Episode 29: The IRS is Waiving Penalties For Not Filing During Covid, If....

If you didn't file your tax return during covid, the IRS is giving you a break from failure to file penalties. You may be able to take action by September 30, 2022, for certain international forms. All the domestic forms needed to be already filed in August of the following year, but you may be able to get previously assessed penalties reversed or fight back a tax notice that arrives that fits into the time periods addressed in the Notice.

Ever wonder what the IRS's cafeteria looks like? Currently it's full of paperwork they still need to process. Whether this was released to justify their new budget increase or not, its still a major improvement over the semi trailers full of unopened mail parked out back that we talked about last year.

IRS Cafeteria: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/interactive/2022/irs-pipeline-tax-return-delays/?utm_source=morning-10&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=20220809&utm_content=article10-readmore

Widespread Penalty Waivers: https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-drop/n-22-36.pdf

About The Show:

Hello and welcome. This is Ron Cohen. I’m a tax partner with the firm of Greenstein, Rogoff, Olsen & Co., LLP and we’re located in beautiful downtown Fremont, California. I appreciate you signing in to listen to my self-indulgent, and sometimes narcissistic comments about the tax system.

No Reliance:

Take no reliance on anything you hear on this podcast. This is mostly for entertainment and education. In order to get an opinion from me or my firm you have to sign an engagement letter and give us all of the facts. After we do some research about your situation we’ll come back and formally give you an opinion. And only then can you use that advice for purposes of entering into any transaction or filing a tax return.

Plagiarism is Okay!

Everything in the tax rules is from the Internal Revenue Code, its regulations, court cases, and various internal memorandums by the Internal Revenue Service. Lots of lawyers and CPAs write very good articles that we will often attach in the show notes. They are trying to show how smart they are to the public so everyone copies from everyone else, and I certainly want to give them credit. We're not writing any novels, nor creating deep or original thoughts here.

No Politics

We try to stay out of general politics, however tax law is developed through legislation in Congress and anything that's legislative has its own political ups and downs. And I feel free to comment on that.

How I Help:

Our firm does around 1400 tax returns for various people. The demographics range from little grandmothers all the way up to high tech executives and multinational corporations. We also specialize in family office services for wealthy groups with far flung entities and we also help those groups with things such as bill paying and taking care of their day-to-day financial operations

No Cheerleader for the Tax System:

Our tax system is intrusive, an invasion of privacy and it's tedious. You need to look at a 12 step flowchart to figure out in some cases whether you can take your mortgage interest deduction. It is part of the technocratic Administrative State that has built up in this country since World War Two, and I don't like it. Other countries have simplified the tax system in many ways, despite this we always try to get an A+ (not an A-, or a B, or a C) in our work and make sure it is accurate. Well prepared tax returns rarely get audited, and the best tax audit, is the one that never comes!

Please let us know if there are specific topics you'd like to hear about in future episodes.

Ron Cohen, CPA

Partner at Greenstein, Rogoff, Olsen & Co., LLP

Email: [email protected]

510.797.8661