Taxes Books

This book is so easy to read and everything is organized the same way in each chapter, making note-taking a breeze. Each chapter ends with quizzes and the answers are in the back to check. Also, the website offers an additional quiz in terminology and multiple choice. To prepare for my exams, I simply studied the quizzes at the end of each chapter as well as online and I got an A on every test. I learned a lot about the different sociological viewpoints of each subject studied in each chapter. This textbook is great for students.

I just wish there was a way to get reviews on textbooks. I previewed several books ultimately deciding on this text. Do yourself a favor if you are a teacher and don't touch this book. The information is presented in the most dull way and further everything is DATED. I have never become so frustrated with a text that discusses current race relations with data from the 1980's. If you are considering this text, just glance at some of the data and you will get my point.

As the author, I wanted to respond to the previous post. This book takes a complex subject (accounting and federal income tax laws) and breaks it down into an easy-to-understand concept. Most new window cleaning businesses start out small and can't afford to hire an accountant or bookkeeper to manage the day-to-day financial transactions associated with their business.

This book was designed to help them establish their business recordkeeping and to describe tax deductions which are allowable in this industry. Federal Income Tax for Window Cleaners is a very useful book for anyone in the window cleaning business who would like to understand how our Federal tax laws apply to their industry.

This is very basic information that can be found on the internet for free, or you can ask any junior accountant. Do not waste you time and money.

A fine book, but don't be fooled by its title, as I was--this book covers tax year 1997, not 1998!

Has anyone ever employed by H & R Block ever taken the time to read the internal revenue code? I highly doubt it, but even if they did, they wouldn't tell you what is contained in it as it would put the company (and indeed most so called "tax professionals") out of business. What the authors fail to tell us is that most U.S. Citizens are not liable for any income taxes. If you work within the fifty states for a non-federal government employer your earnings are not (by legal statute) subject to taxation. Incredible? You bet. Don't read this book - stop relying on this sort of "advice" and read the tax laws!

This was a great book; but be sure you're not fooled as I was by its pesky title: H&R Block's 1998 Income Tax Guide covers the tax year 1997.

Perpetuating the myth... Has anyone ever employed by H & R Block ever taken the time to read the internal revenue code? I highly doubt it, but even if they did, they wouldn't tell you what is contained in it as it would put the company (and indeed most so called "tax professionals") out of business. What the authors fail to tell us is that most U.S. Citizens are not liable for any income taxes. If you work within the fifty states for a non-federal government employer your earnings are not (by legal statute) subject to taxation. Incredible? You bet. Don't read this book - stop relying on this sort of "advice" and read the tax laws!

Do not miss the chance to take advantage of tax strategies for US tax planning. It is still not too late to start seriously planning on how to ease your US tax burden for this year. If you would like more information about tax planning, this book is a good place to start.

Self-published in 2001 (or earlier), this slim volume spends the first couple chapters on the merits of being in business for yourself in order to save on taxes, and the third chapter discusses incorporating your business. Because the author is a professional writer, a libertarian who does not believe in taxation of any kind, and because he is NOT a trained tax professional or even a tax columnist, a lot of the stuff here is superficial and might have simply been compiled from other books.

However, the rest of the book discusses tax shelters, mainly offshore ones, that have been pursued aggressively by IRS in recent years. Of course, for me to write this in 2006 and critique this with some benefit of hindsight may be a little unfair to the author; nonetheless, you should be very suspicious of the current value, or even legality, of the chapter on "hiding your offshore assets from the IRS!" The techniques likely won't work any more, due to pressure on tax haven from the U.S. government, and if you tried, you could well be discovered and prosecuted -- and so far IRS has a 100% conviction rate in such cases.

If you want to save on taxes, I recommend one of the many more professional titles published by well-established publishers such as McGraw-Hill and Wiley. Those books, even though sometimes peppered with self-promotion, likely won't try to land you in jail.

