This PodCast is about taxpayer advice and its reliability and its credibility in court. Taxpayers get their advice from a lot of sources, and we often end up having to defend our own advice against other sources. This week we have two cases that show that all advice is not created equal. In the case of Lehrer v. Commissioner (TC Memo 2006-156) a taxpayer learned the hard way that selecting a preparer predominantly on which one computes the lowest tax is not necessarily the best way to end up well advised.
And the case of Diem v. Commissioner (TC Summary 2006-121) is useful for those clients that will try and check your advice by calling the IRS for an answer and then reporting the IRS's answer to you (so, you know, you don't have to do any work on that one). Mr. Diem was clobbered when it turned out an IRS employee's assurance that the program offered by his employer would be treated just like the workers compensation style claim he was giving up for tax purposes turned out not to be so.
The materials for this week's presentation are found at http://edzollars.com/2006-08-03_Trust.pdf .
This Podcast is sponsored by Leimberg Information Services, Inc. at http://www.leimbergservices.com
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