We’ve all seen the Tax Day cocktail videos on TikTok and YouTube. But while taxpayers need liquid courage on April 15, we know tax professionals need it long before then. So, in addition to providing tax tips to help you survive tax season, we thought our subscribers could use guidance on liquid flow rather than cash flow.

Below are our top five cocktails to help you enjoy (or at least endure) tax season.

The Up All Night*

For those marathon nights leading up to March 15 and April 15, combine in a cocktail shaker:

• Ice
• Coffee liqueur
• Hazelnut liqueur
• Tequila (because decisions were made)
• Coffee cold brew (because it’s all about productivity)
• A dash of B complex with vitamin B12 (pretending we care about health)
• Aqua fava (fancy garbanzo bean juice — don’t ask questions)

Shake vigorously to take out your frustrations, pour into a coupe glass, and sprinkle with some crushed espresso beans. Pairs well with Schedule C reconciliations.

The Math Hard*

When numbers are no longer making sense, these numbers will definitely help — at least when poured into an ice-filled tumbler:

• New Deals Gin #1
• Tequila #1800 Verdano Blanco
• 19 Acres Very Berry Hard Cider
• 7-Up
• 151 Rum

Warning: After consuming, you may find the standard deduction suddenly seems quite reasonable.

The IRS*

Forget the Internal Revenue Service — enjoy your very own IRS: Ice cream, Rum, and Stout.  Just pour stout into a beer mug, add a little coffee rum, and top it off with some chocolate ice cream. Your staff will be far more willing to spend three hours on hold with the other IRS with one of these in hand.

Pro tip: Every time the hold music restarts, take a sip.

The Margin of Error**

Because we all build in a little cushion, right? Just pour one ounce whiskey and 0.75 ounce elderflower liqueur into an ice-filled cocktail shaker. Shake, strain over fresh ice, and top with a splash of seltzer.

Consume while explaining to clients why their “estimated” taxes were only off by $12,000.

The Painkiller***

When 60-70–hour weeks have become 80-90–hour weeks, pour into a cocktail shaker:

• 2 tablespoons orange juice (Vitamin C counts!)
• 4 ounces 100% pineapple juice
• 2 ounces dark rum (or 4, we won’t judge)
• 1 ounce cream of coconut

Add ice, shake, strain into a highball or hurricane glass, and top with freshly grated nutmeg.

Recommended serving: After filing your 47th extension of the day.

Drink responsibly. Remember alcohol is no longer deductible even if served for the convenience of the employer, or for entertaining your clients, as entertaining as you may be … or may become.

For a moment it looked like the tax world was about to be taken over by PokéTax, but accountants can now breathe a sigh of relief. At least for now, PokéTax has been sidelined .

Last April, Pryce Adade-Yebesi, the 24-year-old co-founder and CEO of OpenLedger, unveiled PokéTax, a new game that uses Tax Trainers, representing different parts of a tax form, like income, deduction, and credits (put me on the exclusion team please!), to complete a tax return. Once the “run” is finished, the player is directed to the IRS Direct File site to officially submit the return.¹

PokéTax Tax Trainers ask players various questions to help them win deduction badges. An article cites questions such as “How much did you receive from pensions and annuities?” and “How much did you receive in unemployment compensation?”

I must confess, I thought that was really boring. I mean think of the questions that the standard Pokémon characters might ask:

Pokémon Trainer Style: “How many Poké-pension coins did you collect this season?”

Professor Oak Style: “Now then! Tell me, how much experience points did your retirement account earn?”

Team Rocket Style: “Prepare for trouble, make it double! To protect our tax returns from devastation! Now tell us — what’s your retirement compensation?”

Pokémon Center Nurse Joy Style: “Welcome! I hope your retirement portfolio is in good health! How much did it grow this year?”

Gym Leader Challenge Style: “Before you can pass, challenger, you must declare: What retirement experience did you gain to get here?”

There are various characters that may assist a player through the game, such as Deductoise and  Auditmandar, and players can use moves like “Audit Dodge,” “Tax Blast,” “W-2 Flamethrower,” and “Refund Rush.”²

But alas, tax pros are going to have some time to get their game on in preparation for these tax world games. With the IRS’s tabling of Direct File this year, it appears that PokéTax will not be playing this filing season.

Also note that in 2023, there was the dating-style game Tax Heaven 3000, where users went on a date with an avatar named Iris who asked questions to help complete a tax form. But that was only available for the 2022 tax filing year.  We will have to see what games are released next.

Sometimes criminals seem to get off way too easy. Take Mr. Christopher J. Smyth of Pineville, West Virgina. Mr. Smyth owned Stat EMS, an emergency medical service (EMS) business (aka an ambulance business). Mr. Smythe racked up over $4.6 million in trust fund penalties for pilfering income taxes withheld from his employees for over a decade.

And this wasn’t the first time! Mr. Smyth created Stat EMS after his previous EMS business went bankrupt for, you guessed it, unpaid employment tax liabilities.

This time around, Mr. Smyth received three years of prison time for corruption and forcible interference with administration of internal revenue laws and a super-duper cumbersome repayment plan:

• $25 to be paid per quarter during his three-year incarceration period; then
• Monthly payments of not less than 15% of his monthly gross earnings with a minimum of $100 per month.

Now, when Mr. Smyth was interviewed by an IRS revenue officer, he stated that he had no personal bank accounts and denied that he used anyone else’s. In reality, he made regular deposits into a relative’s bank account and tried denying that he had any involvement in a series of other businesses, despite having signature authority over their bank accounts.

Something tells me that Mr. Smyth is experienced at hiding his income and assets (at least on paper), so the chances of the federal government collecting more than the minimum $100 per month from him once his incarceration ends seems like a stretch. At that rate, in his lifetime, he’ll never repay even a couple of months’ worth of interest on $4.6 million.

I, for one, am not that kind. Mr. Smyth is the type of person who makes you want to bring back good old fashioned medieval English punishments. Maybe I’m mean and cruel, but that’s okay with me. Mark me down as one year older and one year more curmudgeonly.

I recently bought a volume of the works of Edgar Allan Poe during lunch, and I admit I wasted over an hour of work time that I should have spent reading OTA appeals, or pulling together podcast content, or writing articles to instead read favorites like “The Tell-Tale Heart” and, of course, “The Raven.”

But some good did come of it because I thought AI might do a good job of creating a spoof poem of “The Raven.” The results were pretty good, but you know the rule — don’t just rely on what AI pumps out — so I also tweaked it. I’m sure I committed various tense shifts, approximate rhymes, and scansion that leaves a lot to be desired, among other crimes of poetry. Hopefully, I won’t have to eat crow.

“The Haven”

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of offshore lore—
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of someone gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
“‘Tis some auditor,” I muttered, “tapping at my chamber door—
Only this and nothing more.”

Ah, distinctly I remember, it was in the bleak December;
And each asset in my portfolio wrought its ghost upon the floor.
Eagerly I wished the morrow; vainly I had sought to borrow
Respite from my wealth-born sorrow—sorrow for my dwindling store—
For the rare and radiant fortune that the angels name “secure”—
Taxed here forevermore.

Then a whisper, softly creeping, as if some dark secret keeping,
Spoke of islands far and distant, spoke of shores with golden store.
“Take thy wealth across the water, hide it there from those who bother,
Let no tax man ever gather what is rightfully your lore.
In these havens, safe and hidden, you shall prosper evermore—
Shall be poor, ah, nevermore!”

Now my coffers, ever growing, with the wealth forever flowing
To accounts where none may follow, to that far and distant shore.
And my assets from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor
Shall be taxed here—nevermore!

Another Tribune season is coming to a close as April 15, 2025, fast approaches. Congratulations on almost crossing the finish line!

Have you noticed that among our Tribune topics, food plays a significant role? From timeless tax time treats to national Egg McMuffin Day to caffeine and ayahuasca, to “good snacks that change weekly with a combination of healthy and some not-so-healthy,” per Mike Giangrande — it’s clear that a successful tax season is both sweet and savory.

So it’s appropriate that everyone say farewell to the Tribune for now and toast filing season survival with some special cocktails and hors d’oeuvres. Click here and let the celebrations begin!

Starting next week, Spidell’s California Minute^® podcast returns for its 10th season. Spidell’s Federal Tax Minute^® follows on April 22.  

We look forward to staying connected and providing you with everything you need to know about California and federal tax issues.

In the meantime, relax with a cheese puff.

It’s been a couple of years since we’ve sweetened the Tribune with a PEEP delight. But have no fear, PEEPs are returning this year in style … and I mean literally in style.

We know people are regularly tuned in to the annual “PEEPs show” where people can put their Peepsonality on full display by creating art pieces and dioramas with PEEPs:

www.peepsbrand.com/art-diorama-contests/

There are a plethora of PEEPs recipes, including ones for a PEEPtini and PEEP Jello-shots, which will definitely come in handy on April 15:

www.delish.com/holiday-recipes/easter/g3312/peeps-hacks/

But some people are taking PEEPs to a whole new level and are coming out with PEEP clothing, using actual PEEPs:

www.facebook.com/craftymorning/posts/save-those-peeps-so-you-can-get-started-on-your-easter-dress-credit-httpswwwinst/661486856217294/

www.lovetosewstudio.com/take-a-look-at-this-peep-fashion-show/

Being the doomsdayer that I can be, one of my first thoughts (after “wow, people really went there”) was “I just hope there are no April showers” because that could give a whole new meaning to a “PEEP show” …. Ba dum dum.

Recently, Chip Leighton, author of New York Times Bestseller “What Time is Noon,” shared on Instagram some classic texts from kids (who were attempting to handle their own taxes) to their parents.¹ The children are our future, and they want to know:

• Do I just give the tax guy my WD40?
• What do you use for taxes? Geico?
• Do I just take my stuff to the taxidermist’s office?
• I thought W2 was a band.
• Am I a ward of the state?
• Have I ever worked for the railroad?
• Do we live in a halfway house?

