Happy Tax Day! You’ve probably read a ton of lists by now advising you about last minute filing tips and how to reduce your tax bill. That’s all good stuff. But as you finish up the last minute scramble to get yourtaxes filed, here’s a quick list of what not to do:
1. Fib on your taxes and think you’ll pay later.Don’t cheat to get your money faster – or to avoid paying what you owe now. Lying on your return is wrong. It’s also criminal. Even assuming that you don’t get charged criminally for fraud, the IRS does track patterns of tax behaviors: if they notice a pattern of bad filing behavior (filing now to avoid paying, for example), you’ll eventually be flagged. In addition to slowing future refunds, causing delays in processing and potentially increasing your audit risk, you’ll also get socked with a pretty nasty tax bill. You’ll eventually have to pay what you owe plus penalty and interest.
2. Call your tax professional for anything other than an extension.Lean in closely for this one and listen very carefully. Your tax professional may be awesome. Your tax professional may love you as a client. Your tax professional may be thrilled to have your business. But – and this is important – your tax professional doesn’t want to hear from you today. Really. Unless you’re filing for an extension, put the phone down. It isn’t likely that you can bring in your tax information for the first time on Tax Day and expect to file a reasonably correct tax return on time: all you can do at this point in most circumstances is file for extension. And if you’ve found a mistake on your return? You’ll want to amend using good ol’ form 1040X… next week. Not today. It’s been a long, busy season. Cut your tax professional a break.
3. Spend your refund when it’s not in pocket. If your tax return says that Uncle Sam owes you money – and not the other way around – the temptation is to want to spend it. Right now. And why not? It’s good news, right? But don’t rush to the web to plan that dream vacation or plop a deposit down on a brand new car until you actually have cash in pocket. There could be a delay in processing your return or you could be subject to offset. You might have made a calculation error, overstated a deduction or understated your income. Your refund might be held due to concerns about a duplicate Social Security number or an injured spouse claim. Most of the time, IRS gets it right and statistically, refunds were processed fairly quickly this year. ButVisa V +0.37% doesn’t accept “I’m eventually getting a tax refund” for payment. So be smart, plan ahead and don’t spend your refund in advance.
4. Head out for the post office at 4:55pm. If you’re going to have a Murphy’s Law moment, it’s bound to be on Tax Day. According to a study in the Journal of the American Medical Association, deaths from traffic accidents rise 6% on Tax Day. Combine the rush with the extra stress – and in many parts of the country today (including mine), some pretty terrible weather and you’re bound to increase your odds of something bad happening. And even assuming that something terrible doesn’t happen (and I hope that it doesn’t), you don’t want to take a chance on missing that postmark. Check the post office website for post offices with extended hours today – or better yet, leave a few minutes early.
5. Call the IRS. On a routine day, the chances of the IRS actually picking up the phone are about 7 in 10. And if you are one of the lucky taxpayers to get through to IRS, you’re going to have to wait. On Tax Day, those statistics are even more dire. Don’t assume that you can camp out at your phone today and still meet your filing deadline. If you’re worried about timing, you need to file for an extension and figure it out later (but see #7).
6. Forget to sign your return. I know the feeling. You are so glad to be done that you swoop out of the office, tax return in hand on your way to have Tax Day done for good. Don’t be so glad to be done that you forget to sign your return. A tax return is not considered timely filed if you don’t sign it properly – and if you’re married, that means both spouses have to sign. So take a moment to look your return over and make sure that your signature is at the bottom.
This week’s tax map presents the highest individual income tax rates in each state for 2015 (full report on state income tax rates: here). Income taxes are a major, and often complicated, component of state revenues. Furthermore, unlike sales or excise taxes which individuals pay indirectly, income taxes are levied directly on individuals, meaning that income taxes are usually featured prominently in any discussion of tax burdens and public policies.
Income taxes are structured in many different ways throughout the states. Some are flat systems with one rate for all income, while other states offer progressive systems taxing different levels of income at different rates, and some states have no income tax at all.
