Georgia Tax Legal Questions

Your best bet is to get a good CPA and work on correcting the situation as soon as possible. File all the tax returns you should have filed and pay all of the back taxes, if there are any. If you wait until the IRS comes to you, the situation will be harder to deal with. You may be able to get a payment plan if you can't pay everything at once, and if you've come forward voluntarily you will be in a better position to ask for waivers or reductions in penalties. Plus, by starting to correct the situation, you'll prevent it from continue to be a bigger and bigger problem.   Again- find a good CPA who works with tax controversies. You likely don't need a lawyer for this. Best wishes to you.... Read More

The only thing that you can do to lower your property taxes is to appeal the valuation given to your property by the county. If you're already receiving an actual bill for the taxes, there's nothing you can really do about that amount. But, next year, you can file a property tax return yourself (look at the website for the Georgia Department of Revenue for the return form), and you can state what you believe the value of your property to be. If the county agrees, you'll get a lower value and therefore your taxes should be lower. If the county doesn't agree, they'll let you know. You can then appeal that decision and continue to try and make your case for the lower value. There are property tax services that specialize in helping people appeal valuations. I'd look for one of those and talk with them about your chances for appealing next year's valuation.... Read More

I don't believe that there are any set limits on what a tax return preparer can charge you. It isn't great that you weren't told what the fee would be before you had the return prepared, but you should have specifically asked about fees before you had anyone prepare your return. Also, if you signed anything authorizing the return preparation you've likely agreed to pay whatever the fee was. Don't use this preparer again next year: look for a different one and be sure to ask about all fees and costs and get them explained to you up front, in writing. It also isn't great that the return preparer is having your refund sent to their account, instead of to your account. However, if you got an advance on your refund from them, that would be standard procedure. If you didn't get any advance from them then the refund should be sent directly to you. I don't think this is illegal, but it's not a good sign and you should take it as another reason not to use this preparer again. It's not uncommon for the IRS to take several months to process a return, unfortunately. Do keep an eye on the IRS website, and as soon as you see that a refund has been authorized, contact the preparer and get them to send you your refund as soon as possible. If they give you a hard time about it, call the police if you have to. Best wishes to you.... Read More

The county will put the home up for auction after foreclosing on the tax lien. You will have to come up with money to pay the tax debt and get it taken care of as soon as possible. If your brother is not paying rent, you need to have him legally evicted, too, and you need to find a tenant who will pay rent on a reliable basis, enough to cover the taxes and other expenses associated with owning the house. Please get a real estate attorney to help you with the eviction process and with the back tax payments (you need to be sure that you get all liens properly cleared or the debt may continue to haunt you even after you've paid it). You may be able to get help from a local legal aid organization for these if funds are really that tight for you, but you MUST be sure that all tax lien clearning and eviction steps are properly followed, to protect yourself. Unfortunately, if you can't get a reliable tenant and you can't afford to pay the expenses of owning the property from other funds, you really need to consider selling the property if you can get the tax mess cleaned up. Not paying the taxes is never a good option: It just ends up costing you much more in the long run. I understand how attached you must be to the home you grew up in, but sentiment should not override reality. Best wishes to you, and seek help as soon as possible.... Read More

If you have a disability policy that you paid for, whether your benefits are taxable depends on whether your policy was paid for with after-tax money or pre-tax money. If you aren't sure, my suggestion would be for you to find a good CPA and have them review the situation with you. Best wishes to you.... Read More

Whether assets received as part of a settlement are taxable or not depends on what they are replacing. For example, if you have a suit that is based on personal injury (physical injury) and on lost wages (lost as a result of the injury), the lost wages are replacing taxable income and are taxable, while the physical injury component is not. In something like the VW settlement, the recovery may be considered a replacement of money you spent on the car and the loss in value that resulted from the VW fraud becoming public. So, it may not be taxable income to you. However, your best bet is to get a good CPA who knows how to properly report lawsuit settlement proceeds to help you prepare your income tax returns for the year you receive the settlement, and follow the CPA's advice. Best wishes to you.... Read More

If you need a tax attorney to give you advice about how to properly sell items online, you will need to use this site to find an experienced business tax attorney and get an appointment with that person. This isn't a forum for attorneys to be able to provide specific advice to people. It's only suited for general questions. Best wishes to you.... Read More

