Nobody wants to be audited by the IRS, but many taxpayers make simple mistakes that can lead to just that.
Many Americans will file their income tax return early before the April 15 deadline to receive their tax refund. Some IRS audits are randomly selected and based solely on a statistical formula, the IRS says, but other audits can happen when documents simply don’t add up.
Here are five common red flags that could lead to an audit:
Soon you can get your hands on some Palcohol — or powdered alcohol, for those who don’t know.
The Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau has approved Palcohol for sale. However, spokesman Tom Hogue said despite approval at the federal level, the product is still subject to state regulations.
Lipsmark, the company which makes Palcohol said it aims to get it on the market by the summer.
But clearing state hurdles could be tough. Alaska has already prohibited it, and six other states have taken regulatory action against it, including Louisiana, Nebraska, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Vermont and Virginia.
And Senator Charles Schumer from New York on Thursday introduced a bill against powdered alcohol. “I am in total disbelief that our federal government has approved such an obviously dangerous product,” said Schumer, in a statement. “Congress must take matters into its own hands and make powered alcohol illegal.”
Wake up at 7:30, commute to work, spend 13 hours in the office, run for the last train home, eat, and crash into to bed. The next day, rinse and repeat. Welcome to the insane working hours of a Japanese “salaryman” during crunch times at work. It’s a schedule that sometimes leads to what the Japanese call karoshi—death by overwork. Now, in an attempt to help, the Japanese government is considering a plan to force workers to take five vacation days a year.
Here’s an expat in Japan documenting his typical work week, with 78 hours of work and only 35 hours of sleep:
v.19 n. 11 – Released March 10, 2015
Decided that retail banking is the devil? You could opt for a piggybank. Or you could try the new online only services claiming to have changed the humble bank account forever.
In Durham, Atom Bank is poised to launch shortly as a bank with no branches, living solely on the internet.
The US has Ally Bank, an internet-only bank focused on its smartphone interface.
China recently has launched an internet-only bank of its own, WeBank, led by gaming and social network group Tencent Holdings.
With British and US retail banks in low repute since the credit crunch, the field is ripe for nimble new entrants, unencumbered by physical branches, bad loans, and ageing infrastructure.
Meanwhile, many British banks continue to operate back-end systems in pounds, shillings, and pence.
And a botched 2012 attempt at an IT upgrade by the RBS group left 6.5 million people unable to make payments for up to three weeks.
Nudging open the teller’s window for new competition: banking scandals, rate-fixing and payment protection insurance, and bankers’ bonuses have played their role, too.
The bank of the internet is increasingly open.
(Bloomberg) — Sterling Risk Advisors, an Atlanta-based property and casualty insurance broker with 86 employees, has added 13 workers since June and will probably hire 10 to 15 more this year.
“We are committed to growing,” said Doug Rieder, 50, president and co-founder. “We feel a lot better about business. We are pretty bullish right now.”
Small business, responsible for most American job creation, is finally gaining momentum, giving an expansion approaching its sixth anniversary some legs and leading an acceleration in job creation. Confidence is near a post-2007 peak for small companies, construction is recovering and credit conditions are easing.
Much of the Internet rejoiced when net neutrality rules were approved by the Federal Communications Commission last week.
The landmark vote will mean that the Internet is under the most stringent regulation yet including enhanced transparency, application to landline and wireless, and a the bedrock Open Internet principles.
But for all the hubbub, it would be hard to blame people who didn’t see why it was a big deal. The Internet worked the same on the days before and after the vote.
Critics of the move have said that the FCC is trying to fix a system that isn’t broken, and that the possible harms that the net neutrality rules seek to prevent are non-existent.
This is mostly true, but every so often there’s an example of why net neutrality advocates fought for the new rules with such fervor.
v.19 n. 10 – Released March 4, 2015
Laughing Planet Café has 14 restaurants spread across Oregon and Nevada. Its 280 employees spend their workdays making burritos named after Che Guevara and mixing up salads called Highway to Kale. And now, in a move nearly unheard of in the restaurant world, they will all have three months of fully paid parental leave after they have a new baby.
Laughing Planet’s owner and chief executive Franz Speilvogel made the decision last week, after a pregnant store manager expressed concerns that she wouldn’t be able to take any maternity leave. “She’s entering her final trimester, and she talked about the circumstances of being an employee in my company and what she’s faced with,” said Speilvogel, whose Portland (Ore.) company didn’t previously have any parental leave policy in place. “I told her, let me think about it and get back to you.” He was still thinking about it a few days later when President Obama announced that federal workers would now get six weeks of paid sick leave and that he planned to push Congress to extend those rights to everyone else.
On Tuesday, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services announced that select H-4 visa holders will be eligible for employment authorization.
It was part of President Obama’s executive action on immigration in November, but has been part of a grassroots movement for much longer. It is the first reform to be implemented that’s geared toward high-skilled immigrants.
The H-4 visa is given to spouses of those on an H-1B, as well as a handful of other, less common, visas. At present, H-4 visa holders can’t earn an income or possess a social security number.
