .
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Jul 3, 2021 21:21
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Organza Quiz posted:Law is absolutely magic and lawyers are witches. It's a set of totally unnatural rules which overlay the physical world and affect peoples' lives when they mess with them, sometimes unintentionally. People come to us to tell them the future, write words to bind their enemies, give them slips of paper to ensure their ventures are successful, foresee and avoid disasters for them, and sometimes yes to say the magic words to get them what they want. Hmm, so maybe the sovcit problem in this metaphor is more people thinking anybody or least they can do magic? Given how a lot of that crowd react to science as a "belief", maybe it's a whole "I bypass the rules because I BELIEVE harder than all you lesser beings" (which also seems to come up with the religious fanatics that they share a lot of characteristics with, really). I admit there's a definite difference between the people who think taxes are magic but are willing to defer to my greater knowledge of the dark arts vs. the ones who are POSITIVE, just absolutely certain, things work this way because I read it once and I'm never wrong so screw your years of experience doing more tax returns than any one person will do for themselves in their lives every tax season. Obviously lawyers and other similar occupations need a better way to levy curses on those who mock our arcane mastery. Or maybe just pointy hats and staves, I'm not entire certain which would help more. Or perhaps just change our terms for ourselves to the more respected traditional names? I guess my turn paperwork to gold power makes me an alchemist, estate lawyers could call themselves necromancers because of their power over the dead...
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Jul 4, 2021 03:10
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sullat posted:You get half up front and half on the 2021 return. Finish the divorce before 12/31. Or have her file HoH. Since this is partly a tax question, I feel I should chime in with one warning here. The IRS in general doesn't really care about agreements and such when these disputes come up, they look to what are called tiebreaker rules for claiming dependents. First is parent vs. nonparent; parent always wins over non-parent. If both are parents or both are nonparents, then it goes to days in custody (or more accurately nights in custody; if the kids visit during the day but don't spend the night, that doesn't count). If that isn't sufficient to determine it, then they default to who has the higher AGI (i.e. gets more tax benefit). Now, I bring this up because I've seen a lot of jerks in bad splits file taxes claiming kids they haven't even seen much less had custody of, so it's probably worth filing as soon as you're sure you have all the documents. Otherwise the return might fail to e-file with an error of "child with this SSN claimed on another return". When that happens you generally have to mail your return in, and then the IRS will send letters asking for proof of custody (usually things like school or medical records that show the kid's address as being with you). Once they have the info they can award it to the correct person, but that can take a while (holding the refund up to boot) and I understand the IRS can be kind of lovely about stopping them from repeating the same thing in future years unfortunately. Anyway, hopefully paranoia here, but when I see arguments about child tax credit come up I start looking for that kind of crap possibly popping up too. Oh, and the HoH thing is accurate; in the event the divorce is not finalized before 12/31 and your partner meets the rest of the Head of Household requirements (which includes paying at least half the cost of the actual home they and the kids are living in; if you're fronting all the rent/mortgage/utilities/etc. they can't actually file as HoH, that's not just "single parent" filing status), if the two of them lived apart entirely for the last six months of the year you can count as legally unmarried for tax purposes, which is a big help considering how married filing separately screws up a lot of things on the return that are AGI dependent.
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Sep 22, 2021 02:29
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pseudanonymous posted:There’s IRS explanations of this and there are tests and limits, so I think the answer is “yes, but”. If you're curious there's some IRS discussion here. Basically type of plan affects a bunch. The actual rules on high compensation vs low are these, and it's basically "is the ratio of the amount spent on low compensation employees to high compensation employees beyond a certain threshold"; think that mainly applies to traditional 401(k) and not SIMPLE or some of the other plans out there.
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Oct 4, 2021 23:07
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FrozenVent posted:IANAL, but I was under the impression it was the equipment manufacturers covering their asses liability-wise. I don't recall any laws about document copying in the US per se (in fact I have to copy lots of stuff like that to submit to the IRS when helping foreign citizens apply for ITIN numbers) but there are a bunch of anticounterfeiting tricks in use that might screw up scans. At minimum they're usually supposed to have a bunch of things like VOID appear in the background of copies to prevent pawning off a copy as the real thing; maybe some of the scanners just malfunction when they hit such things. Or it could be some sort of unofficial policy like the manufacturers having liability concerns like you mentioned, but I can't believe copying an official document (that's represented as a copy and not an original anyway) is illegal here because there are too many things that demand you provide copies of such documents.
