tax planning - Linkenheimer LLP CPAs & Advisors

Tax Court Case Provides Lessons on Best Recordkeeping Practices for Businesses

Running a successful business requires more than delivering great products or services. Behind the scenes, meticulous recordkeeping plays a crucial role in financial health, compliance and tax savings. Good records can mean the difference between successfully defending a deduction and losing valuable tax breaks. A recent U.S. Tax Court decision underscores just how important this is.

Why it matters

The IRS requires all businesses — no matter how small — to maintain records that accurately reflect income, expenses, assets and liabilities. Without these records, it’s nearly impossible to:

Substantiate tax deductions and credits,
Track cash flow and profitability,
Prepare accurate financial statements,
Monitor the progress of your business,
Support decisions for financing, and
Demonstrate compliance during an IRS audit.

In short, strong recordkeeping protects your business, both for operational and tax law purposes.

Taxpayer loses deductions due to insufficient records

In one case, a union power‐line worker also had business interests in a storm response partnership, a salon and a rental property. He claimed significant losses and business expenses on his return for the year in question. Among his claimed deductions were partnership losses and expenses for tools, clothing and travel.

In Tax Court Memo […]

By Linkenheimer LLP|2025-10-01T16:08:27+00:00October 1st, 2025|business, tax planning, Tech|0 Comments

Milestone Moments: How Age Affects Certain Tax Provisions

They say age is just a number — but in the world of tax law, it’s much more than that. As you move through your life, the IRS treats you differently because key tax rules kick in at specific ages. Here are some important age-related tax milestones for you and loved ones to keep in mind as the years fly by.

Ages 0–23: The kiddie tax

The kiddie tax can potentially apply to your child, grandchild or other loved one until age 24. Specifically, a child or young adult’s unearned income (typically from investments) in excess of the annual threshold is taxed at the parent’s higher marginal federal income tax rates instead of the more favorable rates that would otherwise apply to the young person in question. For 2025, the unearned income threshold is $2,700.

Age 30: Coverdell accounts

If you set up a tax-favored Coverdell Education Savings Account (CESA) for a child or grandchild, the account must be liquidated within 30 days after the individual turns 30 years old. To the extent earnings included in a distribution aren’t used for qualified education expenses, the earnings are subject to tax plus a 10% penalty […]

By Linkenheimer LLP|2025-07-11T15:50:10+00:00July 11th, 2025|tax planning|0 Comments

Turning Stock Downturns Into Tax Advantages

Have you ever invested in a company only to see its stock value plummet? (This may become relevant in light of recent market volatility.) While such an investment might be something you’d rather forget, there’s a silver lining: you can claim a capital loss deduction on your tax return. Here are the rules when a stock you own is sold at a loss or is entirely worthless.

How capital losses work

As capital assets, stocks produce capital gains or losses when they’re sold. Your capital gains and losses for the year must be netted against one another in a specific order based on whether they’re short-term (held one year or less) or long-term (held for more than one year).

If, after netting, you have short-term or long-term losses (or both), you can use them to offset up to $3,000 of ordinary income ($1,500 for married taxpayers filing separately). Any loss in excess of this limit is carried forward to later years until all of it is either offset against capital gains or deducted against ordinary income in those years, subject to the $3,000 limit. If you have both net short-term and net long-term […]

By Linkenheimer LLP|2025-03-19T14:56:06+00:00March 19th, 2025|investment, tax planning|0 Comments

Do You Have an Excess Business Loss?

If an individual taxpayer has substantial business losses, unfavorable federal income tax rules can potentially come into play. Here’s what you need to know as you assess your 2024 tax situation.

Disallowance rule

The tax rules can get complicated if your business or rental activity throws off a tax loss — and many do during the early years. First, the passive activity loss (PAL) rules may apply if you aren’t very involved in the business or if it’s a rental activity. The PAL rules generally only allow you to deduct passive losses to the extent you have passive income from other sources. However, you can deduct passive losses that have been disallowed in previous years (called suspended PALs) when you sell the activity or property that produced the suspended losses.

If you successfully clear the hurdles imposed by the PAL rules, you face another hurdle: You can’t deduct an excess business loss in the current year. For 2024, an excess business loss is the excess of your aggregate business losses over $305,000 ($610,000 for married joint filers). For 2025, the thresholds are $313,000 and $626,000, respectively. An excess business loss is carried over to the […]

By Linkenheimer LLP|2025-02-21T15:21:19+00:00February 21st, 2025|business, tax planning|0 Comments

Make Year-End Tax Planning Moves Before It’s Too Late!

With the arrival of fall, it’s an ideal time to begin implementing strategies that could reduce your tax burden for both this year and next.

One of the first planning steps is to ascertain whether you’ll take the standard deduction or itemize deductions for 2024. You may not itemize because of the high 2024 standard deduction amounts ($29,200 for joint filers, $14,600 for singles and married couples filing separately, and $21,900 for heads of household). Also, many itemized deductions have been reduced or suspended under current law.

If you do itemize, you can deduct medical expenses that exceed 7.5% of adjusted gross income (AGI), state and local taxes up to $10,000, charitable contributions, and mortgage interest on a restricted amount of debt, but these deductions won’t save taxes unless they’re more than your standard deduction.

The benefits of bunching

You may be able to work around these deduction restrictions by applying a “bunching” strategy to pull or push discretionary medical expenses and charitable contributions into the year where they’ll do some tax good. For example, if you can itemize deductions for this year but not next, you may want to make two years’ worth of charitable […]

By Linkenheimer LLP|2024-10-02T14:57:27+00:00October 2nd, 2024|tax planning, year-end|0 Comments