Anneken, Huey & Moser, PLLC

Anneken, Huey & Moser, PLLC Anneken, Huey & Moser, PLLC
201 Martha Layne Collins Boulevard
Highland Heights, KY 41076
Phone: 85

01/23/2025

Subject Line: Membership Has Its Privileges

In 1966, American Express rolled out the first Gold Card for big spenders and created a yuppie talisman. In 1984, they added a Platinum card for even bigger spenders. (Patrick Bateman carried one in American Psycho.) In 1987, they introduced a new tagline designed to attract even more users: "Membership has its privileges." (Never mind the irony of spending millions on national television to attract "members" to an "exclusive" club.) Finally, in 1999, they introduced their most exclusive tier yet: the invitation-only black card that comes with a $10,000 initiation fee, a $5,000 annual fee, and a reported $500,000 minimum annual spending expectation.

It all sounds so bougie and polished, doesn’t it? Who wouldn’t want to join the 21st-century equivalent of those old-school clubs where stuffy men sit around in leather chairs reading the Wall Street Journal while white-jacked waiters keep them stocked with gin-and-tonics? But make no mistake about it, American Express is a business, and a profitable one at that. That means, behind the scenes, they sometimes cut a corner or two, including a little light tax fraud.

Banking and cash management, at Amex’s level, is a game of inches. Margins are incredibly slim, which means banks have to make it up on volume. Amex solves that problem by charging higher processing fees than Visa, MasterCard, and Discover. The difference is enough that many vendors refuse to take Amex—in fact, in the late 80s, Visa ran a series of ads highlighting stores and other venues where "they don’t take American Express."

Most of the time, the battle rages out of sight. Occasionally, though, one of the contenders overplays its hand. In September, the DOJ filed an antitrust suit against Visa. Last week, it was Amex’s turn in the hot seat. On Thursday, the company announced they would pay $230 million to settle civil and criminal charges that they used deceptive tactics to sell small-business cards and wire transfer services.

The first set of charges involved allegations that company sales teams misrepresented benefits and fees to sell cards to small businesses. Violations included lying about credit checks, submitting false information on behalf of customers, and even tricking their own bank into issuing cards to businesses without proper employer identification numbers.

How about the tax charges? From 2018 to 2021, Amex sold wire transfer services called Payroll Reserve and Premium Wire. The company charged a percentage-based fee, ranging from 1.77% to 3.5%, for those transfers. That’s a boatload higher than the competition—but the fees earned reward points that customers could use for travel expenses. Amex told customers that the fees were tax-deductible and the

rewards nontaxable. However, the government contended the fees weren’t deductible as an "ordinary or necessary" business expense because they were incurred solely to create a personal benefit.

How much is all of this costing the company? The settlement includes a $108.7 million civil payment. There’s also a $138 million payment and deferred prosecution agreement to settle the criminal investigation into the wire transfer programs. (A "deferred prosecution agreement" is the technical term for giving Little Rabbit Foo Foo three chances to screw up before turning him into a goon.) $230 million sounds like a lot to you and me. But it’s probably pennies on the dollar compared to the profits the company made off the customers buying overpriced services.

There are lots of lessons in this week’s story. For starters, be careful where you get your tax advice! You’d think a company the size of American Express would steer you straight. In this case, though, you’d be wrong. So call us with your questions—clients have privileges, too!

Kevin

01/23/2025

Subject line: End of an Era?

Last month, Peacock aired the series finale of their monster hit Yellowstone. (One big spoiler to come!) For five and a half seasons, the show chronicled the ups and downs of the Dutton family, heirs to the largest contiguous ranch in the United States, as they fought to defend their land. On one side, greedy developers conspired to turn it into the next Park City. On the other, the neighboring Broken Rock tribe wanted to reclaim their ancestral home. Real Montana ranchers say the show is remarkably true-to-life, especially the gunfights, beatings, explosions, and occasional "long black train" to the back of the head.