These taxes are also subject to change: over the past two years, eight states (Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Massachusetts, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, and Wisconsin) and the District of Columbia reduced income taxes, and one state (Minnesota) increased income taxes.
For the most up-to-date data available on current state tax rates and brackets, standard deductions, and per-filer personal exemptions for individuals filing singly, see our report here.
Before 1913, federal income taxes were rare and short-lived. America became the most prosperous nation on earth. The U.S. Government did not try to police the world or play “nanny” to everyone from cradle to grave. People took responsibility for themselves, their families, and their communities. That is how the founders of America thought it should be. And it worked. It can again!
APRIL 11, 2015 LAST UPDATED: SATURDAY, APRIL 11, 2015, 1:21 AM
BY HUGH R. MORLEY
STAFF WRITER |
THE RECORD
* Local entrepreneurs lay out their case to be on CNBC show
Lisa Nejjar had one last weapon to wield in her effort to woo the young reality TV casting agent from the CNBC show “Shark Tank” sitting at the table in front of her.
Nejjar, a 41-year-old former nurse from Lyndhurst, had laid out on the table a dozen samples of her company’s product — a stretchy waist band called a “fusion belt” — that can hold keys, money and other items while the wearer exercises.
In fast-paced patter, she had touted her $60,000 in sales since launching the product eight months ago, her new partnership with another waistband maker, the fact that she had “sunk all my 401(k) into it”; and her three patents. She even offered the agent a couple of free samples.
“And I’m Italian and from New Jersey,” she added, alluding to the prevalence of people from that demographic in reality TV shows, and laughed a little self-consciously. “I’ve got to push.”
Nejjar won’t know for a while if she makes it onto the show, but there was no shortage of hopefuls like her at Rutgers Business School in Newark Friday, when the show held auditions for its upcoming season, its seventh.
And the bottom 20%? They get paid by Uncle Sam. We compare tax burdens as Tax Day approaches.
By
LAURA SAUNDERS
April 10, 2015 9:59 a.m. ET
Who pays what in income taxes? With April 15 just around the corner, filers may be curious about where they fit into the system as a whole.
The individual income tax remains the most important levy in the U.S., providing nearly half of federal revenue. This is unusual: On average, developed nations get only one-third of their revenue from income taxes. Typically they also impose national consumption taxes, such as a value-added tax, that raise as much revenue as their income tax.
The pressure on the U.S. income tax has prompted lawmakers on both sides of the aisle to seriously consider a national consumption tax. But liberals worry that such a levy could unduly burden the poor, while conservatives fear it would be too easy to dial up the rate and collect more revenue.
As a result, experts say, there is little chance of tax overhaul this year.
Meanwhile, these two tables offer a snapshot of who is paying what for the 2014 tax year.
Jamie Dimon warns next crisis could see ‘more volatile’ markets
Tom Braithwaite in New York
Jamie Dimon, chief executive of JPMorgan Chase, said the next financial crisis should see “more volatile” markets and a “rapid decline in valuations” because regulators have hamstrung the banks.
In his annual letter to shareholders, Mr Dimon said recent schisms in Treasury and currency markets were a “warning shot across the bow”.
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He devoted three pages to a “thought exercise” on what might happen in the next crisis, warning that the ability of JPMorgan and other banks to act as shock absorbers had been dramatically hindered by new capital and liquidity rules.
Mr Dimon has been known as one of the few bank chief executives willing to challenge the regulatory architecture put in place since the 2008 crisis. Some of the individual warnings have been aired before but never woven into a Dimon crisis scenario.
APRIL 2, 2015 LAST UPDATED: FRIDAY, APRIL 3, 2015, 10:26 AM
BY HUGH R. MORLEY
STAFF WRITER |
THE RECORD
Irwin Lipkin, the 76-year-old Paramus man who was the first non-family employee to get hired by swindler Bernard Madoff’s firm, has had his sentencing for his role in Madoff’s Ponzi scheme delayed again, for health reasons.