Thanks to everyone who submitted creative ways to punish those tax clients who make things more difficult than they should be during tax season.  Here are a few final punishments suggested by Stacie D.:

“I want to hang water balloons on the ceiling above where the clients sit. I also want a remote control to release them. Because for some reason, almost everyone I ask about business miles seems to think it’s written up on the ceiling above them!  If the balloons were to drop and peg them once, or twice, they’d remember this is supposed to be documented and supported…and it’s not written on my ceiling.

I would love to hand out, free of charge, a gift bag of manure for every farmer who has sales of $10,100-$10,300 every single year.

A tube of lipstick for the clients who bring in numbers that we call “Revlon.” Because it is all make up.

And tiny fiddles for all the clients that balk about bringing in proof for due diligence for child tax credits. According to them, we’re the ONLY place that requires this. Um, yeah, ok.”

It’s the year 2042, and you’ve taken a job on the moon. The commute’s a breeze (no traffic lights in low gravity), your neighbor is a robot named Kevin, and—somehow—the Wi-Fi is better than it ever was on Earth. But just when you’re settling into your space routine, Tax Day shows up, and your screen hits you with the dreaded question: “Please select your state of residence.”

As Mars missions inch closer to reality and space travel becomes less science fiction, it’s only a matter of time before tax pros face their most out-there challenge: figuring out where tax nexus ends… and space begins.

Astronauts employed by NASA are still considered federal employees—and yes, they file returns like the rest of us. But what about a SpaceX technician based on the moon? Or someone mining crypto in a Mars colony? If you’re not physically in any state, does that mean no state income tax? Or will every state want a slice of that sweet, sweet space income?

California might.

Residency rules can get weird even on Earth. Say you move to Nevada but leave a couple things behind in your old L.A. apartment—like your surfboard and a houseplant that’s barely hanging on. That could still be enough for California to stake a claim. Now try explaining that from orbit: “I haven’t set foot in California since the rocket launch, I promise.”

And what about use tax? If you order snacks from Earth to your lunar pod, is that considered a taxable purchase? Asking for a friend who just wants peanut butter pretzels.

There’s also the matter of carbon credits on rocket fuel. And lunar property taxes? Good news: the moon still doesn’t have zoning laws. Yet.

Until the tax code catches up with space life, we recommend staying grounded—literally. For now, you’re still subject to good old earthly rules, even if you’re filing from low Earth orbit. But the day may come when CPAs have to ask: “Did you spend more than 183 days in the thermosphere?”

And when that day comes… we’ll be ready. With solar-powered calculators.

A report from the Tax Foundation suggests that excise taxes on sugary beverages may not be a miracle weight loss solution after all.¹ Many countries, including the United States, slap a tax on sugar-sweetened beverages – the thought is that with the price increase, people will consume less of these beverages, improving health. Apparently, people tend to just go find their sugar elsewhere rather than not consuming it at all.

The report studied sugar-sweetened beverage taxes (SSBTs… not to be confused with SSTBs, specified service trades or businesses for the purposes of the §199A deduction) across Europe and generally found that although the SSBTs successfully increased prices and decreased consumption of targeted beverages, the overall impact on public health remains as flat as day-old soda. When consumers face higher soda prices, they simply substitute other high-calorie options.

SSBTs can incentivize manufacturers to reduce sugar content in their products, for example the UK’s Soft Drinks Industry Levy has different tax rates for beverages containing 5-8g of sugar per 100ml versus those with 8g+ per 100ml. The thresholds create financial incentives for manufacturers to reformulate products to fall just below tax rate bands.

Besides, the report notes, simply reducing sugar will not (on its own) improve health outcomes. There are other studies that suggest that a broader tax on sugar would be more effective in reducing sugar consumption, but could be complex to implement.

The bottom line is that soda taxes may generate some revenue fizz, but when it comes to public health benefits, they’re mostly empty calories.

In its March 21, 2025, issue of CalTaxletter, the California Taxpayers Association shared this Tax Trivia factoid explaining how 40,000 people came to have the same Social Security number. Reprinted with permission.

Q: According to the IRS, “The most misused Social Security number of all time was 078-05-1120,” which has been used by approximately 40,000 people since 1938, when it was shown in a promotion by the manufacturer of what type of product?

A: Wallets. The IRS explains: “In 1938, wallet manufacturer the E. H. Ferree company in Lockport, New York, decided to promote its product by showing how a Social Security card would fit into its wallets. A sample card, used for display purposes, was inserted in each wallet. Company Vice President and Treasurer Douglas Patterson thought it would be a clever idea to use the actual SSN of his secretary, Mrs. Hilda Schrader Whitcher. The wallet was sold by Woolworth stores and other department stores all over the country. Even though the card was only half the size of a real card, was printed all in red, and had the word ‘specimen’ written across the face, many purchasers of the wallet adopted the SSN as their own. In the peak year of 1943, 5,755 people were using Hilda’s number. The Social Security Administration acted to eliminate the problem by voiding the number and publicizing that it was incorrect to use it. (Mrs. Whitcher was given a new number.) However, the number continued to be used for many years. In all, over 40,000 people reported this as their SSN. As late as 1977, 12 people were found to still be using the number.”

(CalTax: We’re not convinced that using a half-sized replica demonstrates that a full-sized card would fit in the wallet, but that’s another story.)

A group of 24 men in Georgia broke the record for the longest basketball game during a charity game to raise money to fight sex trafficking.¹ The new Guiness World Record for a continuous basketball game is 121 hours and 3 minutes, which broke the previous record of 121 hours, set by the same group of men in 2024.²

The players, ages 17 through 64, were required to stay inside the gym the entire time, even during breaks, and were required to eat and sleep on the court.³ The game was played with no quarter breaks or timeouts, and groups of six played two-hour shifts during the day with a five-hour sleeping shift at night.

The final score was 13,096 to 12,972. As compared to the highest scoring game in real March Madness history: in 1990, LMU beat Michigan 149-115.

Well, the answer is an Englishman who had such a “splendid” experience using it the day before that he was compelled to return later with friends and steal it. Of course, it helps that the toilet was made of solid 18-carat gold and was insured for more than $6 million.

The latrine in question was a fully functional one-of-a-kind work of art located at Blenheim Palace – the country mansion where Winston Churchill was born.

The authorities never found the toilet, and it is presumed to have been cut up or melted and sold. I, for one, hoped they melted it down if for no other reason than to sanitize the gold before selling it.

The toilet has an interesting American history because it had previously been on display at The Guggenheim in New York and was reportedly offered to President Trump during his first term in office.

Kansas and Oklahoma both recently eliminated their statewide taxes on groceries (although local taxes may still apply, and sales tax may apply to certain foods), leaving a handful of states that still apply a state-level tax to groceries.¹

The 10 states that still impose a tax on groceries are:

• Alabama: 3%
• Arkansas: 0.125%
• Hawaii: 4% (average) excise tax*
• Idaho: 6%*
• Illinois: 1%
• Mississippi: 7%
• Missouri: 1.225%
• South Dakota: 4.2%
• Tennessee: 4%
• Utah: 3%

* State offers a grocery tax credit

Last year we ran an article on tax season treats. Not surprisingly, tax pros opt for fairly predictable options such as Smarties, Almond Joys, and microwave popcorn (burnt, of course).

But what if tax offices were to follow some of the trends of food makers that are getting far more creative with their culinary delights, such as:¹

• Van Leeuwen Ice Cream’s Hidden Valley Ranch or pizza ice cream;
• Jones Soda’s gravy-flavored soda;
• Oreos’ Sour Patch Kid Oreos;
• IHOP and Lay’s Rooty Tooty Fresh n’ Fruity potato chips, designed to taste like strawberry-topped pancakes with a hint of bacon; and
• United Kingdom’s Walker’s special Christmas-edition brussel spout-flavored potato chips.

So, what would you like to find in your tax office’s break rooms? Here are some AI-inspired suggestions (thanks Claude and ChatGPT!) to perk up your staff:

• Deductible donuts: These special donuts come with a sticky note that says, “100% business expense. Don’t ask questions”;
• Return receipt rolls: Pinwheel sandwiches with different fillings (e.g., baloney and mustard for reviewing your client’s shoe box receipts; turkey and Velveeta cheese for your tax-cheating clients, etc.);
• Audit-approved appetizers: A grazing board with cheese cubes, crackers, and small bite-sized vegetables with dip (how healthy (yawn));
• Write-off waffles: They don’t actually count as a deduction, but we can dream, can’t we?
• IRS-themed fortune cookies: Every fortune just says, “You’re getting audited” ;
• Schedule C cinnamon rolls: Mini cinnamon rolls arranged in a dollar sign pattern;
• Capital gains candy bar: A DIY candy/chocolate bar with various toppings;
• Extension energy bites: No-bake protein balls with oats, peanut butter, and espresso;
• Itemized ingredient cups: Individual fruit and yogurt parfaits;
• April 15th assortment: A countdown calendar with different treats for the final 15 days of tax season;
• Tax bracket tacos: Tiered according to spice level:
• 10%: Mild salsa, easy filing;
• 22%: Spicy but manageable;
• 37%: Ghost pepper — because, at this rate, nothing matters; and
• Bottom line brownies: Brownies cut into dollar sign shapes.

Illinois residents recently voted on a new design for their state flag after considering thirteen options that included ten new designs,¹ the 1918 Centennial flag, the 1968 Sesquicentennial flag, and the current flag. After culling 4,800 design entries and putting the issue to vote, Illinoisans have spoken: keep the current flag.²

Despite being derisively referred to as “SOB” (seal on a bedsheet, in reference to the circular emblem on a plain white field), the current flag received 43% of the votes, more than any other option. Technically, there were more total votes for the new designs, and the Illinois General Assembly will have the final vote, although it’s unlikely they will deviate from voters’ selection.

You can view all 50 state flags, territory flags, and Native American tribal flags at:

https://bit.ly/flags-us-states-territories

Admittedly, I only recognized a couple, and my personal favorite designs are Arizona, Maryland, Utah, and Chinook Nation.

