Zinner & Co. Blog and Newsroom

The IRS issued its annual inflation adjustments for key tax items for the tax year 2020. Among them are new amounts for standard deductions.

For the tax year 2020, the standard deduction for a married couple filing jointly will be raised from $24,400 to 24,800. For single taxpayers and married couples filing separately, the standard deduction will be raised from $12,200 to 12,400. For heads of households, the standard deduction will be $18, 650.

Margin tax rates will change as follows:

Governor Mike DeWine has signed a bill into law that will allow Attorneys and Lobbyists to take the Business Income Deduction (BID) deduction.The law was backed by the Ohio Society of CPAs, and was viewed as a fix to a part of the biennial budget that was thought to be unfair in its treatment of two specific professions.

As we wrote about when the bill first passed the General Assembly of the House in October, the law, in part, allows lawyers and lobbyists to take the same deductions as other types of pass-through entities. The law also contains two other provisions of note:

The IRS has released the retirement contribution limits for the 2020 tax year. The new limits are adjusted based on increases in the cost of living.

It’s the 4^th quarter. The holidays are right around the corner. The last thing you may want to think about is income taxes … but there are some compelling reasons why you should be thinking ahead.

Last year’s tax season saw the biggest change to the tax code in over 30 years. At the end of the tax season, we noted that one of the lessons learned was that individuals who engage us in tax planning early, on average, fared much better than those who did not. There are some very important reasons for this:

The Ohio General Assembly unanimously passed a bill that reverses a previous tax measure, passed in July, that required lawyers and lobbyists to pay tax on the first $250,000 of income they earned.

In a blow to several high-tax states, a federal judge has upheld a key provision of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA), the State and Local Tax (SALT) deduction cap.

Under the TCJA, congress placed a cap on the amount taxpayers could claim on their Schedule A for state and local taxes.

Ask the Expert: I sold my income property. Someone told me I could be impacted by depreciation recapture even though I didn’t claim depreciation – is this true?The short answer is, yes.

Certain types of assets can be depreciated and are subject to depreciation recapture; among these are investment rental properties.

The IRS has announced it will be automatically waiving penalties for over 400,000 taxpayers. The waived penalties apply to those who have already filed their 2018 taxes, but did not file a waiver seeking forgiveness for the under-payment penalty.

The IRS has unveiled the new, redesigned Form W-4 for the tax year 2020. This new form eliminates many of the complex tables used in previous versions and includes many enhancements from the earlier draft version.

The Ohio Department of Taxation announced they have begun a new process for registering new pass-through entities (PTE.) In the past, the department’s old computer system registered and created accounts for new PTEs upon the filing of their first return. One challenge with this process was that many PTEs made estimated payments prior to filing their first return.