Spidell's Tax Season Tribune

Interesting legislation

AB 1769 (Voepel) would name the California Vaquero Horse as the official state horse.

AB 1782 (Muratsuchi) would establish surfing as the official state sport, given the number of world-famous surfing spots, such as: Malibu, Trestles, Mavericks, Rincon, Steamer Lane (pictured), and Huntington.

AB 1884 (Calderon) would prohibit food facilities from providing single-use plastic straws unless the customer requests one.

SB 969 (Dodd) would require that residential automatic garage doors have a backup battery system that would allow the door to operate if the power is out. Violations would incur a $1,000 penalty.

Photo by: Austin Lewis

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I'm feeling really Line 29 today

Kathryn Zdan, EA
Editorial Director

If you're not sure how to feel about your refund or tax owed amounts, fear not, residents of Arkansas and Rhode Island. Your tax form is here to help.

Both states include a smiley face emoticon in the refund box and a frowny face emoticon in the tax due box. "Woo hoo! I owe $3,275! Oh… wait, no, line 29 is telling me to be sad."

But Line 29-ers might consider the silver lining: If you owe a lot of tax, doesn't that usually mean there was a lot of income to generate that tax?

Arkansas: Form AR 1000S

Rhode Island: Form RI-1040

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So many skulls and hooves, so little space...

Kathryn Zdan, EA
Editorial Director

Taxidermy donations frequently come under scrutiny by the IRS because of the pervasive fraud involving inflated appraisals.¹

A big-game hunter was denied a charitable contribution deduction and carryovers of $1,425,900 for 177 taxidermy specimens he donated to an ecological foundation after his trophy room became "too cluttered."²

The taxpayer's appraiser estimated the replacement cost of each item by totaling the costs to travel to the hunting site to re-kill each particular animal, safari costs, and taxidermy and shipping costs. The appraisal report listed all specimens as being in excellent condition and provided no provenance for any of them.

The court accepted the IRS's valuation method that produced a revised charitable donation amount of $163,045, which wiped out most of the deduction plus the carryover and left the taxpayer holding the bag for $411,875 in tax.

¹ www.ha.com/information/taxidermy.s
² Gardner v. Comm., TCM 2017-165

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A few fun facts about this week's writers:

Kathryn Zdan, EA, meets with an all-female photography group once a month and also spends her free time watching classic and foreign movies. Her dream is to recreate the pie fight scene from The Great Race.

Austin Lewis loves classic rock, despite being born a few decades late, and he goes to more concerts than anyone else in the office. Here he is in Toronto last summer, recreating the cover photo from one of his favorite Rush albums.

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