An important step in estate planning is creating an inventory of your assets. Your executor – the person you designate in your will to carry out your last wishes – uses the inventory to make sure all of your property passes to your heirs. That includes your digital assets. Documenting these along with more traditional effects can help ensure your final wishes are honored and your estate is administered correctly. Here’s what to keep in mind
Did you file all required information returns for 2015 and earlier years? Information returns include Forms 1099, the forms you complete when you pay for certain business expenses such as rent or services performed by an independent contractor. August is a good time to review your filing compliance because this is the time of year the IRS typically begins sending notices for prior year information returns with missing and incorrect taxpayer identification numbers, and the penalties
The art of placing information in a logical order, more prosaically called organization, is key to the efficiency of your business, which can in turn increase productivity. Fortunately, you can master the art of organization by making habits out of simple techniques. Here are suggestions.
If you’re starting your first job this fall, you probably want to avoid overpaying your federal income tax. Consider asking your employer to use a special formula known as the part-year withholding method to calculate the amount of federal income tax withheld from your wages. To be eligible, you have to use the calendar year as your tax year, and you must not expect to be employed for more than 245 days during the year.
When you hire workers from specified groups that typically experience high unemployment, you may qualify for a tax break known as the Work Opportunity Tax Credit. You typically have 28 days after the worker’s first day to complete paperwork for this federal income tax credit. However, for certain workers hired between January 1, 2015, and August 31, 2016, the 28-day rule has been extended until September 28, 2016. The extended date gives you an opportunity to
The average rent in the U.S. was $1,180 a month at the beginning of 2016, up 4.6% from a year earlier, according to a company called Reis, Inc. that tracks such trends. Rents dipped in 2009, following the recession, but they have been growing steadily ever since. Demand for apartments is high, since the rate of homeownership in the U.S. is about as low as it’s been at any time in the last 30 years.
A surprising number of home buyers make an offer for a house that includes some items of the seller’s personal property – they want to keep certain furniture, pieces of artwork, a pool table, a boat at the dock, etc. There’s nothing wrong with this, but it does create some complexities that you should be aware of. For instance, lenders typically won’t include the value of the “extras” in a mortgage loan – it’s simply too
A new Federal Housing Administration initiative will make it easier to qualify for a mortgage loan through the FHA. This is good news for borrowers with lower incomes or an imperfect credit history, since FHA loans are often available to people with credit scores as low as 580 and down payments as low as 3.5 percent. Here’s the background: As part of its crackdown after the housing bust, the federal government adopted rules saying that if
Did you know that it may be possible to avoid paying immediate capital gains taxes when you sell an investment property? That’s true if you’re planning to sell the property and invest the proceeds in another property shortly afterward. For instance, suppose you own a condo as an investment, and you plan to sell it and use the proceeds to buy another investment property. You might be able to treat the sale and the subsequent purchase
One reason many potential homebuyers have always found mortgages to be intimidating is that lenders send them lengthy, complex “disclosure” forms that are confusing and hard to understand. This can make it more difficult to figure out exactly what you’re getting into, and whether one mortgage product is really better than another. Starting a few months ago, though, the federal government has been requiring new, simplified forms to make shopping for a mortgage easier. The new
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