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Alyssa McBride, CPA •

Do you want to save money on your taxes without having to spend any extra money? A tactic called “itemized bunching” could be the way to go. Itemized deductions are used in lieu of your standard deduction, $6,300 for a Single taxpayer and $12,600 for Married filing Jointly, and can amount to significant tax savings. You can get deductions for a number of expenses, including medical expenses, tax payments, mortgage interest payments, charitable contributions and others.  If you itemize and decide you want to save $50 in taxes at year-end you would have to donate an additional $125 - $500 (depending on your tax rate). Instead, you can use itemized bunching to prepay an expense for no additional cost. 

Nora Tellifson, CPA •

The holidays are approaching, and who doesn’t appreciate the gift of cash? I find that there’s a lot of confusion out there surrounding personal gifting so let’s demystify that because it’s very powerful, and you can do a lot without incurring any reporting requirements. I am not referring to charitable contributions here which are amounts you give to a charitable organization and may be deductible for income tax purposes. A personal gift occurs whenever you give something personally to someone (a family member or friend usually) and do not receive something back in consideration. For purposes of our discussion, I am going to stick to personal gifts of cash. Just be aware that there are gift considerations when you gift noncash items also. 

The IRS has issued the 2017 standard mileage rates for deducting the cost of operating an automobile. Both business and medical mileage rates have decreased for the second year in a row. 
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Dana Bull, CPA •
 
The filing of Form 1099s is a hot topic with the IRS right now. Deadlines for filing Form 1099-MISC have been moved up to January 31, 2017 (from February 29 in 2016) and maximum penalties have also increased. It is more important than ever that you familiarize yourself with the filing requirements and properly file all 1099s. ​
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Nora Tellifson, CPA •

Since the holiday season is almost upon us, it’s a good time to discuss the rules surrounding business gifts.  Gifts to clients, employees, vendors, prospects and other business partners are legitimate business deductions within certain parameters.  First of all, the tax deduction is limited to $25 total per person per year.  So if you give your largest, best customer a $200 bottle of scotch, he or she will appreciate it very much, but you can only deduct $25.  If you give the same $200 bottle of scotch to the ten office workers in your best client’s office to share, it works out to $20 per person, and you can deduct $200.  However, those office workers aren’t going to get much work done after that, which would not be appreciated by your best client so consider a fruit basket or cookies instead! 
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