Attorney Robert Wood is one of the nations premier experts on taxation, taxable damages, structured settlements and qualified settlement funds.

His commentary covers a wide range of issues related to taxation and you can find his commentary exclusively on The Legal Broadcast Network

BIO: Robert W. Wood has extraordinarily broad experience in corporate, partnership and individual tax matters. He has an international reputation as a consultant on the tax treatment of litigation recovereies. In this area he is perhaps the preeminent lawyer in the United States. He has long maintained a corporate tax practice emphasizing general business planning, negotiation and documentation of corporate distributions, divisive and acquisitive reorganizations, financings, recapitalizations, formations and liquidations. He has recently been named to "Super Lawyers" by publishers of Law & Politics and San Francisico magazines, and named to "America's Best Lawyers" by Forbes Magazine. Robert W. Wood is a frequent guest on The Legal Broadcast Network and is the featured commentator on The Tax Law Channel.

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Link to Tax Law Channel: http://taxlawchannel.squarespace.com/

Link to Speaking of Justice profile: Robert Wood's Speaking of Justice Profile

Tax lawyer and Tax Law Channel host Rob Wood discusses his recent article in the Los Angeles and San Francisco Daily Journal on navigating California's tax system with LBN host Scott Drake

Robert Wood

(Forbes) Will the IRS pay for your hobby? The short answer is: No. But the more nuanced answer is: "Yes, Uncle Sam will sometimes subsidize your hobby." If, that is, you make it into enough of a real business.

If you want to avoid any IRS hassles, my standard advice is to keep business and personal pursuits purely separate.

Read the article pdf

Scott Drake talks with tax law expert Rob Wood.

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(ABC News) While critics have dismissed Sarah Palin's "death panels" to dole out medical care as fiction, a tax loophole may in fact give the heirs of some wealthy people a financial incentive to make this new year their loved one's last.

In 2001, then-President George W. Bush signed a law designed to phase out the estate tax -- a tax on the assets a deceased individual leaves behind. The law reduced the amount wealthy families were taxed after death starting in 2001 -- leading to complete abolition of the tax in 2010, but at the same time it concerned some because of the financial implications of the date when someone died.

For example, a wealthy person who dies on January 1, 2011, and left her heirs $10 million would really be leaving them $5.05 million because of taxes. If they died a day earlier (assuming no changes were made in tax laws), the heirs could receive the full $10 million.

Tax Law Expert Rob Wood writes about this in the Los Angeles/San Francisco Daily Journal.

Scott Drake interviews tax law expert  and host of the Tax Law Channel...Robert Wood.

(WSJ) A Maryland nurse accomplished two rare feats in her battle with the Internal Revenue Service: She defended herself against the agency's lawyers and won, and she got a ruling that could help tens of thousands of students deduct the cost of an M.B.A. degree on their taxes.

The U.S. Tax Court handed Lori Singleton-Clarke her victory last month, saying the 47-year-old Bryantown, Md., woman had properly deducted nearly $15,000 in business school tuition. The Tax Court ruling should make it easier for many other professionals to deduct the expense of a Master in Business Administration degree.

After getting word of the court decision, "I nearly yelled the roof off the house," Ms. Singleton-Clarke says. "I still can hardly believe it."

The IRS's rules on deducting work-related tuition are complicated and onerous, ultimately preventing most students from deducting their tuition. But this case clarifies the rules and will likely lead to more taxpayers taking the deduction, tax experts say.

Few taxpayers decide to go toe to toe with the IRS as Ms. Singleton-Clarke did, arguing her case without a lawyer. For good reason: In 2009, individuals won only about 10% of about 300 such cases, according to data from Tax Analysts. Ms. Singleton-Clarke fought her case in Tax Court, a venue where taxpayers don't have to pay the contested tax before going to trial. The court has a special procedure for small cases.

Some of the losers, such as several dozen tax protesters who defended the filing of frivolous returns, were tilting at tax windmills. Others were simply on the wrong side of the law, including a horse enthusiast who wanted to deduct his hobby losses, an unsuccessful comedian who tried to classify his expenses as business losses, and an attorney who claimed over $100,000 in medical deductions for his visits to prostitutes.