A judge moved the sentencing from April 10 to May 13 at the request of Lipkin’s attorney, who said doctors have “uncovered potential issues of dementia” and “cardiac related issues,” court records show.
Attorney Richard Galler, of Hackensack, who said his client also has a kidney condition, sought a 30-day delay in sentencing while doctors prepare reports on his ailments.
“It was adjourned a month because part of the plea bargain says that he is allowed to have a reduction because of his health condition,” said Galler, adding that the deal allows Lipkin to face a maximum of 10 years in prison. His sentencing has been delayed a number of times.
Lipkin, who joined Madoff and his wife at the firm, Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities, in 1964, retired as controller in 1998. He pleaded guilty in November 2012 to conspiracy to commit securities fraud, falsifying records and making false filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Despite his plea, he contended that he was unaware of the Ponzi scheme when he worked at the company.
Lipkin, who has a residence in Delray Beach, Fla., as well as his Paramus home, pleaded guilty from a wheelchair. “He is not well,” said Galler. “He spends most of his time in his house.”
The Science Fiction Behind Paul Krugman’s Economics, Part One
Paul Krugman, a few years ago, wrote at length to extol the magnum opus of science fiction grandmaster Isaac Asimov, the Foundation Trilogy. Prof. Krugman’s reflections thereon are of keen interest.
I met Asimov once, 40+ years ago, at a world science fiction convention. I even got him to autograph my Science Fiction Book Club copy of “The Foundation Trilogy.” This compilation of three novels is an SF classic. I, then and since, found it too dull to read in full. (Asimov’s I, Robot then was much more engaging to this long-ago SF geek. But nothing Asimov wrote really rivaled Heinlein’s early, nor Arthur C. Clarke’s best, novels.)
Prof. Paul Krugman, galactically more influential than me, declares that he found the the Foundation Trilogy his formative inspiration. Therein hangs a tale: one of technocracy, which he exalts, versus mere common sense.
(Reuters) – U.S. cable T.V. operator Cablevision Systems Corp (CVC.N) is planning to make an offer for the New York Daily News as early as this week, valuing the troubled tabloid at just $1, according to a person familiar with the matter.
The offer would come one month after New York media and real estate magnate Mortimer Zuckerman said he was considering selling the newspaper and had hired Lazard Ltd (LAZ.N) to assist with the process. It underscores the declining readership and plunging advertising revenue that have plagued the tabloid for years.
Cablevision’s $1 bid takes into account the New York Daily News’ reported $30 million annual loss and $150 million investment in a printing press, and declining circulation that relies heavily on newsstand sales rather than on subscriptions, the source said.
The source asked not to be identified because the offer has not been formally presented yet. Cablevision declined to comment while a representative for the New York Daily News could not immediately be reached for a comment.
To be sure, newspapers are not the only part of the media industry which is struggling. Cable distributors such as Cablevision and its larger rivals have also been under pressure to stop consumers from dumping their cable subscriptions, or “cutting the cord”, as subscribers shift to internet services such as Netflix and Hulu.
Cablevision also owns the suburban newspaper Newsday. The company, which is controlled by New York’s Dolan family, said last month its number of video customers fell 4.7 percent to 2.68 million in the fourth quarter ended Dec. 31.
Northern Bergen office vacancies skyrocket as companies flee New Jersey’s Anti Business Climate
MARCH 29, 2015 LAST UPDATED: SUNDAY, MARCH 29, 2015, 1:21 AM
BY LINDA MOSS
STAFF WRITER |
THE RECORD
* Shifting preferences are likely to alter the look of many now-empty large corporate campuses
Northern Bergen County, once a magnet for corporations, has lost some of its luster as a number of companies leave the area, sending its office vacancy rate soaring to nearly 40 percent, according to one real estate firm.
In the first quarter so far, the northern corridor of the county, including towns like Montvale and Park Ridge, had 2.25 million square feet of its total 5.8 million square feet of office space unoccupied, according to JLL, a real estate firm with offices in East Rutherford.