Michigan Chief Judge William Crawford II has canceled the “Walmart Washes” that we reported on last week. The judge who came up with the sentence didn’t seek approval from other court officials, Crawford said, and Walmart headquarters objected to the car washes being held on store property.¹

However, the legal system has yet to weigh in on the following tax season punishments suggested by Tax Season Tribune readers:

“My punishment isn’t for that one client. It is for Congress who writes the laws. I think every Congress member should be required to prepare their own returns, by hand, without a computer.” — Terri H.

“No matter how many times I tell clients not to send me jpegs of their documents via text message, there is always one or two who do. Their punishment should be that I send them their tax return one page at a time as jpegs to their phone. Let’s see how they like it.” — Linda S.

Do you have any other tax season punishments in mind?  Send them to editor@spidell.com.

Dozens of shoplifters hit a Walmart in Grand Blanc, Michigan, over the past few months, but it’s the store’s other shoppers who will be making a clean getaway.

That’s all thanks to Genesee County District Court Judge Jeffrey Clothier, who sentenced the 48 shoplifters to four weekends of free car washes in the store’s parking lot.

"I came up with a wash for Walmart. Everybody who’s here in the courtroom today is going to be doing community service, washing cars, so the people that actually go to Walmart and pay for their goods, they are going to get a free car wash from the people that think it’s a good idea to go there and steal," the judge told a Michigan TV station.¹

According to the Associated Press,² the judge believes as many as 100 people will take part in the Walmart washes this March and April. And they’ll be joined by the judge himself.

Fast food fight

A judge in Ohio cooked up a creative punishment in 2023 after a Chipotle customer threw her burrito bowl at an employee because she didn’t like how it looked.³

Parma Municipal Court Judge Timothy Gilligan said the food-flinging customer could have her jail sentence reduced by 60 days if she spent two months working a fast-food job instead.

“I bet you won’t be happy with the food you are going to get in the jail,” he said.

What would you do?

It’s the middle of tax season, and any tax professional reading this is probably reminded of that one client that is trouble every single year. If you were judge for one day — April 16, let’s say — what punishments would you come up with? Mandatory paperless/PDF account statements for anyone who comes in with a box of unorganized paperwork? Two weeks of work with no days off for anyone who doesn’t give you their W-2s until after April 1?

E-mail us at editor@spidell.com with your punishment ideas and we’ll share them in a future issue.  Here’s one from Mike Giangrande to get you started: “Spend 12 weeks reading the Internal Revenue Code for 8 hours a day. If you fall asleep, you have to start over.”

Tax agencies have long used taxpayer social media accounts to troll for information during an audit. In this TMI age, the IRS and state tax agencies use taxpayer social media accounts to compare taxpayers’ reported income against their visible lifestyle on social media; confirm business service offerings and pricing; check event announcements for possible unreported revenue; and use social connections to reveal potential unreported business relationships.

But even if the taxpayer isn’t the one posting images online, customers might be.

An Orange County, California, nightclub was found to have underreported its taxable sales by approximately $1.85 million after an audit revealed unreliable information regarding its purchases.¹ During an audit from the California Department of Tax and Fee Administration (CDTFA), which administers California’s sales and use taxes, the CDTFA determined that the nightclub’s liquor markup percentage (which was around 40%) was far below normal, indicating understated sales.

Purchase records from the nightclub’s vendors showed beer purchases, but documentation for liquor purchases was largely absent. The CDTFA examined Yelp reviews of the business, where photos and videos showed a fully stocked bar with various name-brand liquors. Based on these images, the CDTFA estimated that the taxpayer’s liquor purchases equaled its beer purchases (a 50:50 ratio).

Using this ratio and a 463.40% markup from a prior undisputed audit (which is a normal markup percentage for a bar/nightclub), the CDTFA calculated unreported taxable sales of $1,854,547, resulting in unpaid tax of $145,000.

Certain styles of building could be the result of creative genius or… tax policy. Here are some examples of architectural design influenced to get around tax laws of the time:¹

1. In the 18th and 19th centuries in England, France, and Ireland, taxes on windows led building owners to brick over existing windows to avoid paying the tax.
2. Narrow houses in Amsterdam were a response to a 16th century building tax that was calculated based on the width of the building’s façade.
3. Paris taxes that were levied on the number of floors below the roof line could be lowered by a Mansard-style roof.
4. In present day Greece, properties with pools are subject to a luxury tax, causing some pool owners to dye the water green so the pool is less visible from satellites searching for pools to tax.

The IRS released its annual Dirty Dozen tax scams, and one of the threats on the list for 2025 is bad social media tax advice.¹ The IRS pointed out that “social media platforms routinely circulate inaccurate or misleading tax information,” (what, really?) “including on TikTok where people share wildly inaccurate tax advice.” For example, the advice being peddled by social media influencers includes:²

1. Oh, look. It’s Mike Giangrande’s favorite topic: anyone and everyone can claim their car as a business expense.
2. Use tax software to create a fake W-2 with large income and withholding amounts, plus a fictitious employer.
3. Claim your 4-pound chihuahua as a guard dog.
4. Invent household workers and file Schedule H to claim fake sick and family medical leave wages.
5. Anyone who’s self-employed can take the “self-employment tax credit” of up to $32,000. (The actual credit applied only to narrow COVID-19–related circumstances in 2020 and 2021.)

The frustrating thing is that when the IRS catches up with the taxpayers who fall for these scams, the taxpayer is the one liable for the tax and penalties; the influencers generally are not held accountable. However, the IRS does encourage reporting anyone promoting an abusive tax scheme by filing a Form 14242, Report Suspected Abusive Tax Promoters or Preparers.

Have you seen the funny desk sign – “I’m silently correcting your grammar”? I love it! I would also like “I’m silently correcting your pronunciation.”

Word has it that English is crazy difficult to learn if it’s not your first language. It reflects our characterization as a melting pot, with a splash of Old Norse, pinches of Latin, a heavy peppering of Germanic variations, a soupcon of French.

So there’s obviously no consistency with pronunciation, which is a real problem. Just consider “tough,” thorough,” “though,” and “through,” and laugh. Then throw in “lough” (pronounced “lok” (Scottish/Irish)), and weep. Check out itsbobbyfinn on Instagram for an entertaining English lesson. He plays both the nerdy scold and his befuddled, frustrated alter ego who can’t pronounce words correctly because they don’t follow a predictable pattern (ear … so, fear … but, bear … but, hear … but, heard … you get the idea).

There can be some stumbling blocks even for those who think they can pronounce everything correctly: synecdoche (si-nek-duh-kee (Greek)), which is a figure of speech where a part of something is used to refer to its whole, e.g., a hired hand is a worker, floccinaucinihilipilification (flok-se-now-suh-ni-hi-li-pil-i-fi-kay-shun (Latin)), which means the act of estimating something as unimportant, and chiaroscuro (kee-ar-o-skoo-ro (Italian)), meaning the treatment of light and shadow in drawing or painting, just to name a few.

And let’s not forget about another English oddity – the silent medial “t.” “Often” is probably the most obvious example and the most oft-repeated. Often has been around since the early 1300s and used as a variant of oft, so the “t” was pronounced early on but then fell away. It’s been making a resurgence, however, so we’re not allowed to considered someone illiterate if they pronounce the “t.” When I hear the “t,” I admit to silently correcting it.

On the other hand, there’s the issue of the silent medial “b.” Consider “subtle.” Under no circumstances should the “b” be pronounced. My colleague heard the “b” included when she was at a restaurant recently and lost her appetite. It was an ignominious (on a top 31 list of mispronounced words) offense.¹

Hope you’re having a great March weekend, being carefree in your floccinaucinihilipilifications, and taking in some of the rural (another top 20²) charms of your area.

According to U.S. Census Bureau data for the period July 1, 2023, and June 30, 2024, South Carolina had the greatest population growth for the second year in a row, while the state with the highest population loss was Hawaii. You can see the other top population changes at:

https://taxfoundation.org/data/all/state/americans-moving-to-states/

While we know most tax professionals will equate March 17 this year with filing partnership and S corporation returns, most of the rest of the world will actually be celebrating dear old St. Paddy.

For those who can’t break away from their desks to celebrate, we thought you’d like to know what’s happening away from your computers:¹

• In Portland, Maine, they’ll be taking the Paddy’s Day Plunge into the Atlantic Ocean at 5:30 a.m., where the average water temperature is around 40 degrees;
• In New Orleans, where a good parade and party can never be resisted, they’ll be flocking down to the Irish Channel neighborhood for a huge street party, where many will be participating in a cabbage food fight;
• Chicago, my old hometown, turns its river bright green, which is definitely a step up from the murky green it used to be; and
• Not to be outdone is Hot Springs, Arkansas, which manages to host an hour-long parade over a 98-foot bridge. How can it be an hour long?  Well, there’s the Blarney Stone kissing contest … and of course Elvis impersonators.

But these celebrations are not limited to Ireland, the U.S., or even the world. In Montserrat, a Caribbean island, the festivities last 10 days, and St. Patrick’s Day, where both the saint and a slave rebellion are celebrated, you’ll find residents partaking in a calypso competition and eating Creole food.

St. Patrick’s Day is even celebrated on the international space station, where you will find the astronauts belting out an out-of-this world rendition of “Danny Boy” and playing the Irish flute.

As for me, I may be sitting at my desk that day, but I’ll not be alone. I’ve found a fabulous new Irish drink: a Boozy Shamrock Shake, with a little vanilla ice cream, milk, Irish crème de menthe, and a not so little amount of Bailey’s Irish Cream. Care to join me?

I recently purchased a Little Golden Book; not one of the vintage titles that we are all familiar with, like “The Poky Little Puppy” or “The Little Red Hen”, but a brand new one. I am well beyond the typical age for a Little Golden Book reader, also I do not have children. But I was equal parts horrified and delighted to see that one of my favorite movies of all time had been turned into a Little Golden Book… “Jaws”.