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Feb 5, 2022 03:56
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D34THROW posted:
There's an option that lets you release a child's tax credit (and EITC) to another person with Form 8332 to a noncustodial parent. Just gives them the credit, they can't claim Head of Household among other things. Not that I would trust this particular person to honor that. I've also seen parents just alternate years, though those situations in my experience have always involved joint custody/much more amicable divorces. Yorkshire Pudding posted:He is technically supposed to pay child support but does not. One thing that might be possible, though I have no idea of the specifics (I just know it can be done) is to have the Department of Treasury seize any tax refunds as payments against unpaid child support, called the Treasury Offset Program. Not sure how to apply for that, I'm more on the "this is why your refund is gone" explanation side of that thing, but maybe somebody else here has details?
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Feb 15, 2022 05:05
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I wasnt aware it was legal in any way shape or form to claim as dependents non-dependent and jon custodial children. I thought they had to reside with the claimant for at least 6 months of the year.
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SkunkDuster posted:A friend of mine had 50% custody with his ex wife last year at tax time. We looked up the law and it said that in a 50/50 situation, the parent that makes the most money will claim the child. The ex-wife jumped the gun and filed first claiming the child. My friend makes more money than her and just let her have it. I'm curious if filed after the ex and claimed the same child, how would that pan out? You can't efile if somebody else claimed the kid(s) first because you get a reject of "this person's SSN was already filed for as a dependent on another return". So, you mail in the return and when the IRS (increasingly theoretically) gets around to processing it they apply what are known as the "tiebreaker rules". First one is, if one potential claimant is a parent and the other isn't, parent automatically wins. If both are parents or both are non-parents, then you go by custody as counted by nights spent with each claimant. If that's equal for both, then it goes to person with highest AGI (I'm guessing under the assumption they benefit more or (more likely) they're less likely to be claiming EITC on the kid(s) in question). Usually the IRS will send out something requesting school or medical records to both parties, having a shared address for the dependent and claimant is generally considered evidence for custody. It takes forever as a rule and is a pain, much like any other legal process I suppose. You do have to meet the requirements to claim them as a dependent in the first place (paying at least half the support and living with you half the year among other things), so I suppose if both claimants actually failed that the IRS could rule neither gets the dependent. If you get busted the IRS will generally require you to fill out a particular form with more specific paperwork if you file with a dependent next year(s) to confirm that yes, you are actually allowed to be claiming them, I'm assuming that can put you on the hook for deliberate fraud if you lie on those (you can't generally get criminally dinged to my knowledge on the tiebreaker stuff since it can and does come up due to mistakes not malice sometimes). If you are outright lying about a dependent, you can get barred for I believe 10 years from claiming ANY dependents or Earned Income Credit, whether you normally could or not. tater_salad posted:My take is .. the IRS defaults to "where the kids are for over 1/2 the year" because they don't want to get involved in your court case, because they have enough poo poo to do. Yes, that's basically the essence of the tiebreaker rules, they don't want to sort through court agreements and such to settle this, they just set straight rules that default to the actual situation on the ground that can't be argued. They have roughly the same logic towards immigration stuff really, apart from certain visas/particular treaties; if you're here illegally for a period meeting the substantial presence test, you'd file as a resident alien for that period even if Immigration is going to punt your butt out of the country ASAP.
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Feb 16, 2022 02:55
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blarzgh posted:God damnit people, don't you know how bad numbers scare lawyers?! And taxes are full of numbers! Does this mean if someone threatens to sue me I can make their lawyers run hissing from the room by holding up a completed 1040 and shouting "the power of math compels you!" repeatedly? Sweet...  (I was considering if I should yell "the power of the IRS compels you!" but that would probably scare EVERYBODY out of the room, not just lawyers. God knows every time I'm mailing paperwork in to the IRS and the post office "does this mail contain any hazardous materials?" question comes up I've gotten a couple laughs saying "Well...") sullat posted:Pub 501 answers all these questions and more! For ties, we go to the AGI test mentioned earlier. For temporary absences the kid is treated as living with the parent they would be ordinarily with; see example 2 on page 14. For the international flight, see page 14 as well. Yeah, I swear half the agonizing parts of my job involve trying to remember the few random exceptions to and conditions of particular rules. Though I imagine lawyers probably have me beat at THAT kind of thing by a long ways.
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Feb 18, 2022 05:38
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Bit of a silly question, but I was thinking about it watching one of those "bad guy finds the wire tap the cops put on them" scenes in a movie. If the police have a warrant to put a wiretap or bug or similar on someone, and the person finds it and disconnects/destroys it, are they guilty of a crime in doing so? I would assume mens rea would be a tad hard to prove considering they could argue they had no idea any such tap is government-placed and could be from criminals, but I'm curious if the mere act of evading legally established surveillance constitutes some sort of crime. Also, when you have a secret warrant against you, is there some legal method of requiring the government to admit it? I'm wondering how you'd deal with an illegal wiretap without a warrant if the government could conceal whether they had a warrant or not from you, but I'm assuming things are set up so you can't just prevent the police from observing you by constantly demanding to know whether or not they have a warrant to do so.
