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Welcome to the Law Offices of Stephen Moskowitz, LLP. Our professionals have over three decades of experience representing clients (individuals, small businesses, corporations, municipalities, multi-million dollar businesses, trusts, estates, and other entities and organizations) with their tax matters. We are committed to obtaining results for our clients with skilled, calculated legal representation and providing personal, accessible service to meet the professional and personal needs of our clients.
Our law firm, located in beautiful San Francisco, CA, provides civil tax, criminal tax, and related matters representation locally, as well as nationally and internationally. Our tax practice covers the entire spectrum of individual and business needs. We pride ourselves wit
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Introduction
The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) announced a recent third Offshore Voluntary Disclosure Program (OVDP) for U.S. taxpayers with unreported foreign income or financial accounts. The OVDP eliminates potential criminal penalties and greatly reduces the civil (monetary) penalties for U.S. taxpayers with previously undisclosed foreign income and assets. In most cases, U.S. taxpayers participating in the OVDP must pay a penalty equal to 27.5 percent of the highest aggregate balance of their foreign assets since the 2003 tax year. For those who mistakenly failed to disclose their foreign assets, the OVDP may not be necessary and they could be subject to unnecessarily paying 27.5%. This is not to say that these individuals do not need to disclose their previously undisclosed foreign income and
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Who does the Internal Revenue Service consider a tax preparer? For such a simple question, the answer can be complicated. This is an important question for attorneys, accountants, Enrolled Agents, or other professionals. Tax returns that show substantial understatements due to tax preparer error, whether it be intentional or not, are subject to penalties under §6694 of the Internal Revenue Code. These tax preparer penalties are presumptively valid and the preparer challenging the penalty bears the burden of proving that he or she did not intentionally disregard rule or regulation pertaining to tax law, Internal Revenue Code §6694(b)(2).
Treasury Regulation § 301.7701-15 generally defines a tax return preparer as, “any person who prepares for compensation, or who employs one or more persons to prepare for co
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01-2012 Tax Times Newsletter (pdf, 1.09 mb)
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Just in time for the holidays, Congress passed, and President Obama approved, a short-term extension of the Temporary Payroll Tax Continuation Act of 2011. The deal ensures that the social security withholding tax on employees stays at the current rate for the next few months.
Instead of the payroll tax reverting back to the rate of 6.2 percent, the law keeps the rate at 4.2 percent until the extension ends in March, 2012. A jump in the payroll tax rate to 6.2 percent would have equated to an average tax increase of $1,000 per year for 160 million Americans. To put it in simpler terms, the typical worker’s salary in this country would have been reduced by approximately $40 per pay period without the law.
But not all wage-earners benefit from the temporary extension. The deal includes
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San Francisco tax attorney Steve Moskowitz said this year's program was structured so that participants had to admit to intentionally evading taxes.
"I found that horribly offensive," Moskowitz said. "A lot of people inadvertently violated a law they hadn’t even heard of."
Moskowitz said some immigrants don't know they have to pay taxes on foreign income and would like to come clean when they find out. But admitting tax avoidance in the amnesty program, he said, could potentially get them in trouble later.
Moskowitz also argued that the punishment for those who didn't participate – tax audits for up to 12 years instead of eight – is unconstitutional.
Cornez, the Franchise Tax Board's tax counsel, said the $50 million in additional...