Yellowstone had everything you'd expect in a classic western. There was Kevin Costner, playing patriarch John Dutton, riding through stunning mountain scenery. There were comic side plots following the wranglers living in the bunkhouse, which usually wound up with someone bleeding on the floor. (Mamas, don't let your babies grow up to be cowboys.) There was a terrific soundtrack, full of edgy, energetic country music and lonesome cowboy ballads.

And Yellowstone offered something new for Western fans — plotlines that turn on taxes. The Dutton property is bigger than Rhode Island, worth countless billions. (In one episode, the aforementioned greedy developers offered half a billion to turn a 50,000-acre slice – representing less than 10% of the total area – into an international airport.) But the ranch doesn’t turn a profit, leaving the Duttons land-rich but cash poor. That promised there would be yet another crisis at patriarch John’s death, when his estate would owe a tax of 40% on anything above $14 million.

In the real world, ranch heirs can claim special-use valuation discounts and defer taxes for up to 14 years. And Montana law offers discounts on agricultural parcels larger than 160 acres. But nobody wants those sorts of pesky technical details to get in the way of a good story – so let’s just assume there was no way the family could come up with enough cash to cover the tax.

The second half of Season Five solved that problem. It started off with a literal bang – the gunshot John Dutton allegedly fired into his own head on the bathroom floor of the Governor’s mansion. No one who knew John Dutton (or even followed the series since it debuted in 2018) believed it was really su***de, and most of the final episodes deal with finding the real killer. But we also learned the estate tax bill would be $1.5 billion, which would represent somewhere between 5-10% of the entire federal estate tax haul for the year.

You’re just going to have to watch yourself to see how John’s children, Kayce and Beth, solved that problem. No nitpicking here over whether it would really work!

Yellowstone fans need not worry that the saga is over. Creator Taylor Sheridan has spawned more spinoffs than the Kardashians. There are two origin stories (1883 and 1923), with a third on the way (1944). There’s another spinoff centered on Texas’s legendary 6666 ranch, which Sheridan actually bought with some of his earnings from the mother ship. Fan favorites Beth and Rip get to continue their story. And Michelle Pfeiffer will headline yet another spinoff, The Madison, which follow a New York family’s move to Montana’s Madison Valley.

We realize your tax problems don’t include dodging bullets and fists on your way to a 10-figure tax bill. But 2025 promises to be full of tax drama, anyway. If Congress can’t extend the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017, your taxes are probably on the rise! So stick with us throughout the year for more real world tax drama – with no commercial interruption!

07/16/2020

Aloha!

Coronavirus has millions of Americans rethinking where they choose to live, especially crowded cities. Back in February and March, New Yorkers led the charge, fleeing the petri dish that Manhattan had become to vacation homes in places like the Hamptons and Martha's Vineyard. Silicon Valley tech-bros are gazing longingly across the Pacific to New Zealand. Few of the urban expats have returned, and many are surprised to find they prefer the pace and community of rural life to waiting hours for a table at the newest see-and-be-seen bistro or club. But where to settle for good?

If you're on Team Tropical, you should know that Hawaii County, encompassing the entire "Big Island" of Hawaii, is giving mainlanders even more incentive to make the island paradise their full-time home. While the county just raised tax on vacation and investment properties to $11.10 per $1,000 of taxable value up to $2 million, plus $13.60 per $1,000 above that amount, full-time residents will pay just $6.15 per $1,000, no matter how much their homes are worth. If you ever really "needed" an excuse to call Hawaii home, could this be it?

Property tax on a million-dollar home averages $10,800 in the United States. But Hawaii has the lowest average property tax rate in the country, and the bill on that same million-dollar home would cost you just $2,880 in Honolulu County. Now imagine shelling out $23,580 on the same million-dollar home in Essex County, New Jersey — without the gentle breezes, perfect beaches, or 'illima papa bushes with their beautiful yellow flowers!