That translates to a 39 percent vacancy rate in the quarter, up 70 percent from the year-ago period’s 23 percent, JLL reported.
The Hertz Corp.’s former headquarters in Park Ridge, a 226,000-square-foot property, is on the block after the auto-rental giant’s relocation to Estero, Fla. And Pearson Education’s exit a few months ago from its leafy campus in Upper Saddle River added 475,000 square feet of vacant office space.
“You’ve got almost a million square feet just in Montvale,” said JLL Managing Director Tom Reilly.
Vacancy rates could rise even higher when Mercedes-Benz USA moves its U.S. headquarters from Montvale, where it has three buildings, to Atlanta over the next couple of years. That relocation, announced in January, would add as much as 310,300 square feet of vacant space in the region.
(Bloomberg) — Everyone runs into death and taxes. New Jerseyans trundle on toward an afterlife in tax hell.
“I can afford to retire here,” said Susan Barbey, a 60-year-old resident of Ridgewood, about 20 miles (32 kilometers) from Manhattan. “I can’t afford to die here.” (Young/Bloomberg)
What the Domino’s CEO Would Change on Taxes, Obamacare
Stephen Moore / @StephenMoore / March 22, 2015
Here’s a question that has been puzzling Patrick Doyle, the CEO of Domino’s, for months, as he puts it: “How do we list the calorie content of our pizzas on a menu when we have 34 million different variations of pizza?” The new menu labeling law, a creation of the Affordable Care Act, could require his company to do just that.
It’s a textbook case of a mindless and arcane regulation, of Washington bureaucrats imposing on businesses costs that will have no effect on public health. “We’ve been voluntarily doing menu labeling for over a decade,” Doyle says. “We even have an online calorie calculator we call the ‘Calo-Meter’ for every possible pizza order, and it tells customers what happens if they substitute, say, sausage for mushrooms, because we strive to be very nutrition-conscious.”
That isn’t good enough for the feds. The Food and Drug Administration is now insisting that every one of the chain’s 5,000 stores post menu boards on the wall with calorie counts. “It’s crazy and it doesn’t help consumers,” Doyle says, because “90 percent of Domino’s orders arrive by phone or Internet and are for delivery, so fewer than one of 10 customers will ever see these signs.” The signs will cost about $2,000 at every store, and each change of menu will require new ones. That is about $10 million of extraneous costs nationwide for Domino’s. Thank you, Washington.
Other than that, Doyle is having a good day when I visit him at the Domino’s world-wide headquarters in Ann Arbor, Mich. And a very good year, with sales up 12 percent in the past quarter alone.
The headquarters are a few miles up the road from where the original Domino’s Pizza opened in 1960. Doyle, who is 51, is tall, stocky, affable and appropriately a Michigan man through and through, having grown up in Midland and earned a degree at the University of Michigan. In his five years as CEO, annual sales have climbed to $9 billion from about $2 billion. Some 250,000 workers wear a Domino’s uniform and sell roughly one billion pizzas each year. During the Super Bowl, Domino’s was taking a dizzying 1,400 orders a minute.
Making pizzas may not be the sexiest business—though it’s a $125 billion world-wide market. But while investors obsess over finding the next Facebook, the share price of Domino’s has soared from $13 in 2010 to just over $100 today. It has been among the top performing stocks in the Fortune 100.
Doyle has helped take the company global, with stores operating in 80 nations and expansion plans throughout Asia. In sales, Domino’s is now the No. 1 restaurant chain in India. Sub-Saharan Africa is also among the company’s fastest-growing markets, with a billion people and a growing middle class. “We’ve discovered Africans love pizza,” he says. “They order them on their mobile phones.”
Things weren’t always flying so high in Ann Arbor. Doyle became CEO after two of the company’s worst years, and sales were still sliding. One of his first decisions was to take an unorthodox approach: “We held a series of focus groups with consumers and we discovered that people hated the pizza. So we ran these TV ads featuring Americans complaining about how bad Domino’s pizza tasted.” Then Doyle appeared on screen with an apology and promise: “We hear you America. Sometimes you know you’ve got to make a change. Please give us another try.”