It sounds like you have two separate issues. The IRS does not call people out of the blue. Therefore, if you are receiving threatening phone calls accusing you of tax fraud and saying that immediate legal action will be taken if you don't pay up, you are likely yourself the victim of attempted fraud: most, if not all, of those calls are scams. Report the call to the police and do NOT respond to them. As for your failure to file past returns: you ideally need to correct that situation sooner rather than later. Find a good CPA that has experience with tax controversy matters and have the CPA help you put together and file the returns you should have filed and pay as much of the resulting tax liability as you can as quickly as possible. Then, don't fail to file returns in the future. Best wishes to you.... Read More

Unfortunatly, you will need to find either a good CPA who can help you work with the IRS or a good tax attorney who does tax controversy work to help. I don't do tax controversies myself; I only do tax planning and some gift and estate tax returns. However, there are good attorneys and good CPAs out there who can help you.... Read More

The gas company's asking for a W-9 does not necessarily mean that any damages they pay you will be taxable income, no. But they will generally be required to issue a 1099 if they are going to deduct the damages against their own taxable income, and the W-9 is needed for them to be able to do that. Whether or not the payment is taxable income to you is a completely separate question that you will need to answer when you file your income taxes for the year you receive the payment. You should consult a competent income tax preparer to determine that answer.... Read More

You need to determine the fair market value of the property at the time you inherited it (generally, this means the date of death of your late husband, if he was the owner of the property). That is the new basis that you receive in the property for purposes of calculating capital gains or losses on a sale. Then, when you sell the property, in very big-picture terms, you subtract your basis from the sales price to determine the capital gains on the sale. The capital gains are subject to income taxes; the rest would be a recovery of your basis and not be subject to income taxes. The entire sales proceeds and your basis must be reported to the IRS on your income tax return, but not all of the sales proceeds would be taxable unless you have a $0 basis.... Read More

If the divorce decree allows your ex to claim your daughter in alternating years, then he is presumptively eligible to do so. Unfortunately, how much time he spends with her does not matter; it's the payment of support. You may be able to successfully defend yourself against his claims if he was not paying, and you might be able to successfully win with the IRS if he claims her on some of his returns for years you also claimed her, but you will have to deal with the provision in the agreement that gives him the right to claim her. Best wishes to you.... Read More

Changing your divorce settlement is not a taxation question; it's a family law question. You may get better answers on that issue if you post the question again using family law or divorce as the topic. As to the issue of your ex-husband claiming a deduction for your daughter in a year that you were supposed to get the deduction under your existing settlement agreement: you can still claim her, if the agreement gives you the right to claim her for 2015. However, the IRS may ask either you or him (or both of you) to explain why you are both claiming the same child and produce evidence of who is entitled to the deduction. If you have a signed agreement that says you are to get the deduction for her in 2015, then that would be what you show to the IRS. If your agreement isn't clear on who gets the deduction, or if I misunderstood your post and your ex-husband is given the right to the deduction for your daughter in 2015 (or in all years), then you can't claim her unless and until you can get a different agreement. In that case, again, you will need a divorce lawyer, not a tax lawyer. Best wishes to you.... Read More

I'm not sure what you are asking, but "disability" is not an income tax filing status. Any disability benefits you received may be taxable to you as income; that depends on a lot of different factors. You should seek the help of a good income tax preparer (preferably a really good CPA or enrolled agent) to help you figure out the correct way to file your income taxes. Best wishes to you.... Read More

Your association's tax preparer should be able to prepare a 1099 without the SSN or EIN for the lawn care person; however, backup withholding may be required in order for the association to avoid penalties. The instructions for IRS Form 1099-MISC address this situation.  For this year, the association needs to report the income and make appropriate backup withholding payments. However, I would stop using that person for lawn care services immediately, if the association hasn't already stopped using him. In the future, no one should be hired to provide services to the association if they won't provide the required taxpayer identification number and other information up front.    ... Read More

The extent to which the actual settlement payment will be taxable income to you, if any, is likely already determined and there may not be anything you can do at this point to avoid those taxes. As for the funds themselves, you really need to seek the help of a competent financial planner to help you determine the best ways to invest the funds. Avoiding or reducing income taxes is part, but not all, of determining the best way for you to use the funds. Keeping everything in cash is very likely NOT the best answer. A good, tax-focused CPA can also be greatly helpful. And you should likely consult a good estate planning attorney to ensure that you have a good power of attorney and Advance Directive in place for yourself, and that you have a Will or trust in place so that, if you pass away, any remaining assets you have will pass to your intended beneficiaries in a beneficial manner.... Read More

