We are six months away from the effective date of one of the biggest tax changes in history. 

The U.S. Senate passed a bill Monday evening allowing states to collect sales taxes for Internet purchases.

As you work through the 2013 tax year, proper record keeping is important if you want to reduce your tax liability. It becomes critical if you expect to off-set positive income with losses from other business activities – especially if some of that activity was passive.

California’s Franchise Tax Board has extended the deadline for taxpayers to make payments. Californians now have through Tuesday.  The agency extended the deadline by a day after its website experienced severe delays for hours on Monday.

This year’s deadline to file individual federal income tax returns, Form 1040, is Monday, April 15. Before you know it, the deadline will be here. In filing your income tax return this year, here are some helpful reminders.

 Valley Springs surgeon Timothy Sloan was arrested today and booked into the San Joaquin County Jail on tax evasion charges.

As we head into the tax filing season, taxpayers are always looking for ways to lower their tax burden. As Judge Learned Hand once wrote: “Anyone may arrange his affairs so that his taxes shall be as low as possible; he is not bound to choose that pattern which best pays the treasury. There is not even a patriotic duty to increase one’s taxes. Over and over again the courts have said that there is nothing sinister in so arranging affairs as to keep taxes as low as possible. Everyone does it, rich and poor alike and all do right, for nobody owes any public duty to pay more than the law demands.”

In his State of the City address Wednesday, Mayor Garrad Marsh called on the public to pass a new tax to pay for public safety, including new emergency responders.

With the passage of the American Taxpayer Relief Act of 2012, or ATRA, we see that we have been fooled again.

You could hear the collective sigh of relief sweep across the country when, like a movie cliffhanger, Congress managed to rescue the country from the very brink of the so-called “fiscal cliff.”