Taxpayer Advocate Report Friendlier to Micros
Jan 21st, 2008 | By Dawn R. Rivers | Category: RegulationsOne of the highlights of January in Washington took place last week when IRS National Taxpayer Advocate Nina Olsen issued her annual report to Congress for the 2007 tax year. Olsen is still grousing about the tax gap, although she is more focused on administrative adjustments the IRS could make to address the problem rather than simply rattling microbusiness cages by portraying us as desperate tax criminals. What the National Association for the Self-Employed is gleeful about, though, is a legislative recommendation that Congress give us a home office standard deduction. This has been on the wish list for a long time and, one would hope, with this recommendation, policy makers would be willing to give the matter another look. Besides being a simple step toward tax simplification, it would better enable us scofflaws to avail ourselves of this “underutilized” but legitimate tax break. So … break out the bubbly. Nina got one right.
