3. (TCO 10) What is the difference between a recognized gain or loss and a realized gain or loss? Would you rather have a realized gain or loss or a recognized gain or loss? (Points : 30) |
Question 14.14. (TCO 9) Explain how a company chooses a taxable year. What do you think the taxable year for the following businesses would be?
i. A major league football team |
Question 15.15. (TCO 8) Matthew and Mia have been house hunting. The real estate agent is trying to convince them that they should buy as much of the house as they can possibly afford. They are in a 33% tax bracket, so he has assured them that spending $28,000 a year on mortgage payments will reduce their taxes by $9,240. They may be even more reduced in the future as they continue to rack up the big raises over the next few years. The couple has always used the standard deduction and isn’t really sure how the itemizing thing really works. Mia vaguely remembers her tax professor in college warning the class that some real estate agents tend to oversell the tax benefits of home ownership. What factors would cause the actual tax savings of a $28,000 mortgage payment to be less than the payment times the couple’s highest ETR (estimated tax rate)? |
Answer to question 13
When any one sell an any asset,such incident may create income tax liability if that person earn a profit. The Internal Revenue Service makes a distinction between recognized gains and realized gains. While a recognized gain may create a tax liability, the realized gain often determines the amount of tax you must pay. let us understand what is mean by recognized gain or loss and a realized gain or loss
Realized gain : A realized gain is the excess of the amount realized on a sale or exchange over the basis of the property sold or exchanged.
Recognized Gain :The recognized gain is the amount of this realized gain that will be treated as income and subject to tax on the seller’s income tax return.
Answer to question 14
It is very important to choose financial year for the company. it is very critical job to decide the financil year either calender year or fiscal year
Calender year is the year starting from 1 st january to end on 31 december
Fiscal year is a 12-month period that ends sometime other than December 31
short tax year can result because the business began after the start of the tax year or ended before the end of the tax year
if your business has , non-calendar business cycle or they have highly seasonal business—such as a restaurant in a summer resort area—would likely benefit from reporting their financials on a fiscal year. and this will a better measure of how a business performs over its natural business cycle.
i. A major league football team
Generally a major league football team will chose short tax year . Mostly tax years consist of 12 months, but a short tax year can result because the business began after the start of the tax year or ended before the end of the tax year. A short tax year can also result because of a change in the tax year
ii. A moving company
Genrally moving company adopt shor year or more then 12 month period as year end (also known as its ‘accounting reference date’) to make your company’s financial year run for more or less than 12 months.
Changing your company’s year end will also change your deadline for filing accounts, unless you’re doing your first year’s accounts.
The rules on changing your financial year end
You can shorten your company’s financial year as many times as you like – the minimum period you can shorten it by is 1 day.
You can lengthen your company’s financial year:
- to a maximum of 18 months, or longer if your company’s in administration
- once every 5 years
iii. A tax preparation business
generally Tax preparation business will chose a calander year
Answer to question 15
The mortgage interest tax deduction is one of the most cherished tax breaks.
Firstly you will get interest tax deduction
The second is that every dollar paid in mortgage interest results in a dollar-for-dollar reduction in income tax liability
Tax Payer Status | Standard Deduction | Value of Standard Deduction in 35% Tax Bracket | Value ofMortgage Deduction on $12,000 in Interest | Bottom Line DifferenceBetween Standard Deduction and Mortgage Deduction |
Single | $5,800 | $2,030 | $4,200 | $2,170 |
Head of Household | $8,500 | $2,975 | $4,200 | $1,225 |
Married | $11,600 | $4,060 | $4,200 | $140 |