Unfortunately, while Hawaii has the lowest property tax rate, it also has the highest property values. According to Zillow.com, Hawaii's median home value is $636,541. (If you're looking for more affordable digs, consider taking a country road to "wild, wonderful" West Virginia, where the median house costs just $108,236.) Hawaii also imposes a transfer tax when you sell your home, ranging from $0.10 per $100 of value on the low end to $1.10 per $100 for homes over $10 million.

Hawaii also has one of the highest state income taxes in the country, with a top rate of 11% kicking in on income over $200,000 (singles) or $400,000 (joint filers).

Property taxes in general pinch harder since passage of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017. Until then, you could deduct an unlimited amount of state and local income and property tax, so long as you itemized deductions. The IRS even helpfully provided safe harbor sales tax amounts you could deduct if you lived in a state like Texas or Florida with no income tax. The new law caps that deduction at just $10,000.

And sometimes, unique properties just mean unique property tax bills. Fox News heir Lachlan Murdoch just bought "Chartwell," the instantly-recognizable Clampett mansion from the Beverly Hillbillies. (Ironically, it's set in Bel Air.) He'll pay $1.3 million in annual tax on his new pad. Of course, he'll get 25,000 square feet with 18 bedrooms, 24 baths, and a 12,500-bottle wine cellar set on 10 acres with a "see-ment pond" out back — so don't feel too sorry for him. (Everyone in L.A. knows that Beverly Hills proper is where the poor rich people live.)

Coronavirus is likely to inspire all sorts of changes in your life. And many of those changes will involve taxes. So be sure to bring us into those discussions. Remember that today's trend towards virtual work means we can continue to serve your needs no matter where you move!

07/01/2020

Bigfoot


This week's story takes us to Verkhoyansk, a frozen flyspeck of a town with 1,300 shivering souls deep inside Siberia, six miles from the Arctic Circle. The local delicacy is a version of a Russian favorite called pelmeni: minced reindeer fat rolled in a thin dough, seasoned with horseradish and deep-fried on a stick. (Editor's note: not entirely true.) The town's main claim to fame is its record winter cold, with temperatures dropping as low as -90 Fahrenheit. Tripadvisor.com rates the local Pole of Cold Museum as the town's #1 attraction. ( #1 out of 1, to be precise.)

Last weekend, Verkhoyansk made headlines when the temperature soared the other direction to 100.4 degrees, the hottest ever recorded in the Arctic. Children splashed in local ponds to cool off — and who can blame them, considering how far they probably are from the nearest central air conditioning. Environmentalists cite the heat wave as more reason to reduce humanity's "carbon footprint" — the total amount of greenhouse gas emissions caused by an individual, event, organization, service, or product.
The whole thing got us to thinking: since carbon footprint is such a helpful concept for understanding the impact of our activity on our physical environment, could "tax footprint" be just as useful for understanding the impact of our financial activity on our tax bill?

It turns out that "tax footprint" really just describes the concept of taxable income — the amount of income on which you pay tax. The higher that footprint, the higher your bill. And just as environmentalists identify ways to reduce carbon footprint (use more renewable energy sources, travel more efficiently, and eat less meat), we focus our tax-planning efforts in four areas:
• Timing-based strategies, like traditional IRA and qualified plan contributions, involve deferring tax on that particular "footprint" to later years, when your tax rate is hopefully lower. Conventional wisdom usually recommends taking that sure thing every day and twice on Sunday, whether you need it or not. (Of course, sometimes that conventional wisdom means paying more tax down the road!)
• Shifting-based strategies, like family business gift-leaseback arrangements, involve shifting part of your tax footprint to lower-bracket family members who pay less on the same footprint. Think of this as the tax equivalent of driving your hipster daughter's Prius instead of your usual SUV.
• Code-based strategies involve finding the tax code's opportunities to convert income that would otherwise wind up in your tax footprint into nontaxable forms, like medical expense reimbursement plan benefits. They also involve opportunities to avoid tax when you sell big-ticket assets like investment real estate or a business, and charitable gifts that let you keep valuable strings on your gift. (Think of this as ditching the Prius for a Vespa or a bicycle.)
• Finally, product-based strategies, like tax-efficient stock portfolios and cash value life insurance, involve positioning your investments where their return misses your tax footprint entirely.
Our job, then, is to help you reach your financial goals with the smallest tax footprint possible, both today and tomorrow. This includes managing your footprint through predictable changes (such as transitioning from work income to retirement income) as well as tax "climate emergencies" like higher future rates, which many expect in the wake of trillions of new spending for coronavirus relief. We can't control the climate, or the weather, but we can make sure you don't go out into the Arctic heat without sunscreen!