Of the few who did prevail against the IRS, nearly half came to court on a single issue: requests for "innocent spouse" treatment that decouples a spouse from a partner who is a tax cheat. This provision has been used mostly to protect unknowing wives against their husbands' tax misdeeds. One of the spouses granted relief last year was formerly married to an investment banker who didn't pay his taxes after his bonus didn't come through.

Ms. Singleton-Clarke's encounter with the tax system shows what it can take for one individual to prevail over the IRS against the long odds: favorable facts, obsessive organization, and fearlessness. She says she didn't have a lawyer because she couldn't afford one.

Her odyssey began in 2006, when she filed her 2005 return. It showed just over $50,000 of income, several smaller deductions, and one large one—for $14,787 of expenses for an M.B.A. from the University of Phoenix, an online school. Ms. Singleton-Clarke deducted the tuition because her tax preparer told her she met the law's narrow definitions.

When the IRS audited the return in late 2006, she conceded all the IRS's challenges to her deductions but one. She dug in her heels on the tuition deduction because, after looking at a complex diagram in IRS Publication 970, she believed she qualified for it.

The audit process first involved several rounds of confusing IRS correspondence. "At one point I had three requests for the same records, each with a different contact name. I had to spend hours calling to figure out who needed what," says Ms. Singleton-Clarke, a steely but soft-spoken woman.

After that she was summoned to an IRS office in downtown Washington where she had to provide more copies of her résumé, a job description, and other records. She felt overwhelmed and intimidated.

Both the IRS's actions and her reactions are typical, says Christopher Bergin, president of Tax Analysts, a group that fights for tax-system transparency and since l972 has won a series of freedom-of-information cases against the IRS. "Without doing anything illegal, they muscled her. That's what they do. The pressure can be terrifying," he says.

A spokesman for the IRS says that it never comments on issues with specific taxpayers.

As Ms. Singleton-Clarke held fast to her conviction that she deserved the deduction, she drew on skills she developed as a nurse responsible for dealing with doctors who may have infringed hospital rules. That was why she studied for her M.B.A., she says: "I didn't want to feel outmatched by surgeons who didn't want to talk to me."

When the IRS again denied her deduction by mail after her meeting with the agent, Ms. Singleton-Clarke wound up going to Tax Court to set a trial date. But when she came to court in November 2008, it seemed that everyone else had settled their cases: "There was just me by myself at one table and the [IRS] tax team at another in a big courtroom."

The tax team consisted of two attorneys and several assistants or paralegals. Ms. Singleton-Clarke had been told to bring copies of her documents in triplicate, including a time line of her career. Judge Stanley Goldberg questioned her closely and complimented her on her record-keeping during the hour-long trial. "The whole time," she says: "I was thinking, here is this god-like man who is going to make an important decision for me. But he wasn't a bully. I had met with the bullies before."

Reached Friday by phone, Judge Goldberg said: "I remember the case well because Ms. Singleton-Clarke was so articulate and well-prepared. Too many taxpayers are not."

Ms. Singleton-Clarke's victory came when the ruling was issued a year later. It is unusual in that it helps not only her but others as well. Decisions in small cases aren't allowed to be cited as precedent. "But everyone uses them," says Melissa Labant, a tax expert with the American Institute of CPAs. "This case definitely provides a road map others can use, especially M.B.A. students."

(Laura Sanders WSJ)

Read the Forbes article

Rob Wood joins us to discuss his recent article in Tax Notes on the tax treatment of litigation recoveries.
In this case a settlement payment from Pizza Hut to a sausage supplier in the neighborhood of $15 million dollars for misappropriation of a trade secret.

The tax treatment of the settlement further highlights the need for expert tax consultation beforehand to avoid problems.

Rob wood is the host of the Tax Law Channel.  He is partner at Wood and Porter in San Francisco. This edition brought to you by ATG Trust.

Tax Law Expert Rob Wood Explains The IRS's Views On Bartering

Tax authorities eye barter income, require 1099s from barter exchanges.

A little knowledge about the tax law can be a dangerous thing. You might get the sense from this brief romp through constructive receipt and economic benefit doctrines that you have a good sense of how to manipulate your own income. That is probably inaccurate.

Indeed, my main point is that there is much artifice in the tax law. Some of that can be helpful, and some of it is decidedly hurtful. If you have ever received a Form K-1 reporting phantom income to you when you received no cash, you know exactly what I mean!