That’s right, Tribune reader, everyone’s favorite movie featuring blood-stained water, severed limbs, and a haunting retelling of the USS Indianapolis sinking is now a charming book that illustrates opposites, as the little boat chases the big shark. I probably don’t need to tell you that the above-mentioned features have been scrubbed from the storyline. Instead of homemade moonshine and plates of beans and rice, our sailors sing songs over coffee and croissants (also, Quint lives). Spoiler alert: at the end, the shark gets tired and goes home.

I love that Little Golden Books has released bios of famous people such as Lebron James, Zendaya, and Harry Stiles. And their Taylor Swift bio sold 1 million copies in just 7 months.¹  But turning bloody 70s thrillers into children’s books seems weird. Although, when they release the Little Golden Book version of “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre”, you know I’m going to buy it.

Sunday, March 2 is National Egg McMuffin Day, celebrating the 50th anniversary of McDonald’s flagship breakfast menu item. The McMuffin was released in 1975, invented by Herb Peterson, who for some reason was looking for a way to put eggs benedict “in the palm of your hand.”¹

To celebrate, McDonald’s is offering egg McMuffins and sausage McMuffins for $1, only on March 2 and only if you order through the McDonald’s app. For the rest of March, you can get BOGO McMuffins delivered directly to you via the McDelivery option in the app.

In last week’s Tribune, I wrote an article titled “Business” autos: The bane of my existence.” If you missed out, you can read it here: https://bit.ly/41d3iV4

I think I hit a raw nerve with many of our readers because I received more direct e-mail responses to that article than any other article I have written in my nine years with Spidell. I responded to many, but the time constraints of tax season prohibited me from responding to everyone.

I take comfort in knowing that so many of us go through the same struggles and are confronted with the same client frustrations.

I communicate with so many tax professionals through e-mail, webinar Q&As, Message Board responses, and good old-fashioned face-to-face conversation at live seminars. I am always comforted when I hear another person in our industry let down their guard and admit to the annoyances in their practice or lament the errors they made along the way.

I don’t take pleasure in the hardship of others, but I take comfort in knowing that whatever I’m going through in my practice, nearly everyone else has gone through it, too.

I may not be able to respond to every e-mail that comes my way, but if you need to let it out, you know where to reach me: mikeg@spidell.com

It’s not the name of a band, it’s the revered beings responsible for everyone’s favorite energy elixir, 2.25 billion cups of which are consumed daily worldwide.¹ According to legend, Kaldi the Ethiopian goat herder discovered coffee when he noticed that his goats became energetic and would not sleep at night after eating berries from a certain tree. They were eating coffee cherries, and coffee beans are the seeds inside. Here are more fun facts to peruse as you enjoy your morning cup.

• Before becoming a drink, coffee was eaten. Early East African tribes would grind the cherries into a paste mixed with animal fat, forming small edible energy balls.²
• Each coffee cherry typically contains two seeds, but sometimes only one develops, creating what’s called a “peaberry,” which some consider to be superior in flavor.³
• The world’s most expensive coffee, Kopi Luwak, comes from partially digested coffee cherries eaten and defecated by Indonesian palm civets.⁴
• Coffee is the second most traded commodity in the world after oil. It employs over 125 million people globally.⁵
• Brazil has been the world’s largest coffee producer for over 150 years. They produce around one-third of all coffee globally.⁶

Meanwhile, if you rock as hard as you reconcile, and you’re thinking of forming an office band and need a name (and “LIFO the Party” isn’t doing it for you), Kaldi and the Goats is probably available. I predict a strong cult following, especially among the barista set.

The IRS Criminal Investigation Unit annually releases its top 10 cases from the prior year. Here are some highlights from the list of 2024 cases.¹

• The longest-running bitcoin money laundering service on the darknet has come to an end. A dual Russian-Swedish national was sentenced to 12 years and six months in prison for running Bitcoin Fog, a cryptocurrency mixer that allowed criminals to hide transactions involving over 1.2 million bitcoin, valued at approximately $400 million at the time the transactions occurred.
• A former Jacksonville Jaguars employee was sentenced to six years and six months in prison and ordered to forfeit $22 million in funds he embezzled from the team. He used the team’s virtual credit card program to make hundreds of purchases and transactions with no legitimate business purpose, and then created accounting files that contained numerous false and fraudulent entries and emailed them to the Jaguars’ accounting department. He used the funds to buy a condo and to purchase cryptocurrency, nonfungible tokens, electronics, sports memorabilia, a country club membership, spa treatments, concert and sporting event tickets, home furnishings, and luxury wrist watches.
• A former law firm partner was sentenced to 10 years in prison for money laundering in connection with the OneCoin international scheme. OneCoin is a multilevel marketing cryptocurrency scheme that originated in Bulgaria and has taken in more than $4 billion. The law firm partner had previously been convicted of laundering OneCoin proceeds for its founder Ruja Ignatova, the “Crypto Queen,” who is a fugitive on the FBI’s Most Wanted list.

Can we talk frankly about “business” autos? I can’t be the only tax professional who cringes every time a client says they bought a new car for their business that they insist is only used for business purposes.

In the most recent instance in my own practice, a lawyer told me that he bought a new Mercedes G550 in 2024 – a vehicle with a $150,000 price tag. He said he chose the G class because it has a gross vehicle weight rating over 6,000 lbs., therefore he can claim 60% bonus depreciation for the vehicle ($150,000 x 60% = $90,000 expected deduction).

When I informed my client that 60% bonus depreciation is only available for vehicles that have 100% business use, he insisted that he only used the car to commute to and from the office, therefore, the vehicle is 100% business. When I informed him that commuting to and from work is a personal expense and not a business expense, I got the usual “what do you mean commuting to and from work isn’t a business expense?” I’ve only explained this issue to clients a bajillion times.

I know my client’s business and I knew right away that his business mileage, if any, was probably 5% at best. Of course, he also had the firm purchase the vehicle. So now I have to deal with a vehicle owned by the business with 5% business mileage (if I’m lucky) and I’m sure the firm’s credit card will include car payments, gas, maintenance, etc.

This is only one of many, many different variations of business auto issues I encounter on a regular basis that have caused me to pull all my hair out (there’s none left). Do you hate business autos as much as I do? What business auto issues make you want to smash glass? Let me know via e-mail at mikeg@spidell.com.

The IRS denied a religious organization tax-exempt status because it served its members ayahuasca while it was awaiting a religious exemption from the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA).¹

Organizations that want to be classified as tax-exempt under §501(c)(3) have to demonstrate that their activities are legal and consistent with public policy. The organization in this case was a church whose members’ sincerely held beliefs involved the consumption of ayahuasca, a Schedule I controlled substance that contains DMT, which is a strong (and illegal) psychedelic drug.

Under the Controlled Substances Act (CSA), there is a specific process for religious exemptions that allow for the use of controlled substances. To obtain the exemption, a religious organization must apply through the DEA, or a federal court can also issue an exemption.

The Iowaska Church of Healing applied for both tax-exempt status and a DEA religious exemption from the CSA. However, while those applications were still pending, the church conducted Ayahuasca tea ceremonies for its members. The IRS denied the §501(c)(3) exemption because the church engaged in illegal activity without a CSA exemption. The church cited Gonzales v. O Centro Espirita Beneficente União do Vegetal,² claiming that case recognized the use of ayahuasca in religious ceremonies as an exercise of religion under the First Amendment. But the IRS countered, and the court agreed, that the church had misinterpreted O Centro to mean they could use ayahuasca without the CSA exemption. Rather, that case found that an organization does not have to apply for an exemption from the DEA before seeking relief in the courts.

The Environmental Protection Agency’s annual “Fix a Leak Week” is approaching: March 17 through 23, 2025. According to their website, household leaks nationwide waste almost 1 trillion gallons of water a year total. The website provides info on checking for various types of leaks, videos for how to fix simple leaks like leaky faucets, and other resources:

www.epa.gov/watersense/fix-leak-week

The USGS provides a drip calculator so you can get a sense of how much water is actually going to waste. They calculated the volume of one drip to be ¼ milliliter and you can see how that adds up at:

https://water.usgs.gov/edu/activity-drip.html

Okay, I have a confession to make. I have become one of the myriad of “golden agers” who have joined the pickleball craze. I was never one for team sports; they were always way too much pressure for me. But I could never resist a ping pong table, and there my inner competitive monster would always come out. Friends who had seen me at the ping pong table said I’d love pickleball and, no, it didn’t require nearly as much energy as tennis, so I thought, why not, “I’ll give it a try.” 

And that was the last mild-mannered phrase you have since heard me utter about pickleball.

Here are a few of the things I absolutely love about pickleball:

• You are constantly being yelled at to stay out of the kitchen;
• I’m nowhere near a computer;
• The majority of folks playing are my age or older;
• It’s a great way to meet people who are rarely going to have the time to ask you any tax questions; and
• Unlike golf, you can always find the ball after you hit it.

And now that I’ve become hooked, I highly recommend my fellow tax professionals to join in, especially during tax season. I know, you’re thinking I’m crazy, but hear me out.

First, pickleball scoring is significantly less complicated than calculating alternative minimum tax. When your brain is fried from determining whether your client’s crypto trades constitute a wash sale, there’s something refreshing about a scoring system that doesn’t require a master’s degree to understand. Plus, shouting “7-3-2!” is far more satisfying than working with balance sheets.

The “kitchen” rule in pickleball (where you can’t volley from the non-volley zone) is also oddly familiar to tax practitioners. Just as you wouldn’t dare step into the kitchen during a game, you know better than to step into certain tax positions without substantial authority. Both mistakes can result in painful penalties, though at least pickleball doesn’t involve IRS notices.

Consider the therapeutic benefits: Every dink shot is an opportunity to release the pent-up frustration of dealing with clients who bring their tax documents in a shoebox. Each serve becomes a symbolic launching of those passive activity loss limitations into the stratosphere. And nothing beats the stress relief of smashing a pickleball after spending hours on hold with the IRS.