06/10/2020

"Reality" Bites

In the world of football, one family stands out among the rest: the Mannings. In tennis, it's the Williamses. And on television, it's the Kardashians, Jenners, and various C-list and D-list orbiters that make up the First Family of Reality TV. What many viewers don't realize is that the Kardashians aren't just a family, they're a conglomerate. Matriarch Kris Jenner doesn't just have a talent for making headlines, she has a talent for monetizing it. It turns out, though, that she's not above using a little financial "enhancement" to make herself look even better.

Back in 2014, the supermarket tabloids that none of us confess to paging through at the checkout were speculating that youngest daughter Kylie Jenner was using lip-filler injections. After denying the story for a year, she finally 'fessed up. But instead of apologizing, she doubled down, launching her own cosmetics line and selling her first 15,000 liner-and-lipstick kits in less than a minute on Instagram. That foray eventually grew into Kylie Cosmetics, a real-deal company. Why squander all that social media influence selling someone else's stuff when you can pitch your own?

By that point, the family was looking to move Kylie's face from the tabloids to Forbes. Her publicists showed reporters a 2016 tax return reporting $307 million in top-line revenue for the company and $110 million in profits for the 19-year-old founder. In July 2018, Kylie got her cover, ranking #27 on their list of self-made women with a net worth of $900 million, on track to become the youngest self-made billionaire ever (if you count "slipstreaming along in the wake of the Kardashian PR machine" as "self-made").

Turns out her success was as fake as those teenage lips. In January, Jenner sold 51% of her company to the publicly-traded cosmetics giant Coty, Inc. for $600 million. And now Coty's SEC filings reveal the lips without the filler. Kylie's revenue for the 12 months before the sale was just $125 million — barely one-third what her 2016 tax return claimed. The skincare line her reps bragged had sold $100 million in a month and a half was really "on track" to do just $25 million in its first year.

What gives? Did sales just collapse before Coty bought it? Or did the Jenners lie about it and tell their accountants to draft fake tax returns to show the reporters in a financial equivalent of a brow lift or tummy tuck? Last month, Forbes stated bluntly that "it's clear that Kylie's camp has been lying." Now, the magazine says, "a more realistic accounting of her personal fortune puts it at just under $900 million." (As if that's something to be ashamed of, right?) In a possible case of karma striking back, Coty stock has dropped 60% since the deal was announced.

Here's the thing about tax returns. You can put any numbers you want in the boxes. Use them to impress your parents, your in-laws, Forbes, or your dog. But they don't mean anything until you file them. That's why the bank that holds your mortgage made you sign Form 4506-T with your application, so they could verify your numbers directly with the IRS.

We left a message for a Mr. Pinocchio at the publicist's office, but he didn't call back. Kylie's flaks told Forbes that accusations they falsified tax returns are "absolutely false." (Well, they would, wouldn't they?)

You're probably not interested in using your taxes to convince anyone you're a billionaire. You just want to pay less. We'll give you the strategies you need to do just that, without putting lipstick on any pigs!

06/03/2020

When Does 1918 + 1968 = 2020?