He adds with a laugh that the one thing in his career that impressed his children was when they were in a New York restaurant and comedian Amy Poehler spotted him and shouted, “Hey, you’re the pizza guy.”
In the three months following those ads, Domino’s had its fastest rise in sales in company history. “I think consumers really appreciated that we were direct and honest with them,” he explains. That ad campaign is now considered a textbook crisis-management story, with its lesson in honesty as a best commercial policy.
Domino’s is also riding the digital revolution. “In a lot of ways we’re really a technology company,” Doyle says. “We’ve adapted the art of pizza-making to the digital age. Globally, we’re already at a run rate of about $4 billion of digital sales.” He adds that digital drives sales by making ordering easier and more efficient, and saves money on bad orders because customers “take their own orders so they make fewer mistakes.”
His goal is to have every iPhone in the world equipped with a Domino’s app, and the company is working with Ford Motor Co. on a voice-activated technology that will let motorists order a large thin-crust pepperoni with onions while driving home from work.
The atmosphere at company headquarters feels more like Silicon Valley than a fast-food company. Most employees here are computer programmers and technicians monitoring in real time what people are ordering, how long it is taking to fill an order, and the online complaints and comments that stream in. Their mission is to streamline the pizza-making process from the time the order arrives to when the pie is handed off at the customer’s front door. If the goal is delivery in 30 minutes or less, every innovation that shaves 10 or 15 seconds is a major money saver when you’re selling a billion pies a year. Although the Domino’s menu also includes such things as sandwiches, pasta and chicken wings, 80 percent of its sales are pizzas.
Doyle is unconditionally bullish on the U.S. economy. “The big story since the recession is that American households and businesses have become lean and efficient and have paid down debts. Consumers finally have money and they are starting to spend it,” he says.
Meanwhile, as the head of one of the nation’s biggest employers, Doyle sees the effects of what he calls a “tightening of the labor market” firsthand. “Frankly, right now, it’s getting harder and harder to hire. We have shortages of truck drivers and delivery people.”
Such real-world experience makes Domino’s a barometer of sorts. “My take is that the official statistics are underestimating the strength of the labor market. Look, it has been a long, slow recovery. We’re now six years into it and we’ve finally reached the point where there seems to be more demand for labor than there is trained supply.” For job seekers “that is great news, right?”
As for those who fret that only the rich are getting richer and upward mobility isn’t possible, Doyle says they should pay more attention to what happens at Domino’s. “Over 90 percent of our 900 franchisees started as an hourly worker in the store,” he says. “Most of them started as delivery drivers at minimum wage. They work their way up. They become a manager. Then they come in, they apply to buy a store.” So from earning $7 or $8 an hour, they now earn $80,000 to $100,000 by operating a franchise. Many have become millionaires. “This is absolutely a story of upward mobility in America.
If he were economic adviser to the president, what reforms would he recommend to accelerate growth and hiring? Without hesitation he says: “Simplify the corporate tax. It’s a killer. We pay 38 percent at Domino’s.” He’s including state and local taxes, but that’s a huge burden, especially given that many large corporations pay below 10 percent. “Just get rid of all the loopholes—and make it fair with a broad base and lower rates.” Then he adds, only half-kidding: “No one in Washington ever woke up and said ‘let’s have a loophole for pizza makers.’” Sounds like he needs a lobbyi
One of Doyle’s biggest worries is that the Domino’s franchise-owner model—which is also used by thousands of other retail and restaurant stores—has come under assault from trial lawyers, unions and the National Labor Relations Board. These groups want to treat a Domino’s or Popeyes franchise store and the parent company as “joint employers.” This would mean a locally owned store with a few dozen staff would still have to comply with, for instance, the ObamaCare rules that only apply to firms with more than 50 workers. Seattle passed a minimum-wage law last year that treats franchise restaurants as big businesses that must pay a super-minimum-wage that phases up to $15 an hour.