Moreover, the social aspect of pickleball provides a much-needed escape from tax isolation. Instead of talking to your office plant about depreciation schedules, you can discuss them with fellow players who will quickly change the subject to literally anything else.

Remember: Tax season is temporary, but pickleball addiction is forever. Besides, the only audit you’ll face on the court is whether your serve was actually out. And unlike tax disputes, those can be settled with a friendly “do-over.”

From its humble beginnings trading for pennies to becoming legal tender in sovereign nations, from pizza purchases that made history to lost fortunes buried in landfills, Bitcoin has already had a journey that rivals the best Hollywood scripts.

Here are some fun facts about everyone’s favorite magical internet money.

Bitcoin factoids

Satoshi Nakamoto, Bitcoin’s creator, owns around 1 million bitcoins (worth billions of dollars) but has never moved or spent them.¹ The FBI became the holder of (at the time) the largest Bitcoin wallet in the world after seizing 144,000 bitcoins from the Silk Road marketplace in 2013.² However, Satoshi Nakamoto is the largest Bitcoin holder.

There’s a limited number of bitcoins that will ever exist — 21 million. However, due to lost wallets and passwords, the actual number of usable bitcoins is significantly lower. Some estimates suggest up to 20% of all bitcoins are permanently lost.

For example, James Howells accidentally threw away a hard drive containing 8,000 bitcoins in 2013.³ He repeatedly tried to get permission to excavate the Welsh landfill where it’s buried, even offering the local council a percentage of the recovered funds.

(Following a hearing, a High Court dismissed Howells’ claim for excavation in January 2025, ruling that it had no prospect of success.)

A few people have had QR codes of their Bitcoin wallet addresses tattooed on their bodies, allowing for quick transactions by scanning their skin.⁴

Bitcoin firsts, a timeline

The first Bitcoin whitepaper was published by Satoshi Nakamoto on October 31, 2008, titled “Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System,” which describes the original plan and protocol for Bitcoin.

The first Bitcoin block (the Genesis block) was mined on January 3, 2009.

The first Bitcoin transaction occurred on January 12, 2009, when Satoshi Nakamoto sent 10 BTC to Hal Finney.

The first Bitcoin exchange, Bitcoin Market, was established in February 2010.

The first real-world Bitcoin transaction was on May 22, 2010 (also known as Bitcoin Pizza Day), when Laszlo Hanyecz paid 10,000 BTC for two Papa John’s pizzas (roughly $41 at the time, or $0.0041 per Bitcoin). The Bitcoin Pizza Index tracks how much that purchase would be worth in today’s Bitcoin: https://bitcoinpizzaindex.net/.

The first major company to accept Bitcoin payments was WordPress in November 2012.

The first Bitcoin ATM was installed at Waves Coffee Shop in Vancouver, Canada, on October 29, 2013. The first Bitcoin ATM in Europe was installed in Bratislava, Slovakia in December 2013. The first Bitcoin ATM installed in the United States went online on February 18, 2014, in a cigar bar in Albuquerque, New Mexico, but was removed 30 days later.

The first country to adopt Bitcoin as legal tender was El Salvador on September 7, 2021.

Tax season has officially kicked off and for many of us that means arriving at the office before the sun rises and leaving long after it sets. Working 12+ hours every day, six or seven days a week for three months straight is a hell of a grind. How do you get through it?

Here’s what works for me:

• Good snacks that change weekly (with a combination of healthy and some not-so-healthy);
• Mixed coffees and teas to break up the monotony of the same hot drinks;
• Keeping a good rice cooker in the kitchen so I can make a hot meal in an office environment;
• Keeping a pillow, blanket, and sleeping pad handy because there will inevitably be a couple of days where I just hit a wall and need to shut my eyes for an hour;
• Putting a weight machine in my spare office for a quick lunch-time workout (although, if I’m being honest, my consistency needs a lot of improvement); and
• Large-screen TV mounted in my office – When I’m alone at the end of the day, I’m kept company by my old friends, Netflix and Amazon Prime Video.

Lately, I’ve had a lot of tension in my neck, so I’m considering a massage chair. It’s depreciable, right?

Send your best tips (and massage chair recommendations if you have them) to mikeg@spidell.com.

Toward the end of 2024, a DOJ release floated across my desk: an individual in Seattle had been sentenced to 10 months in prison for failing to report as much as $6 million in income on his tax returns for 2016 through 2020.¹ Upon closer reading, I discovered this individual owned coffee carts in Seattle. I know Seattle loves its coffee… the world loves Seattle’s coffee.² But $6 million in income from coffee carts? The answer is yes, if they are bikini barista coffee carts, which these were.

Let us set aside the questionable (although apparently profitable) practice of selling coffee in a bikini in the winter in Seattle. The DOJ release also presents readers with a Helpful Comparison so we can wrap our pea brains around the magnitude of this fraud.

Not content to merely note that the coffee cart owner caused a tax loss of around $1.3 million, the prosecuting attorney offered that while the coffee cart owner had enriched himself from sales to his community, he felt “he did not need to pay his share of the costs that support that society. … For example, school lunches are provided by the United States Department of Agriculture’s Food and Nutrition Service. But for this prosecution, [his] tax fraud would have cost the government the equivalent of 462,000 school lunches.”

Oh, now I get it. Dollars mean nothing to me, but undercooked pizza and tater tots? How dare he.

In case you are still unclear as to what this all means, here are more Helpful Comparisons, using a standard 10 × 8 school lunch tray:³

• To circle the world with school lunch trays, you would need approximately 250 million trays.
• You could fit approximately 300,000 school lunch trays in an acre if stacked perfectly without any space between them.
• If you were to stack up 850,000 Styrofoam lunch trays that New York City schools used to throw away daily, the stack would be 8.5 times taller than the Empire State Building.
• Stacked end-to-end, it would take 2,178.5 school lunch trays to reach the height of the Emerald City’s CN Tower.

Which brings us back to Seattle, and bikini barista coffee carts, and a fraud worth the height of 212 CN Towers in school lunch trays. And he only got 10 months.

Already dreaming about a post-tax season European vacation? If you know you want to get away but can’t decide on the destination, there’s always the usual considerations: museums, architecture, gardens, a restaurant featured on Chef’s Table… beer taxes.

The Tax Foundation created a map of the beer taxes across Europe, with Finland being the highest at €0.597 per 330 mL bottle of beer. You can see the rest at:

https://taxfoundation.org/data/all/eu/beer-taxes-europe/

This is it: the final issue of Spidell’s 2024 Tax Season Tribune. Hopefully we have provided you with some levity during this filing season, and maybe a few new jokes to tell at parties. Don’t forget to follow us on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram — you’ll get great information there, too.

We’ll continue to provide you with more analysis, seminars, and breaking tax news. Next Sunday, Spidell’s California Minute^® podcast returns for its ninth season, and Spidell’s Federal Tax Minute^® podcast will be back starting April 23.

The IRS is warning taxpayers of the inaccurate and misleading tax advice coming from social media, including TikTok among other sources. Before you roll your eyes at me, let me say up front that the IRS’s warning is less about Chinese disinformation and more about faux experts run amok.

Who would have thought that a group of people whose lives depend on “clicks” would provide anything but sound professional tax advice? To save you the time, I watched a TikTokker (wearing cut off jean shorts and a tank top) explain that all you have to do is start an LLC, and you can deduct all your cell phone, car, and other expenses against your other income — no actual business purposes needed. Why didn’t I think of that?!? Oh yeah, because it’s tax fraud, you dolt!

So, as I end my last Tribune article of this tax season, let’s raise a glass to TikTok tax influencers and artificial intelligence creators alike! They will give real professionals plenty of job security to last (… at least until I’m ready to retire).

Until next year!

In March 2023, the IRS issued new FAQs on their website addressing whether certain costs related to nutrition, wellness, and general health are classified as medical expenses under IRC §213.¹

The FAQs reminded individuals about the deductibility of expenses like smoking cessation programs, therapy, weight loss programs, and gym memberships.

However, it seems that people were taking the IRS’s advice too far because almost exactly a year later, the IRS issued an alert reminding taxpayers that personal expenses for general health and wellness are not considered medical expenses under the tax law.²

Specifically, general welfare expenses that are not specifically for the purpose of diagnosis, cure, mitigation, treatment, or prevention of disease are not deductible or reimbursable under health flexible spending arrangements, health savings accounts, health reimbursement arrangements, or medical savings accounts (FSAs, HSAs, HRAs, and MSAs).

The IRS noted that some companies were misrepresenting the circumstances under which food and wellness expenses can be paid or reimbursed under FSAs and other health spending plans. FSAs and other health spending plans that pay for, or reimburse, nonmedical expenses are not qualified plans. If the plan is not qualified, all payments made to taxpayers under the plan, even reimbursements for actual medical expenses, are includible in income.

We are excited to announce that in May, Spidell will begin to roll out a new look and feel for our brand! This includes a new logo and a fresh look for our marketing and subscription e-mails. But you can be sure that behind these visual upgrades, there will be the same high-quality tax analysis that you have come to trust and expect from Spidell.

Filing season can be hard on everyone, tax pros and taxpayers alike. But a recent poll by Cash App Taxes revealed that 25% of Gen Z taxpayers said they get so stressed during filing season, they need a therapist.¹ Further, 54% of that same group said that filing taxes has brought them to tears in past years or they expect it will this year.

This could open up a new advertising avenue for tax professionals: “No-More-Tears Tax Prep.”

(If Cash App Taxes sounds familiar to you, they were the ones involved in the logo dispute with H&R Block, which we covered in the March 5, 2023, issue of Spidell’s Tax Season Tribune.²)

AB 984 to the rescue

In an attempt to bolster the financial literacy of young people leaving high school, California’s AB 984 would require a one-semester course in economics that would include content in personal finance as a requirement to graduate.

According to the bill’s authors, “AB 984 guarantees access to a personal finance course to all high school students, instilling them with the skills and support they will need throughout their lives.” Problem solved.