GOOD FOR HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS ONLY

I found The Tax Map an extraordinarily helpful tool for visualizing the structure of the Internal Revenue Code. It puts together all the pieces in a way that made it much, much easier for me to visualize the whole code and understand its underlying dynamics. The way everything feeds into the big equation at the bottom is brilliant -- you can trace any one rule down to its resultant tax-liability function. If you're at all visually oriented, or if you have trouble thinking about the intricacies of tax, I highly recommend this aid.

We wanted training that taught what to do at the courthouse before the sale. I have been attending free and clear sales for a good while but saw a great opportunity in the sales that left the buyer open to liens, judgements and other matters. We have a great many of these come up every year in our area but few people bid on them because researching is difficult work. We have used the research methods outlined in the training course over the past two sales and done exceptionally well with our wins!

I've read and used quite a few of the tax sale investment programs out there and feel the base information in this course is at or above par with everything else, but the detailed information about research puts it over the top. We found it well worth the money spent - by being able to bid on and buy subject to property without worrying about what would show on the title later or having to pay an attorney to do an abstract we have made our investment in the course back a thousand times over already. Thanks!

I was wondering why this cost so much. I went to a retail chain store to see if I could take a glimpse of what's so good about this book. I found that this was almost like a useless workbook. It's like he copied some state laws directly into the book, which makes reading it really boring. I don't think its worth the price.

Now in its second edition, State And Local Taxation: Principles And Planning is the authoritative and collaborative effort of tax experts Charles W. Swenson, Sanjay Gupta, John E. Karayan, and Joseph Neff. This outstanding informational resource is meant to be used as a professional reference or a college curriculum text. Covering tax code, hazards, loopholes, and regulations as imposed by governments (especially pertaining to cross-border transactions), State And Local Taxation is meticulously detailed and spells out the facts, principles, and requirements for both students of Economics and non-specialist general readers seeking to expertly flesh out their knowledge base with respect to all aspects of governmental taxation.

As a state and local tax professional, I purchased a copy of this text to use for "in-house" training at my company. Seeing that the "Second Edition" was published this year (2004), I assumed it would be a relatively accurate text. However, in reviewing Chapter 3 ("Corporate Income/Franchise Taxes" - my area of specialization), I was dismayed to find that most of the information has not been updated for current law. As examples, the table on apportionment factor weighting hasn't been updated for changes since 1999, and the discussion of state differences in depreciation fails to address the dramatic changes that have occurred due to 2002 and 2003 federal legislation.

While the authors do present some good materials on the basics of state and local taxation, and address many of the issues that can arise, their release of a "Second Edition" that is woefully out-of-date seriously detracts from its utility in a learning environment.

It's true that the book is geared to the Canadian system, but the writing is clear and many of the more general points and psychological insights hold here as well.

This book is for Canada tax laws and is published by CCH Canadian Limited. The description does not tell you so, so if you are interested in US tax law, this is NOT the book for you.

Not worthy. Despite the promising title and subtitle, the book is written in the pre-modern tax-minimization mode. The proper goal of tax-smart investment management is not minimizing taxes. Rather, the modern view is that tax-smart investing should focus on maximizing after-tax risk-adjusted returns. The chapter topics--direct ownership, munis, tax-deferred savings plans, employer retirement plans, annuities, whole life, MFs, VAs, VLI, MECs, real estate, FLPs, asset location, estate tax, estate strategies--are reasonable and do include nuggets of insight, but lack the over-arching modern view of taxable investment management. The variable annuity chapter, for example, does include 3 paragraphs on the "minus" of extra expenses but considers the fact in isolation. Details building a case for this "minus" are weak--they seem stacked against persuading someone that expenses are a significant negative. (When in fact, many VA policies have expense levels egregious enough to defeat the tax-smart aspect of VAs.) Note further that at least 100 pages of the thin book are fluff--appendices of minimal usefulness. The more so since this 1999 book cannot reflect the 2001 tax changes. Even if the tax code weren't evolving, I'd question the appropriateness of this book in the "Wiley Financial Advisor" series for any but the greenest advisor unacquainted with the pre-modern rudiments of after-tax investing.

The books moves from the basics to the more complex. It would be a great book for new advisors.

The authors do a great job of explaining a concept and then giving an example to drive the points home.