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May 21, 2022 00:54
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toplitzin posted:Iirc there was a case recently about someone removing a GPS tracker from their car, and the police tried to call it theft of their property. LOL - "'To find a fair probability of unauthorized control here, we would need to conclude the Hoosiers don't have the authority to remove unknown, unmarked objects from their personal vehicles,' Chief Justice Loretta Rush wrote for a unanimous court." Though I like one of the comments suggests if this is an issue for the police they should mark such devices "Property of Such-and-So Sherriff's Department" to get a theft assumption .
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May 23, 2022 19:01
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Bad Munki posted:What if you really want to say, "I have a lawyer on retainer" Check with an orthodontist to see if you can find a lawyer with a retainer?
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Jul 16, 2022 18:11
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euphronius posted:Possession is 9/10ths of the law drat the War on Drugs!
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Sep 4, 2022 09:26
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Discendo Vox posted:No pretty much the exact opposite. Juries are intended to uphold the factual and consistent application of the law. Nullification bypasses and erodes the rule of law by creating inconsistent exceptions. I think a certain amount of considering the morality of applying the law will happen anyway, and I can't say it's wrong to always. To give an extreme example for illustration, if the bigoted psychos in the US pass an "it's illegal to be trans" law I would consider it my moral duty to tank any sort of guilty verdict if I was on a jury judging someone for that, no matter how much the facts say they're "guilty". Anything less is effectively offering "I was following orders" as an excuse for my participation in evil, even if those orders come from a judge instead of a military officer. I realize the legal system must not encourage nullification which is why every legal professional argues against the idea quite strongly in my experience, and God knows it should be VERY rarely applied, but I think it's a little silly to pretend the idea is always bad no possible argument otherwise. I can't see any real justification for a jury system that does not, in the end, boil down to "we will not trust the judicial system alone to decide whether something rises to the level of punishment", so almost by definition the jury system kind of has to hold that system up to judgement itself in the cases where it fails its own function. Hell, even the laws themselves are frequently written for the jury to apply judgement to their applicability as is; I doubt you could get a machinelike application of the "reasonable person" standard anywhere. As for inconsistent exceptions to law enforcement, you certainly don't need a jury to inconsistently apply the law (God knows all those juries that ruled for whites/against blacks were generally not the only racists in the courtroom putting their fingers on the scales) and if a law is inconsistently applied, isn't that just as likely to be a problem with the law as the people trying to use it? Anyway, sorry for the tl:dr, I just find it a little annoying how often it feels like nullification is always dismissed as wrong and not intended when it feels like a core function of a jury is to allow disagreement with the government's position, which pretty much implicitly suggests the idea. It's just that you can't really put "it's OK to break the rules" in the rulebook when it's on a very vague sometimes basis . And at least well written well enforced laws shouldn't ever need nullification anyway, nullification should only be for when all the other protections against injustice break down.
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Jun 25, 2023 20:36
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Volmarias posted:Your honor, objection, this derail sucks and has just gone on too long Fair enough, any other subjects lawyers find annoying every time they come up? I ask purely out of curiosity, of course  .
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Jun 29, 2023 19:58
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Discendo Vox posted:"beyond the shadow of a doubt" "Reasonable" has to be one of the funniest legal terms around, I'm not sure how many people involved in the legal system are actually interacting with "reasonable persons" or "reasonable doubts" as a rule. Though I suppose the most "reasonable" thing in general is to stay the gently caress out of court if possible, so that makes sense.
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Jul 1, 2023 06:13
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blarzgh posted:No, probably not. You're paying out of pocket for legal guidance to make sure that you do the job correctly. Actually, going by what I know about taxes for estates anyway, taking legal expenses out of the estate/trust is perfectly common, it's not like you can't point to "getting legal advice to manage the entity correctly" as a legitimate expense of the entity. Though one other estate thing, if there are things in the estate earning income (stock dividends or the like), you'll need to file a Form 1041 to report the income (and if any of the income gets distributed before the estate dissolves, you report each beneficiary's share of said income for their tax return) if the total income is over $600. As for actual estate tax, normally unless you're in the millions you won't usually worry about it, but some states have their own rules (Pennsylvania has an "inheritance tax" that they apply to everyone).
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Oct 12, 2023 02:26
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