How to Pay Zero Taxes, 2007 (How to Pay Zero Taxes)

by Jeff A. Schnepper

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Editorial Reviews
Product Description

Make 2007 the year you pay zero taxes!

Fully updated to include all the latest tax law changes, How to Pay Zero Taxes outlines the easiest, most practical strategies you can use to lower your taxes this year, next year, and beyond. From converting personal expenses into business expenses to avoiding or surviving an IRS audit, Jeff Schnepper's guide comprehensively covers more deductions than any other tax book, all conveniently organized in six fast-access categories: exclusions, credits, “above-the-line” deductions, “below-the-line” deductions, traditional tax shelters, and supertax shelters.

IN THE 2007 EDITION YOU WILL FIND COVERAGE OF

The new Hurricane Katrina tax law
The new capital gains and dividends rules
$4,000 deduction for higher education expenses
Increased dependent care and “kiddie” tax credits
Coverdell Education Accounts for elementary and secondary school expenses
Increased IRA and retirement plan limits
Job-hunting expenses
Capital gains rules
Real estate trusts
New above-the-line deductions for teachers
Home equity loans
Theft and casualty losses
Educational and ROTH IRAs
Divorce and separation costs

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All Customer Reviews
Average Customer Review: 4 out of 5 stars

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

3 out of 5 stars

a LOT of unnecessary information , 2007-12-05
The title is "How to... 2007". The writer refers to the tax laws in prior tax years again and again and again for some reason. I don't think anybody ordering this book wants to wade through deduction tables that date to the 1990's. If every single item NOT referring to your return THIS year was deleted the book would be a third the size it is.

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5 out of 5 stars

I highly recommend it, 2007-04-11
Within the first thirty minutes of getting this book, it saved me a lot of money on the amount of taxes owed. I would definitely recommend it to anybody who has to pay taxes. Even if you have a professional do your taxes, I would still tell you to get this book,

6 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4 out of 5 stars

Thorough, 2007-02-23
This is an overview of the many options available for taming your taxes. It is not necessary to read the entire book cover-to-cover in order to learn something new. The chapter and section division allow you to jump around to find the specific sections that apply to your individual situation. I found it highly useful and thought-provoking.

9 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4 out of 5 stars

Good book for understanding tax breaks, 2007-01-28

I initially borrowed older edition of this book from local library and liked it enough to buy its new edition for my personal copy. I compared this book with several others offering deductions advice and found them either "too small or too big" for my comfort and they did not usually have all the info I needed at one place. For example, some deductions books don't explain the retirement plans in details and their impacts like this book does.

What sets this book apart from other similar books is that the author treats long term tax planning & organizing as seriously as immediate year-end tax-breaks. This book is good reference on several other topics such as trusts and estate planning for which normally you'd again find in different books. I liked the plain english break down of several tax complexities.

It's a no-brainer bargain at Amazon for understanding deductions, exemptions, credits and other tax breaks and I highly recommend it for average taxpayers.

24 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

3 out of 5 stars

Useful book for reducing your income tax liabilities but not well written, 2007-01-18
Tax Attorney and MSN tax columnist Jeff Schnepper's "How to Pay Zero Taxes" is a self-help book on Federal individual income taxes. The book title is largely marketing hype: in all likelihood it won't help you reduce your Federal income tax liability to nil. But after reading the section relevant to your own situation, you'll likely find a few tax deductions that you hadn't known before. Frankly, for $12 (Amazon price) this is a good value -- and it is more accurate than most professional tax preparers out there. I use the book together with the free TaxAct online software to prepare my 2006 return.

The book starts off with an introduction to how Federal individual taxation works and moves on to specific tax topics organized by the structure of the 1040 form: gross income, above-the-line deductions, adjusted gross income, below-the-line deductions. Then tax shelters and planning are discussed. The final chapters, occupying nearly half of the total pages, are devoted to detailing tax "reforms" from 1993 onward as well as how to avoid and survive an IRS audit. The 775 pages of main text are packed with useful information. For individual taxpayers, regardless of whether you work as an employee or as a contractor or whether you have your own business, this book can help you improve your tax strategies.

However, there are several issues with the book:

1) This book (2007 edition, for the 2006 tax year) is now in its 24th edition, so a lot of places look like it was really written over several years. In one paragraph it would say "as of 2002 there has been no change..." and then in the next paragraph it would say "in 2004 we are finally seeing...". Finally, a third pargraph reads "as this goes to press, we heard that ..." You get the point.

2) The author tries to inject some dry sense of humor but for the most part his jokes are not funny. And the book really needs some good editing as sentences often do not flow logically from one to the next.

3) The author spends a lot of ink criticizing the IRS (and Congress) for the "disgraceful" U.S. tax code. He repeats the same lines too many times in the book, and recites a lot of IRS statistics and expert quotes that grow old and tiresome quickly. The auditing chapter is in particular painful to read, as it buries the how-to tips deep inside mountains of charges against IRS abuses (many examples of which occurred 20 years ago) and loads of useless statistics.

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