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The Tax Deduction No One Tells You About

By Cathy Moran

Money on the table

Did you file Chapter 13 to save your house from foreclosure? Making payments to the trustee to catch up on the mortgage? If you haven’t claimed a tax deduction for the bankruptcy plan payments that go to the lender, you’re leaving money on the table. That’s money that fattens Uncle Sam’s coffers at the expense […]

Filed Under: Real property & mortgages, Taxes Tagged With: mortgage interest

How Guarantors Can Escape Tax On Soured Debt

By Bill Purdy

settlement tax

Tax lawyer Bill Purdy and I shared a client with a small interest in a failed corporation with a huge SBA loan.  Could our client escape the tax consequences should we be able to settle his  liability on a million dollars in unpaid loan.  Was the client looking at a million dollars of cancellation of […]

Filed Under: Small business, Taxes Tagged With: 2019, default, guarantor, tax consequences

The One Person You Must Tell About Your Bankruptcy

By Cathy Moran

bankruptcy tax

Most people who file bankruptcy don’t want anyone else to know. Some of my clients try to hide their break for financial freedom from friends and neighbors. Others are worried about their boss finding out. Occasionally, someone will try to keep it from their mate. But trying to hide his bankruptcy nearly cost one client […]

Filed Under: Consumer Rights, Taxes, True Stories

Tax Form 1099 Needs A Closer Look: Chances Are It’s Wrong

By Bill Purdy

tax form 1099

  Tax attorney Bill Purdy says:  don’t take IRS form 1099 at face value. Hundreds of thousands of taxpayers at this moment are looking at, or thinking about, Form 1099-A or Form 1099-C documents they have received. Some arrived in the tax year a debt was allegedly cancelled. Others are issued by financial instructions many […]

Filed Under: Featured, Taxes Tagged With: 2019, cancellation of debt tax, tax form 1099

The Flat Wrong 1099

By Cathy Moran

When her soon-to-be-ex filed bankruptcy, my client got a 1099-C for the joint credit card. The form claimed that the debt was cancelled. Therefore, she had additional income equal to the card balance. Only, none of the statements on the 1099 were true. The debt wasn’t discharged as to the non filing spouse.  One spouse’s […]

Filed Under: Consumer Rights, Taxes, True Stories

Don’t Let The IRS File A Return For You

By Cathy Moran

SFR taxes

  Bankruptcy works lots of magic with tax debt, but the magic fizzles out when it comes to SFR’s. In my vocabulary, SFR is almost as doleful a phrase as KIA or DOA. Three times in 10 days, I’ve had to explain to clients that the taxes associated with an IRS Substitute For Return are […]

Filed Under: Featured, Taxes Tagged With: 2019

Find The Lost Tax Deduction When Lender Misreports Mortgage Interest Paid

By Cathy Moran

missing mortgage interest

How can you pay thousands of dollars in mortgage payments in a year, and get a  tax Form 1098 for a fraction of actual mortgage interest paid? That’s what my client wanted to know. His monthly mortgage payment is $2715.  The loan is currently interest only.  All the payments were made. And yet, the Form 1098 […]

Filed Under: Real property & mortgages, Taxes Tagged With: 2016

If The IRS Comes Calling After Your Bankruptcy Discharge

By Cathy Moran

tax after bankruptcy

It’s scary, or infuriating, when the IRS continues to try to collect taxes discharged in bankruptcy. What was the point of filing bankruptcy if the government ignores your discharge? Yet IRS attempts to collect taxes from people with a bankruptcy discharge form the single largest group of cases in my law office today. Why the […]

Filed Under: Consumer Rights, Taxes Tagged With: 2018

Audited? Did You Tell The State Tax Authorities?

By Cathy Moran

tax audit

We’re all about sharing these days, aren’t we?  So, did you share with the state tax authorities the outcome of your IRS audit? While telling the Franchise Tax Board that you owe more taxes to the feds may seem like inviting trouble, you gain by doing so. How? You set those taxes owed to California […]

Filed Under: Featured, Taxes Tagged With: 2018

Last Minute Tax Break For Distressed Homeowners

By Cathy Moran

tax break

  Days before the end of the tax year, the massive tax bill changed the rules retroactively.  And for once, the change benefited individual taxpayers. The tax bill revived, for tax year 2017, the exclusion from income accorded to phantom income upon foreclosure, short sale, or loan modification. The provision that created an exception protecting […]

Filed Under: Featured, Taxes Tagged With: 2018, qualified principal residence debt

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Bankruptcy Basics

About The Soapbox

You’ve arrived at the Bankruptcy Soapbox, a resource of bankruptcy information and consumer law.

Soapbox is a companion site to Bankruptcy in Brief, where I try to be largely explanatory and even handed (Note I said “try”).

Here, I allow myself to tell stories and express strong opinions. We dig deeper into how to consider bankruptcy and navigate a bankruptcy case.

Moran Law Group
Bankruptcy specialists for individuals and small businesses in the San Francisco Bay Area

How Bankruptcy Works

Cheat Sheet For Passing Bankruptcy Means Test

The bankruptcy means test has a fatal weakness in its attempt to keep people out of bankruptcy. Like so much recently, it's health care. It's health care, in the future, to be paid before your creditors get any money in your bankruptcy. It works because, in a logic that only Congress could employ, the means … Read more

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