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Tax and SEC Deadline Watch: Are You About to Get Your Life Back?

Doubtful!

But it is March 15th and corporate return extensions are being submitted en masse. Tomorrow is also the deadline for accelerated filers to submit their 10-Ks so auditors that are borderline delirious (and probably feeling frumpy) might get more than four hours of sleep this week.

For you tax jockeys, today could mean a couple of things: 1) this is a bump in the road and your life will be even more hectic as your deadbeat clients who are now realizing that April 15th is coming up fast or 2) you don’t touch anything that isn’t an 1120 and you’re in the clear for awhile.


And for you auditors, hopefully you haven’t forgotten our little teaching lesson from the previous deadline? Try and catch all the embedded “f*cks.” And hey! E&Y is still having Canadian Tuxedo Fridays for a couple more weeks so that’s something to look forward to, amiright?

Yes, there are some of you out there that are still billing monster hours with no end in sight. But look at this way, if you haven’t quit by now, you’re in it to the end, so you better just read this reminder from Deloitte and get back to it. It’ll be over soon enough.

TaxSlayer.com Is the New Corporate Sponsor of The Gator Bowl

You may have heard that the college football season over the weekend, which means tax professionals’ mandatory Saturdays will be a little more unbearable and your football crazed significant other will not be seen nor heard from (with the exception of deafening bodily functions) until January.

January, of course, is bowl season when the best teams in the land compete for bragging rights as champions of various BCS bowls. It also allows a few dozen mediocre teams to play equally mediocre teams for no particular reason. One of these bowls is the Gator Bowl. Sure it might be the 6th oldest bowl and sure, it has been played on New Year’s Day since 1996 but that doesn’t make it any more meaningful. It will feature teams from the SEC and The Big 10 that will be a threat for their respective conference championships for 2 to 3 weeks. In short, the Gator Bowl has a long tradition of fielding third-rate football teams.

So it makes perfect sense for TaxSlayer.com, tax prep company with a long tradition of third-rate service, to sponsor the Gator Bowl:

The Evans, Ga.-based company announced a multi-year partnership Thursday with the Gator Bowl Association and the fact that it was named a new “title sponsor” of the bowl, starting with the 2012 Gator Bowl in Jacksonville, Fla., on Jan. 2.[…] TaxSlayer may not have the same name recognition as TurboTax or TaxAct, but it comes out of a tax prep business that dates back 40 years.

And in case you’re not convinced that TaxSlayer.com isn’t doing everything they can to get their name out there, they also sponsor Dale Earnhardt, Jr., which will make them a household name in no time. In the South, anyway.

[via AT]

Sometimes Billionaires Get Bad Tax Advice, Just Like Us!

It’s probably safe to say that billionaire hedge fund manager Leon Cooperman doesn’t get poor service very often. As the founder of Omega Advisors and #655 by Forbes‘ last count, the man has arguably earned the right to demand only the best, especially when it comes to something as important as tax services.

Howthat Cooperman is just the latest billionaire to have tax issues (McCombs, Anschutz have had troubles recently) that might cause a less prudent mega-rich person to flip their lid (e.g. Ted Turner, Steve Jobs).

Cooperman recently received a letter from the IRS informing him that despite the generous gift of $43 million to his own foundation, the contribution could not be allowed because the donation was a non-marketable security made to a private foundation, which is not allowed by the IRS. Had he made the donation to say, NORML (he looks like he could get behind it, couldn’t he?), or some other public charity everything would have been hunky-dory.


Unfortunately for Mr Cooperman, this isn’t the case and the IRS sent him a bill for $14 million in back taxes and $5 million in penalties. Understandably, this aggression will not stand and the “plain-speaking” Coop has taken the case to court to insist that he relied on his accountants to get this shit right. It’s complicated, after all. It’s not about the money, it’s the principle. Coop would gladly schlep in suitcases of consecutively numbered hundos to settle this here and now but the penalties are uncalled for and he’s bound and determined to prove that. But who actually is to blame?

The lawsuit says Cooperman’s two personal returns claiming the deductions were prepared by his longtime accountant, Mark I. Gittelman, a CPA with Gittelman & Co., Clifton, N.J. The formal appraisals to support the claimed deductions were done by RSM Business Services and Duff & Phelps, Cooperman’s suit adds.

[…]

McGladrey does tax work for other Cooperman entities, including his hedge fund, Omega Advisors. Cooperman told Forbes that McGladrey knew he was planning to donate a nonmarketable security to his private foundation and take a deduction when the firm rendered its appraisal for a fee that Cooperman said was about $20,000.

Again, the money isn’t important but for crissakes, McGladrey, you just don’t half-ass your work for Leon Cooperman. Forbes was all over this issue back in ’04. Where were you in 2004? Stumping for John Kerry?

Of course we all know where this is eventually going – litigation! When rich people get wronged, someone inevitably pays and it sounds like LC is happy to sit tight and let the tax court do its thing. Once that’s resolved, he’ll turn his sights towards the responsible parties:

Cooperman clearly is thinking about malpractice litigation. He acknowledged McGladrey is likely to assert it didn’t prepare or sign the tax returns with the disallowed deductions, although the firm’s formal appraisal was attached.

Best of luck to everyone involved!

Billionaire Leon Cooperman: I Got Bad Tax Advice [Forbes]