If the person living in the place has agreed to pay the property taxes as part of payment for the right to live there, then yes, it is "right." If that wasn't part of the agreement, and the person living in the property feels that he or she is being forced to pay fair rent, PLUS the property taxes, then maybe it's not "right." It's not illegal, however; it's a contract question. If the person living in the property feels he or she is paying more to live there than he or she should be, then the next step is to have that discussion with the owner of the property and try to work out a more acceptable arrangement. Or, get a new place to live. Best wishes.... Read More

Unless you can pay cash and don't need to get a mortgage, or unless you can get a loan from someone other than a regular mortgage lender, it is very unlikely that you will be able to buy a house unless you can show that you didn't file any income tax returns since 1997 because you weren't legally required to do so. Unless your only income for all those years is Social Security benefits and tax-exempt income, or unless you barely had any income at all for all those years, you probably were required to file. If you were required to file and you would have had to have paid additional funds with your returns for any of those years, then you have a big mess on your hands. If you were required to file but your withholdings or estimated tax payments were made and the amounts you actually paid would fully cover any income tax liability you would have had, you have a smaller mess, but still a mess. The best suggestion I can give you is to start taking corrective actions as soon as possible. Find a really good CPA who handles tax controversies and can help you put together as much information as possible, and then file the returns you should have filed. Figure out what, if anything, you owe in taxes, interest, and penalties, and get started on paying that amount. If you do this, you may eventually be able to get a mortgage. Best wishes to you.  ... Read More

Congratulations on your win! However, no one is going to be able to answer your question without a lot more information about other income you will likely have in 2015. You need to figure out what your total gross taxable income is likely to be, including the value of the car and any other prizes and also any wages, commissions, bonuses, interest, dividends, rents, and other income. You then need to figure out what your total deductions are likely to be for the year, and whether you may be able to itemize or will be stuck with the standard deduction. If you file jointly, your spouse's income and deductions will also need to be estimated. Then, you should be able to figure out the likely net income number and how much you will have withheld. The additional amount will be what you need to have set aside. You might also need to file quarterly estimated income returns and pay some of those taxes in advance, even if you have withholding from other income sources. Don't forget to look at both state and federal income, including the taxes that may be imposed by the state where you won the car, if that's not the same as your home state (i.e., if you won a game show that is filmed in California, California will likely want to tax the winnings as income from California, even if you live somewhere else). It's probably a good idea to talk to a good income tax CPA or other experienced income tax preparer who can help you make the estimates and figure out what you need to set aside, and whether you should be filing the quarterly estimated returns. It's not the sort of question most tax attorneys will answer.    ... Read More

I have not researched the statute, so am not going to opine on what it does say. Under most Georgia laws, the definition of a family member does not include sons-in-law or daughters-in-law. Therefore, while your daughter's husband is family to you, under most state laws he is a stranger to you. In fact, under many Georgia laws, the stepgrandchildren would normally also not be considered your family members. If they are considered family members under the laws relating to sales tax on the transfer of a vehicle purchased from an immediate family member, that would be an exception to the general rule that people not related to you by blood or adoption are not considered to be your family. Your statement also contains an incorrect statement about assets being marital assets under Georgia law. In Georgia, we are not a community property state, and there are no such things as "marital" assets except in the narrow case where a couple is getting divorced. For ALL other purposes, if a person's name is on the title, the asset belongs to that person. In other words, it doesn't matter if your daughter was the one who used the car, or whether the intent when she and her husband bought it, for state law purposes it was HIS car if his was the only name on the title. If he had died, she would have had to deal with his probate estate in order to receive it, and if he had a creditor problem, his creditors could have tried to take it, and she would have had not claim on it at all. As I said, the statute in question, in treating stepgrandchildren as if they were part of the family, is making an exception to the general rule. That may be because, at least in my experience as an estate planning attorney, more people will treat stepgrandchildren as "real" family than will treat their sons-in-law or daughters-in-law that way. But I'm actually surprised that you were told that stepgrandchildren were treated as your family for that purpose. The fact that your son-in-law isn't treated as family doesn't surprise me at all. It's also not a sales tax any longer. It's a title transfer ad valorem tax.  ... Read More