Except the bill analysis admits that there have been numerous past attempts to mandate personal finance instruction in high school, but research into whether this instruction is actually effective has mixed results.³ Specifically:

“One author concludes that, ‘We have long noted with dismay that students who take a high school course in personal finance tend to do no better on our exam than those who do not. This finding has been a great disappointment to consumer educators and to those who support efforts to make courses in personal finance a requirement for high school graduation, and it points to the need for better materials and teacher training.’ (Mandell, 2006).”

Until personal finance finds its way into the curriculum, filing season might be a boon to therapists. And taxpayers will want to refer to the IRS’s FAQs to see whether those therapy costs are deductible medical expenses. But more on that next week.

You win some, you lose some. An Irish woman lost out on a payout worth more than $800,000 in U.S. dollars in an injury lawsuit after the judge dismissed her claim earlier this year because she won a tree-throwing competition just months after her supposed injury.

Kamila Grabska claimed that a 2017 car accident left her with pain in her back, neck, and spine, and she filed an insurance lawsuit in 2022 claiming she was unable to work for the previous five years.¹

In court proceedings in Limerick,² she was questioned about a photo published by a local newspaper the year after her injury that showed her heaving a Christmas tree through the air.³ Grabska said in court that she was only trying to “live a normal life.” Other evidence presented included video of her playing with a dog for up to an hour and a half.

Judge Carmel Stewart described the tree-throwing photo as “very graphic,” and dismissed Grabska’s lawsuit, saying “I’m afraid I cannot but conclude the claims were entirely exaggerated.”

As this tax season is winding down, here’s hoping you haven’t had to deal with a questionable return that may feel entirely exaggerated in its own way. After all, you can only trust a troublesome client as far as you can throw him, which is good news — unless, of course, you’re in Ireland and that client is a tree.

In a past Tribune issue, we covered the Banished Words List, which is released annually by Lake Superior State University in Sault Ste. Marie in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. The 2024 list contains the following words:

• Hack
• Impact
• At the end of the day
• Rizz
• Slay
• Iconic
• Cringe-worthy
• Obsessed
• Side hustle
• Wait for it

You can read about the selection committee’s reasoning at www.lssu.edu/traditions/banishedwords/.

The Banished Words List is not the only fun tradition held by LSSU. In 1971, a faculty member started the Unicorn Hunters club. The club disbanded when he retired in 1987, but you can still get a unicorn hunting license through the university’s Department of Natural Unicorns.

The university also welcomes spring to the Upper Peninsula each year by burning a 10- to 12-foot paper snowman at high noon on the first day of spring.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection in Cincinnati recently seized a shipment containing 90 fake championship rings that, if they had been real, would have been worth $2.71 million.¹

The shipment contained 40 2019 Kansas City Chiefs Super Bowl rings, 20 1969 Kansas City Chiefs Super Bowl rings, 15 1985 Kansas City Royals rings, and 15 2022 Kansas Jayhawks championship rings. All of the pieces were made with cheap materials and faux gemstones, and bore the registered trademarks of the NFL, NCAA, and MLB.

The shipment appeared to be a person-to-person transaction, a common counterfeiting technique where the shipment is sent to one person who then mails out smaller prepackaged parcels to U.S. addresses, bypassing scrutiny.

The Cincinnati package was flagged for a physical search after an X-ray examination yielded inconclusive results.

Don’t forget about use tax

However, counterfeiters may not only land in trouble with Customs and Border Protection. In a recent tax appeal in California, a counterfeiter was also slapped with use tax on the street value of the fake goods he was holding.

The taxpayer was in the business of selling counterfeit handbags, belts, wallets, and sunglasses in Los Angeles.² The taxpayer sold two counterfeit items to an investigator, and based on those purchases, the California Department of Tax and Fee Administration (CDTFA) was able to determine the approximate markdown percentage of the counterfeit items as compared to what the items would have cost if they were legitimate. The two counterfeit items totaled $1,280, but the MSRP if they had not been counterfeit would have been $165,510. This resulted in a markdown percentage of 12,830.47%.

The CDTFA then applied the markdown percentage to the $13,059,470 MSRP of all of the confiscated goods. They determined that the taxpayer could have sold all of those goods for $100,998, and based the use tax owed on this amount.

The taxpayer was convicted of two counts of counterfeiting.³ Therefore, because he is a “convicted purchaser,” his purchases of counterfeit items for resale were subject to use tax because any purchase of counterfeit items he made prior to being convicted constitutes a taxable storage or use of those items.⁴

Before your blood starts to boil, I’m not talking about Communists, Republicans, or Buckeyes fans. This is something much more pervasive that affects all of us. Red dye #3.

If you’re old enough, you remember the disappearance of the original red M&M, which was discontinued in 1976 when the FDA removed red dye #2 from its safe list. We somehow survived red-M&M-less until 1987 when they returned using red dye #40 (except in Europe, where that dye is banned; this should probably be of some concern to us, but that’s a topic for another day).

However, red candies are again on the chopping block in California, following the passage of AB 418 in 2023,¹ which, beginning January 1, 2027, prohibits the sale of any food product containing any of the following: brominated vegetable oil, potassium bromate, propylparaben, and red dye #3.

Candies such as Skittles and Nerds contain red dye #3, as do pink and purple Peeps, certain chocolate milk products, and boxed cake mixes.² The Environmental Working Group’s Eat Well Guide returns a list of around 3,000 products containing the dye.³ M&Ms do not appear on the list; however, Mars didn’t use red dye #2 in its red M&Ms, either, but discontinued them anyway to avoid consumer confusion.

The future of the red M&M again hangs in the balance. And if it’s discontinued, maybe Mars will just replace it with more blue ones.

Thank you to everyone who sent in their tax jokes over the last several weeks. Here are a few final submissions from another Tribune reader, Tom K.:

Why did the accountant get into trouble at culinary school? He was cooking the books.

Why was the mullet being audited? Because he wasn’t up front with his business.

Why did the swimmer throw all his gear into the water? Because his accountant told him to pool all his resources.

We’ll wrap up our joke series on this April Fools’ Day Eve with a trip through the Tribune archives. Check out our 2021 article on a few tax-related pranks from years past.

It’s just a statue commemorating probably the most beloved Los Angeles Lakers basketball player ever, no big deal.

After the February unveiling of a new statue dedicated to Kobe Bryant at Crypto.com Arena, someone finally took the time to read the various inscriptions on the base of the statue. It probably would have been easier to mark any edits using a program like Microsoft Word than applying red pen to polished granite, but the Lakers have announced they’re working on correcting the following:¹

• Former NBA players José Calderón and Von Wafer’s names are misspelled Jose Calderson and Vom Wafer; and
• The phrase “DNP – Coach’s Decicion” appears directly under the correctly spelled “DNP – Coach’s Decision.”

It’s supposed to be like that

Another [less costly] option would be to claim that the errors were made on purpose. The 2017 unveiling of a statue on the USC campus included verses from Hamlet and the playwright’s name: Shakespear.

When pressed on the missing final e, the university said they did it on purpose, citing the various spellings of the Bard’s name throughout the centuries, for example Shakspeare, Shakspere, Shaksper, Shackspeare, and Shagspere. They had chosen an older spelling on purpose, even though it was less common. (Sure [wink].)²

At first, Marlene Engelhorn just had “family money”; you, know, the kind you have when you’re a descendant of Friedrich Engelhorn, the man who started the German chemical company BASF. But when her grandmother passed away in 2022, she inherited €25 million.

Prior to the inheritance, she had already founded TaxMeNow, an initiative of wealthy people actively working for tax justice in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. Frustrated that her inheritance wasn’t taxed (Austria eliminated its inheritance tax in 2008), she has chosen to give away the €25 million. A team of 50 individuals will decide what to do with the funds. The group was chosen through a statistical process to be representative of the overall Austrian population.

Engelhorn noted, “I’m just one brain, I’m just one person and so to me, this is a huge relief knowing that the process of redistribution is much more legitimate and thorough and democratic than I could ever do it. Nobody needs another foundation.”

Here are a few more bad tax jokes for this week. The first comes from a reader who remembers hearing it from former Spidell speaker Steve Honeyman at a seminar years ago.

Two IRS agents are looking up at a flagpole, trying to figure how tall it is. Just then, two accountants are walking by and see the agents wondering how to measure the flagpole. The accountants walk up to the flagpole, take it out of the ground, and lay it on the ground. They measure the pole. They walk over to the IRS agents and say, "It’s 46 and 1/2 feet." Then the accountants walk away.

At this point one IRS agent says to the other, “Isn’t that just like an accountant? They told us how long it was and not how tall it was."

Did you hear about the CPA from Dallas who took on 100 new clients this year? He’s deep in the heart of taxes.

Did you notice that when you put the words “the” and “IRS” together, it spells “theirs”?

Growing up in the Chicago area, I’ve always had fond memories of St. Patrick’s Day … and not all of them relate to the thousands of Irish bars that can be found in the Chicago area.

I remember working in an office that was located on the Chicago River and watching as the city “dyed” the river green for the day. However, to be honest, some years it was hard to tell the pre- and post-dye river apart. 

I also recall watching Jane Byrne, the city’s first female mayor, wearing a long green fur coat for the St. Patrick’s Day parade. Although I must confess when I did a Google search to try to find a picture of the coat, all that came up were stories about how she moved into Cabrini Green (one of Chicago’s infamous housing projects) as a way to improve public safety and investment in the area. The woman had chutzpah … but I digress.

But enough about my memories.  Here are some fun facts about St. Patrick’s Day:¹

• St. Patrick wasn’t Irish (it is said he hailed from Wales or Scotland), although that doesn’t stop Ireland from declaring it a national holiday. Nor was St. Patrick’s name Patrick (he was born Maewyn Succat) and despite the stories, he didn’t banish snakes from Ireland as Ireland didn’t have snakes;
• 13 million pints of Guiness are consumed on March 17 across the world; and
• Two million people attend New York City’s St. Patrick’s Day parade.