In China, it's a curse to say "may you live in interesting times." If that's so, 2020 is surely cursed. It all started with coronavirus in January or thereabouts. April brought the murder hornets to Washington State. (They might still be only in Washington, but they're murder hornets.) And last week brought news that yet another unarmed African-American man died in police custody, sparking unrest across the country. You can't be faulted for thinking the two smartest men in the universe right now are the Space-X astronauts who literally left the planet on Saturday afternoon.

With all of that grim fare getting grimmer, it's good to know there's some lighter news to put a smile on our faces. Last week we saw one we knew we had to cover: a singer selling a piece of her soul for the bargain price of $10 million (or best offer) as part of a sale of her artwork at a gallery in Los Angeles.

Claire Elise Boucher — better known as Grimes — isn't afraid to march to the beat of a different drummer. She and her boyfriend, tech entrepreneur Elon Musk, just changed the spelling of their newborn baby boy's name to X Æ A-Xii (pronounced "Ex-Eye Eye," of course) because the state of California churlishly wouldn't let them go with first-choice X Æ A-12. (It seems they don't allow numerals). But her offer to sell her soul raises so many tax questions we don't even know where to start.

For starters, what exactly is a soul, and how should that sale be taxed? It's certainly not a tangible asset like a business, real estate, or a Picasso. Tax professionals are mainly looking for guidance from Section 197, which governs self-created intangibles like goodwill. Her soul might also resemble intellectual property, like patents, trademarks, and logos. Sadly for Grimes, she can't have any basis in the asset, which means she'll owe tax on her entire $10 million.

How will Grimes' buyer treat her soul? Surely they'll want to depreciate their investment. But how long do you depreciate something like a soul with no useful life? Would that make it nondepreciable like land? (Don't get caught up in the technicalities here. We're just riffing.)

Grimes may be the first celebrity to offer her soul for sale, especially at such a high price. But soul-selling has a long, distinguished history. In Christopher Marlowe's tragic play Doctor Faustus, the title character strikes a deal (in blood, no less) with the devil: 24 years of life to command the demon Mephistopheles as his servant and use magic, in exchange for his soul and eternal damnation at the end. That transaction, of course, is covered by Section 83, which governs property transferred in connection with services.

Tax treatment changes again if you gamble your soul. In Charlie Daniels classic barn-burner, "The Devil Went Down to Georgia," the Devil tells Johnny: "I'll bet a fiddle of gold against your soul, 'cause I think I'm better than you." Hell breaks loose in Georgia and Johnny wins, or it wouldn't be much of a song. Gambling wins are taxable, of course. But odds are poor that the Devil issued a W-2G, which is required for bets that pay $600 if the winnings are more than 300 times the original wager. And we can assume the unsophisticated Johnny neglected to report his win on his own return.

Here's hoping Grimes is getting smart tax-planning advice before she sells. You should do the same any time you sell a business, real estate, or any other big-ticket item. You don't want to turn 2020 from the biggest payday of your life into the biggest tax bill of your life. (Did we mention the murder hornets?)

05/13/2020

Mom Totally Knows Best

In 1914, Woodrow Wilson signed a proclamation designating the second Sunday in May as Mother's Day. Ever since then, Americans have spent that day destroying Mom's kitchen in the name of breakfast in bed, tramping through her garden in the name of bringing her flowers, and making up for the phone calls and compliments they overlook the other 364 days. While coronavirus, quarantines, and social distancing made this year's holiday a bit less festive, it was still a welcome break from 2020's usual grimness for mothers, families, and even tax collectors.

The National Retail Federation estimates consumers spent over $26 billion on Mother's Day this year, for an average of $205 per person celebrating. Greeting cards, flowers, gift cards, and brunch and dinner were the most popular gifts. (Coronavirus means less for brunch and dinner this year, although it won't dry up entirely — Mom still loves carryout.) But housewares, books, and electronics are gaining ground, too.

