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I knew my husband excluded income from our joint tax return, but he lied to me. Will the IRS still hold me responsible for unpaid taxes?

It is not sufficient to simply say that your husband lied to you regarding intentional omissions from a joint income tax return. Lack of knowledge regarding tax laws is also not a valid argument when trying to obtain relief from a tax deficiency arising from one spouse’s failure to include income or understate tax owed on an income tax return. However, if the spouse seeking relief can prove that she did make an effort to inquire and was repeatedly lied to about the couple’s finances then the IRS can release a spouse from liability for a tax deficiency.

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Rights When Your Home Mortgage Loan is Sold and Assigned to Another Lender

The practice of selling or transferring the servicing of your mortgage loan is very common in the mortgage industry and your mortgage servicing can be transferred more than once during the life of your loan. Whether or not a borrower has any rights to object to and perhaps stop an assignment of his or her loan for servicing or ownership depends entirely upon the written agreement between the borrower and the lender for the loan. Simply put, if the written documents do not prevent the lender from selling the loan to the borrower and its servicing rights, the borrower has no rights to stop the transfer and assignment.

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Settling IRS Tax Debt Through Tax Arbitration or Mediation

You can opt for binding arbitration for either a single factual issue or the entire decision. Appropriate cases for binding arbitration include valuations, reasonable compensation for taxes owed, and allocation of deduction and credit cases. Mediation, just like binding arbitration, must be selected by the tax payer. It must be requested within the parameters of the trial timeline and cannot be used as a means to delay the trial or other settlement procedures. Mediation is also a one-shot deal and cannot be used twice in the same case. IRS mediations are overseen by the tax court and guidance is offered to the mediator where necessary. In order to qualify for either of these methods, you cannot have already appeared in tax court.

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What is gross income for tax reporting purposes?

Gross income is almost everything of value received by a taxpayer during the taxable year. In fact, the law is that everything of value a taxpayer receives during the year is income unless the taxpayer can establish that it is not income. The amount of that income is the value of what is received. Gross income includes, wages and salaries, interest, dividends, stock sales, self employment income, income from business entities, prizes, rents, real estate sales, bartering, babysitting and most other forms of income. Basically, any money that you receive from any source, is almost always part of gross income.

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What is ejectment?

Ejectment is a legal remedy to resolve conflicts between a landlord and tenant that can sometimes be used to remove a person from wrongfully occupying real estate. Ejectment can be available if a landlord or property owner can show they have a legal right to the property, and the occupier has no valid legal claim to be there.

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Can I appeal from a federal circuit court of appeals to the United States Supreme Court?

Any party can attempt to appeal a decision from a circuit court of appeals to the U.S. Supreme Court, but this doesn’t mean that the appeal will be heard. Each year, the Supreme Court typically grants certiorari (i.e. accepts an appeal) for about 100 cases out of the approximately 7,000-8,000 cases that are appealed. Thus, for 99% of all federal cases, the decision of the circuit court of appeals is the last word. A court of appeals decision can be appealed, but the issues at stake must be so significant, or the court of appeal’s error in law so egregious, that the Supreme Court is persuaded to hear the case. The Supreme Court’s review of circuit court of appeals cases is thus best described as discretionary, rather than mandatory.

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