And what’s St. Patrick’s Day without a few Irish jokes (the clean ones)?²

• How come you can never borrow a few quid from a leprechaun? Because they’re always a little short!
• What does an Irishman get after eating a load of Italian food? Gaelic breath.
• How come Irish golfers can’t finish their game on St. Patrick’s Day? Because they refuse to leave the green!

And lastly, one of my favorite Irish sayings:

“May your day be touched by a bit of Irish luck, brightened by a song in your heart and warmed by the smile of the people you love.”

It’s the dawn of artificial intelligence (or A.I. for short) and the beginning of the end of actual intelligence. Every industry is experimenting with and developing A.I. tools, but who’s to blame when A.I. screws up?

Recently, Air Canada tried arguing in a court of law that they weren’t liable for their customer service A.I. chatbot giving a customer incorrect information regarding its bereavement travel policies. Thankfully the court didn’t let Air Canada escape liability for its own creation.

But have no fear, there is sure to be endless creative legal arguments in this decade and the next as businesses try to automate and argue that it’s not their fault when their monster fails to deliver as promised. At the very least, it should provide some good reading (for those of us who still can).

How many of us have lamented the lack of decent help and the rise of the growing social media “influencer” army. An entire generation full of people sprinting into stupidity as fast as they can. Well, it won’t be long until skilled work is entirely automated. I am afraid that Mike Judge’s Idiocracy will become a reality, and much faster than the 500 years he predicted it would take.

Remember April 15? It has gone the way of the 8-track, the VCR, the payphone, the McDLT, cursive, the horse as transportation, long-distance calling charges, bloodletting, smoking in a hospital … the list goes on.

Since winter storm disaster declarations are the new norm, it’s interesting to note that the last true April 15 filing deadline for many taxpayers, including nearly everyone in California, was the 2019 filing season (for 2018 returns).

We can feel the breeze from the collective sigh of relief emanating from our readers each time the deadline is postponed. Can Congress just get their act together and either stick to their promise of simplifying the tax code or push out the filing deadline by a month permanently? One can only dream.

How many accountants does it take to change a lightbulb? As many as it took last year.

Your tax jokes are better than ours, so please keep them coming! Reply to this e-mail to send us your favorites, and we’ll include them in a future Tribune issue.

I keep a four-panel cartoon pinned in my office with Snoopy sitting atop his doghouse at his typewriter telling the IRS that he’d like to cancel his subscription and to please remove his name from their mailing list.

While funny, merely asking to be removed from the IRS’s mailing list won’t work to get the IRS off your back. But, according to the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration,¹ 77,868 living taxpayers found the ultimate loophole: They found their way onto the IRS’s list of dead people. Well, that’s one way to get the IRS off your back.

This year, I’m celebrating the 25th anniversary of my first tax season in this industry. After 25 years, if I manage to find my way onto the IRS’s dead people list, I might just quietly retire to a log cabin on a trout stream as far away from a cell tower as I can get. If that proves too cold for this Southern California native, then a deserted tropical island is my fallback plan.

I wonder if helping clients “accidentally” get on the IRS’s dead list could be a new revenue stream for my practice. It can’t be too much different than advising clients on how to become California nonresidents, right?

In case you couldn’t make it to the CDTFA’s first public auction featuring property seized during cannabis enforcement actions  (see “Make sure to set a repeated reminder about this upcoming event” in the February 11, 2024, issue of Tribune), here’s an update.

The good news for the CDTFA is that everything was sold – success! This included items like televisions, money-counting machines, paper shredders, and a snow cone machine.  All proceeds will be applied to the $14.4+ million in unpaid taxes from 10 Los Angeles-based cannabis operations.

The bad news is that the auction yielded a stupefying $2,075 (there are no missing digits between the dollar sign and the 2). What?! That means each of the cannabis operations gets a credit of only about $200.

Overall result: $14.4+ million in unpaid taxes.

In a dramatic reversal, Guinness World Records has updated its policy regarding matchsticks, which resulted in a new record-holder in the category “tallest matchstick sculpture.”¹

The policy change came after Richard Plaud unveiled his 23.5-foot tall 1:45 scale model of the Eiffel Tower, which was built using over 700,000 matchsticks and validated by a surveying firm. Unfortunately, Guinness rejected the model when it discovered that Plaud had not used standard matchsticks like the ones purchased in a store. Instead, Plaud had contracted directly with a matchstick company to purchase matchsticks in bulk … without the flammable tip. Because his matchsticks didn’t contain the usual sulfur blob, they were ruled to be too different, and the model was disqualified.

However, days later, Guinness announced that it had “corrected some inconsistencies within our rules which now allow the matchsticks to be snipped and shaped as the modeller sees fit.”

Plaud’s Eiffel Tower was awarded the new record, ousting Toufic Daher of Lebanon, whose 6-million-match scale replica of the Eiffel Tower in Beirut stands around 21.4 feet.

Do you know why Sherlock Holmes never had to pay income taxes? Brilliant deductions!

Your tax jokes are better than ours, so please keep them coming! Reply to this e-mail to send us your favorites and we’ll include them in a future Tribune issue.

Last year, we covered the case of the Harmon brothers,¹ whose darknet crypto mixing business was shut down for money laundering. The IRS had seized various assets, including a cryptocurrency storage device that the IRS was not able to crack the password for.

However, one of the brothers was able to recover $4.9 million in bitcoin (now worth over $20 million) from that cryptocurrency account because he knew the password, which allowed him to transfer the cryptocurrency from the seized account to his own wallet. Naturally, one of the first things he did (after further laundering the recovered bitcoins) was visit a nightclub, fill a bathtub with cash, and take a bunch of selfies.

Update: He was sentenced to four years for stealing over 712 bitcoins that were the proceeds of the darknet bitcoin mixer and subject to forfeiture in the then-pending criminal case against his brother.²

Mix master

Crypto mixing, or crypto tumbling, mixes potentially identifiable or "tainted" cryptocurrency funds with others to hide the fund’s original source.³ Funds from multiple sources are pooled together for a random period of time, and then they are redistributed at random times, making it difficult to trace the cryptocurrency’s source.

Mixing helps protect and maintain the privacy of using cryptocurrency. But due to its involvement in illegal activities, and because mixing services have been known to steal coins during the mixing process, many have suggested that mixing services be criminalized.

Last year, a McDonald’s franchisee in Louisville got busted for violating federal labor laws after the Labor Department discovered that two ten-year-old children were employed, who sometimes worked as late as 2 a.m. and who were not paid.¹

After digging deeper, it turned out the two ten-year-olds had come to work with their parent, who was one of the night managers. However, management had not approved the children to be in the employee parts of the restaurant where the deep fryers, grills, and ovens are.

Not-so-happy meal

A child operating the deep fryer may explain another McD’s mishap. A McDonald’s in Florida was sued for serving excessively hot food, but this time instead of coffee, it was a 200-degree chicken McNugget.² The McNugget was part of a happy meal order that landed in the lap of a four-year-old, who dropped the McNugget onto her bare leg, where it left a second-degree burn. The family was awarded $800,000.

The infamous “hot coffee case” involved 79-year-old Stella May Liebeck, who spilled an entire cup of McDonald’s coffee into her lap, resulting in third-degree burns. To cover medical expenses and lost wages for her daughter (who cared for her during her initial three-week recovery from the skin grafting process), Liebeck sought to settle for $20,000. McDonald’s refused, and offered $800. When Liebeck sued, a jury awarded her $200,000 in compensatory damages and $2.7 million in punitive damages. A judge reduced these amounts to $160,000 and $480,000, respectively, and both parties appealed, settling out of court for an undisclosed amount.

Your tax jokes are better than ours, so please keep them coming!  Here are a few that you submitted this week.

My friend bought a 12-inch ruler and asked me if he could deduct it for tax purposes. I told him not any longer.

My friend asked if I could help him get a tax deduction by delivering a bunch of old magazines to the local Goodwill. I told him that I couldn’t because of back issues.

Every year my friend asks if he can deduct the cost of his jogging shoes for tax purposes. It’s a running joke.

Reply to this e-mail to send us your favorites and we’ll include them in a future Tribune issue.

Actor Stephen Harrison has issued an apology to the investors who lost an estimated $1.3 billion in the HyperVerse cryptocurrency Ponzi scheme.¹

Harrison was hired as a “corporate presenter,” which his agent explained to him was simply acting out a role to represent a business. He became suspicious after reading the scripts for the videos, but after doing some online searches he felt “everything seemed OK, so I rolled with it.”

During recording, he was asked to use the name Steven Reece Lewis. In the videos, Harrison talked about investment opportunities with HyperVerse. The final version of the videos referred to him as CEO, and also included his “credentials”: degrees from Leeds and Cambridge universities and more than 10 years of experience in the fintech industry. The problem was, neither university nor any fintech firms had ever heard of Steven Reece Lewis, which piqued the interest of the SEC.

As part of his apology, Harrison made it clear that he had not benefited in any way from the scheme itself; he was paid around $5,000 for his performance and given a free wool and cashmere suit, two business shirts, two ties, and a pair of shoes.

Crypto scheme losses

Generally, if a cryptocurrency drops in value and the investor experiences a loss, the investor can sell the poorly performing cryptocurrency and offset other gains, or if the losses exceed gains, take a deduction of up to $3,000 per year until the loss is used up.²

However, in order to take a capital loss, the investor must sell or exchange the asset.³ This is impossible when an exchange files for bankruptcy, shuts down, and all trades are halted.

Further, although the IRS has stated that cryptocurrency is property, federal law has still not addressed whether cryptocurrency is treated as a commodity or a security.⁴ This means that the deduction for worthless stock does not currently apply.⁵ Plus, bankruptcy doesn’t automatically mean the total debt is worthless, so any bad debt deduction would have to wait until the loss is certain.⁶

In order for the theft-loss Ponzi scheme rule to come into play, the investor would have to prove that the exchange had an intent to bilk the investors out of their money.⁷

Two years ago, we brought you the story of Jens Haaning, the Danish artist who received the equivalent of $84,000 from the Kunsten Museum of Modern Art in Aalborg, Denmark. The museum was expecting Haaning to create artwork incorporating the money into the design. Instead, he submitted two blank canvases titled “Take the Money and Run” and pocketed the cash.

