Today in Tax Court

Episode 4 - Witasick v. Commissioner

Deducting $1 million in renovations on a 15k sqft second home - what could go wrong?
 
A lot. Witasick was an attorney who mostly served Arizona clients. He bought this 56 acre monster home and for two years renovated it - while deducting a majority of the costs as business expenses.
 
The Court called it fraud and he served jail time. We dig into repair and maintenance, business / personal use, and unreimbursed partner expenses.

Episode 3 - Greenblatt v. Commissioner

S-Corps gone wild.
A taxpayer forms more S-Corps than he needs and loses out on millions of dollars in deductions from:
- S-Corp basis limitations
- Bad record keeping
- Missed tax elections

Episode 2 - Aboui v. Commissioner

Buy here pay here car dealership, bad accounting record access, and an aggressive IRS agent all combine for a few million dollars in tax assessed.
But the good guys get a win in this case and Aboui gets major tax relief mostly from some IRS missteps.
We talk about:
- Cohan rule (what happens when accounting is bad)
- S-Corp taxation on distributions
- Types of audit techniques the IRS will use

Episode 1 - Top Tax Court Cases - 2024

On Episode 1, we get into 7 US Tax Court cases from 2024 with some solid lessons learned:
Parkway Gravel v. Commissioner - 3:07 - real estate options, C-Corps, partnership, related parties
Schnackel v. Commissioner - 16:09 - cheating husband, disallowed business deductions for cheater
Foradis (Warren) v. Commissioner - 28:15 - Real Estate Pro status blown up
Maggard v. Commissioner - 37:02 - S-Corp income allocation, embezzlement, Operating Agreement rant
Schwarz v. Commissioner - 49:09 - bad accounting, conglomerate of activities, losses disallowed as hobby
Huffman v. Commissioner - 1:01:17 - stock options subject to gift tax, personal goodwill as C-Corp play
Strom v. Commissioner - 1:12:06 - dot com bubble crash, $100MM W2, sham tax structuring