“You’ve got 20 million people today employed in the franchise industry in the U.S. Part of why small business owners want to be in a franchise is because they’re getting support from each other, and they’re getting support and ideas from a company. Franchise stores have dramatically higher success rates than people who are just doing it all on their own,” Doyle says. “Why destroy a model that is almost uniquely American and has been a tremendous success for 50 or 60 years? This would be horribly detrimental.”
Doyle is optimistic about the world economy and how the digital revolution will continue to lift living standards for billions in the coming decade. Even in sub-Saharan Africa per capita incomes are growing at 5 percent annually. “I’m a free trader. I just believe in my core that free markets, technology, innovation, cheap energy and globalization will be triumphant and will make people better off.” They will also, not coincidentally, make people order more pizzas on their smartphones.
New Jersey Last again tops nation in auto insurance rates and only lower gas prices are keeping state from most expensive place to own a car.
March 23,2015
the staff of the Ridgewood blog
Ridgewood NJ, The National Association of Insurance Commissioners says New Jersey motorists paid an average of $1,220 in 2012. That’s about 49 percent more than the national average of $815.https://newjersey.news12.com/news/report-new-jersey-tops-nation-in-auto-insurance-rates-1.10103446
A lesser known fact is that New Jersey is now the 5th most expensive state to own a car , with only lower gas prices ie gas taxes keeping us from last place . ( https://www.bankrate.com/finance/auto/car-ownership-costs-by-state.aspx )
Bankrate analyzed the cost of gasoline, repairs and insurance in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. Labor and parts data were provided by CarMD.com, while gas spending was calculated with statistics from GasBuddy.com and the Bureau of Transportation Statistics. Insurance costs were compiled from National Association of Insurance Commissioners statistics.( https://www.bankrate.com/finance/auto/car-ownership-costs-by-state.aspx#ixzz3VDEPJ73V )
Fed whistleblower quits Wall Street, weighs book
By Kevin Dugan
March 20, 2015 | 11:53am
Carmen Segarra, the Wall Street whistleblower who secretly recorded 46 hours of private conversations with her fellow regulators — casting a light on the sometimes too cozy relationship between the New York Fed and the banks it oversees — is considering writing a book, The Post has learned.
Segarra, a lawyer, left her job at Barclays in New York earlier this month after Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen, in a March 3 speech, appeared to refer to Segarra’s rocky relationship with her then-Fed colleagues.
“It is important that anyone serving the Fed feel safe speaking up when they have concerns,“ Yellen said in her speech in New York City before the Citizens Budget Commission.
“It’s been an ongoing drain [for Segarra],” a person familiar with Segarra told The Post, talking about the publicity following her going public with her New York Fed issues.
Segarra does not yet have a book deal or even an agent, according to one person familiar with her plans.
Segarra’s 2011-2012 tapes were made public in September when WBEZ’s “This American Life” aired a report on regulators at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York shrinking before bankers at Goldman Sachs over a “legal, but shady” deal.
To say that Los Angeles merely failed would be putting it mildly.
Earlier this week, the nonpartisan RAND Corporation released a study that helps demolish the argument that governments (cities, in this case) can socially engineer away residents’ obesity by restricting food freedom.
The study, funded by the National Cancer Institute, focuses on a ridiculous, controversial, seven-year-old zoning ban on new fast food restaurants in South Los Angeles. To say that the measure merely failed would be putting it mildly.
“Since the fast-food restrictions were passed in 2008, overweight and obesity rates in South Los Angeles and other neighborhoods targeted by the law have increased faster than in other parts of the city or other parts of the county,” reads a RAND press release on the study.
Well then.
“The South Los Angeles fast food ban may have symbolic value, but it has had no measurable impact in improving diets or reducing obesity,” said lead author Roland Sturm of RAND.
The RAND study results represent some of the best evidence to date that policies that restrict food freedom do no make people healthier. The failure and repeal of Denmark’s so-called “fat tax” and damning research on mandatory menu labeling are two other convincing examples.
