Taxes and Thomas Taibe A Club Hit

Many members came up to me after the February 2007 meeting to tell me Thomas Taibe and Taxes was one of the best topics yet.

Thomas Taibe provided a framework for discussing income taxes that resulted in a barrage of questions starting less than half way into the presentation.

For example if you get income but no document such as a 1099, what should you do? Answer always include the income. Income Thomas claimed is the one item you do not want to understate. The IRS rules and system is geared to finding missing income and penalizing you for omitting. On the other hand, claiming a deduction that is not allowed is less painful if denied.

Thomas pointed out how to determine if you qualify for free eFiling with IRS. As his assistant we went to the IRS site. There is a prominent link entitled 2007 Free Filing. From there you can search for a free eFiling vendor or use the very quick wizard that will tell you if you qualify.

Otherwise to eFile you need to pay. This is often included with versions of tax software such as TaxCut and TurboTax.

Thomas provided us with some background into the issue of Fraud versus mistakes on tax returns. Generally Fraud means there is intent and it opens the IRS to look back to your finances as far as they want to go.

Currently the IRS does not keep your tax return in a paper or electronic image after fixed number of years – I believe 7 – but I do not remember exactly. But that does not include the data the IRS enters into their computers. Thomas was not certain, but suggested the IRS may now keep the summary level data indefinitely.

The meeting helped members who have filed taxes on their own for decades to our youngest member of the club that successfully started an online business and before his mother knew it had to learn about business taxes.

I think this could be a candidate for a annually repeated topic.

By Lon Hosford

Internet and Mobile Development Educator and Consultant Independent software developer with practical engineering project experience for clients such as AT&T, Avis, Bristol Myers Squibb, Ortho BioTech, Chanel, Avaya, Green Birdie Video, Aztec Learning Systems and Verizon Wireless. Lon is well known for translating client needs into useful applications. An interesting aspect of Lon's consulting work was the creation of industry jobs that did not exist before. That lead to hiring and training college students who were taught dead technologies at a time academia was woefully behind on the paradigm shifts in personal computing, the internet and today the distributed device environment often called mobile. Lon has taught thousands of students internet web development, animation and programming topics over two decades both privately and academically. He developed Multimedia Associated Degree program and courses for Raritan Valley Community College in the 1990s at a time when Macromedia Authorware and Director were tools. He is the founder, developer and educator for Raritan Valley Community College Web Developer Certification program also having its roots in the 1990s at the dawn of the internet. He also was a key curriculum developer and instructor for one of the Nation's first Web Developer Certification program offered through New Jersey Institute of Technology. Lon was also a technology instructor at the University of Phoenix Online. Lon over the years has produced educational video for topics including Paradox, Cobol, Java, Jasmine, C, C++, Linux, Flash, Cocos 2d and HTML. These courses were distributed and taught in Universities internationally when global was an emerging term.