Bill Zumwalt's (teamzumwalt) Blog

In 2008 Mitch and Ann Romney bought a home in LaJolla California. The cost was a mere  $12,000,000.  Seems the Romney’s wanted a home where they could hear the ocean.  Well they also wanted to tear down the existing home and rebuild on the property a new 11,000 square foot house. If you stop to t...

Please remember this year you can use the new IRS rule for the home office deduction.  This method allows you to deduct a flat rate of $5 per square foot up to 300 square feet or $1,500 for a home office.  The good and bad to this are as follows1) Gooda) You still can deduct all of your mortgage ...

Apple and other big corporations like Google and Facebook have long used tax avoidance methods that have moved large amounts of money to foreign banks and companies. Some of the methods have colorful names such as the “Double Irish” and the “Dutch Sandwich”. Well this past week the Securities and...

It's Week Nine of the 2013 football season, and millions of Americans are following every play. The Kansas City Chiefs are still undefeated. The New York Giants have finally won a couple of games. And playoff races are already starting to take shape. (Bengals, anyone?) So, what does any of this h...

If you find that your income is up for the year 2013 and you make quarterly estimates for state income taxes consider making the fourth quarter estimated payment before December 31st, 2013. By doing this you will increase your deduction for state taxes on your itemized deductions on Schedule A. I...

Seems we have survived the latest government shootout. At least, until the first of next year, we can pay our bills. How many people feel like we will be back in a few months to see congress battle again? From a tax standpoint we at the least stopped the IRS for a few weeks and gave them a nice p...

Back in grade school, you did all sorts of math problems. You started out with drills to learn your basic addition, subtraction, and multiplication. You learned long division (ugh). You moved on to fractions. And all along the way, as part of your teachers' efforts to convince you that it all mat...

One area I see missed quite often is the separation of 50% meals from 100% deductible meals. You mean you did not know there were 100% meals??  That means you have really been missing out. Every time you spend money for snacks or refreshments for an open house you have 100% deductible meals. The ...

I have been asked this question more than a couple of times as I speak to realtor groups around the country. My wife and I work for two separate companies and we go out to eat and discuss work with each other and how to solve problems, Is this deductible as a business meal? Well sorry, but the ta...

As I have written about before there are two high schools in Oklahoma that dominate the large school division. The Jenks Trojans and the Union Redskins have combine to win the last 17 state championships. Another daunting stat is that during the month of October Jenks and Union are a combined 128...