Haaning took the money, but was he able to run? That all depends on your perspective. The museum filed a civil suit against him, and in September 2023 the court ruled that he had to return the money — most of it, anyway. According to the BBC,¹ Haaning returned nearly $72,000, but was allowed to keep the balance to cover the cost of mounting the canvases and an “artist’s fee.” All in a day’s work (or not, as the case may be).

Other art oddities

Unusual art can be sold anywhere, of course. CBS News² brings us the following highlights:

• London: A Banksy painting of a girl reaching for a balloon sold for $1.4 million at auction in 2018. The artwork shredded itself as soon as it was sold, and three years later those pieces sold for $25.4 million.
• Miami: One of the works on display at a 2019 art convention was a banana duct-taped to a wall. It sold for $120,000 and was then eaten by David Datuna, a performance artist.

What does the pessimistic accountant think?  It’s accrual world.

We’re hoping you know better jokes than that one! We’ve been on the hunt for good tax jokes to share in the run up to April Fools’ Day, but so far we’ve come up empty. Reply to this e-mail to send us your favorites, and we’ll include them in a future Tribune issue.

If you’re already making plans for your summer vacation, here’s something to add to the mix: gold prospecting in California’s El Dorado County. Talk about some real and raw fun! You’ll be taking advantage of what’s known as “Gold Rush 2.0,” which is a result of the unusually wet winter and deep snowpack that brings cascading water and all the materials, like gold, that come with it. According to Mark Dayton, a metal detector expert, “It’s one of those 100-years events … material [gold] is being ripped literally right off the walls of the creeks as they reshape themselves.”¹ Yikes! Maybe we can all go on vacation AND make money too!

But hold on, this is California, so there are a lot of regulations specific to different regions. For example, some areas only allow for panning – or hands-and-pans – which means you can’t use a shovel to dig. At state parks, you’re only allowed to gather up to 15 pounds of mineral material per day, which can’t be sold or used commercially for profit (so much for making money). There’s also sniping and sluicing. Sniping involves lying down in a creek bed and prying gold out from the bedrock (this qualifies as working on your vacation, which is a big no; also, the water is probably freezing because it’s from the snowpack; a tropical beach vacation is sounding better).

Prospectors can stake a claim on public lands, however, but before doing so, they must check for prior claims and abide by the “Detecting Mining Code of Ethics.” Uh-oh, due diligence. That means there’s a whole list of practices you need to adhere to, like “leaving as little sign of your passing as possible,”² and reporting all finds to landowners (umm, so we have to split?).

Panning and sluicing will reportedly be best in June once the water levels go down and drowning is less likely, so plan accordingly. There are some five-star reviews for campgrounds in the area, which is promising, although nothing that would qualify as “glamping,” so count me out. Plus there are bears in the campground that reportedly don’t like to interact with people and because I qualify as a person, that’s also a negative. I’m thinking the tropical beach wins my vote.

If you’re in the business of putting words (or numbers) out into the world, there will inevitably come the time when a typo slips through. Recently, ridesharing heavyweight Lyft proved that it’s not too big to fail when it released an earnings report that contained an extra zero.

The initial report said Lyft’s adjusted earnings before interest, tax, depreciation, and amortization (or EBITDA¹) margin as a percentage of bookings could expand by 500 basis points in 2024, or 5%. In response, shares went up as much as 66% to $20.04 per share. The excitement was short-lived when it was announced that in fact the margin is actually forecasted to expand by only 50 points, or 0.5%. Share price dropped but still netted a $2 per share increase overall.

(As a side note, Lyft has not yet turned a profit, a milestone that its rival Uber only reached for the first time in 2023 since it went public.)

Karma’s a botch

We have an unspoken rule at Spidell: Don’t laugh and snark and smirk when a competitor prints a typo because we have been in the same position. This author remembers not long after starting at Spidell (as a copyeditor), the California Taxletter went to print misspelling then-Governor Schwarzenegger’s last name. (I’m too embarrassed to even attempt to hunt down that issue, circa 2007.)

But at least we are not alone. In searching for the comfort of others’ mistakes, I found the following grave errors:²

1. The 1631 “wicked Bible” included the commandment “Thou shalt commit adultery.”
2. The 1934 edition of Webster’s Dictionary included the mysterious entry “Dord.” This was eventually traced to an editor’s note that the word “density” could be uppercase or lowercase: D or d.
3. The British paper The Guardian was so famous for misprints that it became known as “The Grauniad.”
4. The iron content of spinach is somewhat of a myth, based on a typo in 1870 indicating that it has 35 grams of iron, rather than 3.5 grams per 100 grams of spinach.
5. A craftsman working on the Lincoln Memorial would have appreciated the Ctrl+Z function after carving “euture” instead of “future.” The offending bottom bar has since been filled in.

In an effort to reach more taxpayers, the IRS’s Tax Outreach, Partnership and Education team is partnering with fortune cookie companies to turn dessert into an opportunity to provide tax information.

“Now when people go into a Chinese restaurant, and they open up their fortune cookie, they not only can get a fortune, but they get some tax advice as well,” Derek Ganter, director of stakeholder liaison at the Internal Revenue Service, said Thursday at a conference in Las Vegas.

The fortune cookie messages will include things like reminders about deadlines. Spidell editors immediately offered the following suggestions:

• She who is charitable reaps the benefits of large deductions (provided adequate substantiation is kept)
• No, this meal is not deductible
• He who keeps receipts is fortunate when the audit man cometh
• It is better to be a cheerful giver to the IRS, or penalties and interest will apply
• Your unlucky number is $9,833. Make a payment online at irs.gov

Let us know if you have any fortune cookie suggestions for the IRS by replying to your Tribune e-mail.

So…the IRS’s Taxpayer Advocate service has published an online interactive map of the IRS’s internal operations. And holy cow! This mall map from hell looks like it comes from the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (the 2005 remake starring Martin Freeman, not the actual book). To help you visualize, I’ve included a small version of the map here. For the full experience, the map can be found here: https://www.taxpayeradvocate.irs.gov/get-help/roadmap/?notice=29179.

The Taxpayer Advocate is really not doing the IRS any favors, considering snarky individuals (like me) who may (fairly or unfairly) seek to compare IRS employees to Vogons, who are described by the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy as:

Not actually evil, but bad-tempered, bureaucratic, officious and callous. They wouldn’t even lift a finger to save their own grandmothers from the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal without orders – signed in triplicate, sent in, sent back, queried, lost, found, subjected to public inquiry, lost again, and finally buried in soft peat for three months and recycled as firelighters.

Well, if that doesn’t provide a description of what this map looks like, as well as this practitioner’s personal experience trying to call or paper-file anything with the IRS, then I don’t know what does!

If you’re close to Los Angeles on February 16, whatever you do, don’t forget to set an alarm on your phone to remind yourself of the “first of its kind” public auction for property seized during cannabis enforcement actions.¹ So kewl!

The auction is being held by the CDTFA and will feature items seized from search warrants to collect taxes from nine illegal cannabis businesses and one legal dispensary that didn’t pay their taxes. According to the CDTFA, 10 Los Angeles-based operations owe in excess of $14.4 million in unpaid taxes, and the CDTFA has seized almost $90 million in cash and products from businesses.² Mind blown!

Prospective bidders should check out some of the paraphernalia:

• Cash drawers
• Glass bongs and pipes
• Snow cone machine
• Crowd control poles
• Menu boards
• Sandwich boards
• Display cases
• Refrigerators
• Win spin prize drop
• Money counting machine/bags
• Cameras
• Conveyor belts

I will personally be bidding on the conveyor belt and the snow cone machine. The snow cone machine gives new meaning to the idea of “deliverables” – maybe it was the most fanciful execution of delivered edibles. Bruh!

And who wouldn’t want a conveyor belt?! All I can think of is Lucy and Ethel in front of a conveyor belt popping candy into their mouths because they can’t keep up with the speed of what’s happening.³ Except in 2024, the candy would be replaced with edibles. Sick!

Bidding starts at 10 a.m., so don’t be late. Bring cash, money orders, or cashier’s checks. See you there … unless it rains, or it’s too cold because it’s below 75º, or something else comes up.

The 2024 Super Bowl champion is almost in the books, and while the main event will captivate every San Franciscan and Swiftie, the rest of us are there for the food.

This year, fans are expected to consume:¹

• 50 million cases of beer;
• 28 million pounds of chips; and
• 54 million avocados.

In preparation for the Big Game, avocado harvesting begins in January in Michoacan and Jalisco, Mexico, in order to move the volumes of avocados required for gameday guacamole.

According to the USDA’s weekly perishable produce report,² 81% of all avocados eaten in the U.S. come from Mexico and the Super Bowl accounts for 20% of annual sales of avocados. The report noted, “When it comes to increased sales, avocados are the real Super Bowl champion.”

But the true winner is the chicken wing. According to the National Chicken Council, Americans will consume 1.45 billion chicken wings on Super Bowl Sunday.³ To put that number in perspective:

• 1.45 billion wings is enough for every man, woman, and child in the United States to eat four wings each;
• If Kansas City Coach Andy Reid ate 50 wings every day, it would take him 79,452 years to eat all 1.45 billion;
• 1.45 billion wings is enough to put 693 wings on every seat in all 30 NFL stadiums;
• If laid end-to-end, 1.45 billion wings would stretch one third of the way to the moon; and
• If each wing represented one second moving forward, 1.45 billion would be 46 years from now, or the year 2070.

Time to buy stock in wet naps.

Last week, we asked what your go-to tax season treats are, and the results are in:

• Smarties
• Almond Joy
• Trader Joe’s Dark Chocolate Almond Butter Cups
• Red Vines
• Microwave popcorn… burnt, of course