All that spending means a billion or two in sales taxes. Combined state and local rates average as low as 5.43% in Wyoming all the way up to 9.53% in Tennessee, and tend to be higher in states with no income tax. Restaurants and retailers will also pay income tax on their holiday profits, and their employees will pay tax on their wages. With stay-at-home orders driving the economy into a medically-induced coma, governments are starving for revenue, and they'll be grateful to collect every penny they can get.

As for our friends at the IRS, they're in charge of administering an internal revenue code that's full of tax breaks for moms (child tax credits), single moms (head of household status), stay-at-home moms (spousal IRA contributions), and working moms (dependent care credits). Of course, that last one raises the question, what mom doesn't work? (You can actually make her breakfast any Sunday of the year!)

And here's a specific tax-planning tip for moms who love chocolate. (And if she doesn't, what's wrong with her?) Twelve states, including California, Michigan, Ohio, and Pennsylvania, exempt chocolate from sales tax as a grocery item. Some states also exempt food-producing plants, which makes a tomato plant or an avocado tree a good choice for a mom with a green thumb. (Just make sure it's not a plant that attracts murder hornets. Seriously, 2020 . . . you're drunk. Go home.)

Mother's Day also gives you the chance to reflect on all that wisdom and common sense Mom gave you. If you're like a lot of people, the older you get, the smarter she gets. This year especially, you can appreciate some of that advice she's been giving you since she let you ride Scooby Doo at the carnival all by yourself. Wash your hands — check. Cover your mouth when you cough — double-check. Clean your room — now that you're spending all day at home, it's even more important than ever!

Mom also wants you to be careful with your money. That's why she gave you a piggy bank when you were five years old. She'll cry if she finds out you're wasting money on taxes you don't have to pay. Or maybe she'll be mad. Either way, that's where we come in. This year, honor Mom with a tax plan that lasts longer than flowers and shows her you really listened and learned.

02/05/2020

"I'd Trade It All for A Little More"

The French newspaper Le Monde called it "the robbery of the century." So what was it? A Mission Impossible-style crew of balaclava-wearing acrobats bypassing sophisticated alarms to burgle a museum or gallery? Or maybe it looked like one of those "Oceans" movies: a crack team of hardened specialists tunneling deep underneath a casino or bank vault to blow the final hole at 5pm on Friday and spend a leisurely weekend looting stacks of bullion and currency?

Museums and banks may look like inviting targets. But if you want to make real robbery history, think bigger. As the playwright Bertolt Brecht once wrote, "Bank robbery is an initiative of amateurs. True professionals establish a bank." And so the heist we're talking about this week involves a years-long history of bankers, lawyers, and investors looting billions of dollars from a dozen European treasuries.

In today's economy, the brightest minds dream of inventing the next breakthrough technology. But there's a smaller group, nerdier and more devious, who dream of inventing tax shelters. Why risk failure investing in unknown technology when you can find a government-guaranteed gravy pipeline directly into your account?

The scheme involved a dividend arbitrage strategy called "CumEx" trading, named for the Latin phrase meaning "with-without." In most cases, traders bought and sold shares in a way that let them claim refunds on dividend tax withholdings they hadn't actually paid. In others, they took advantage of creative paperwork to exploit a loophole letting more than one person own the same share at the same time. (Schrödinger's stock?) Either way, the result was two refunds for one stock.

That sounds like an obvious party foul. But there weren't any laws specifically prohibiting it. Traders took that as their green light to siphon $60 billion out of various governments. This wasn't ordinary tax fraud. They weren't just evading tax on their income — they were taking refunds for taxes they had never paid. In 2017, a German clerk noticed a $60 million claim from a New Jersey pension fund covering just one guy and blew the whistle. (Spoiler alert: the guy wouldn't talk when the New York Times showed up at his door.)

Now, German prosecutors are pursuing 56 separate cases and targeting over 400 suspects, including the lawyers who issued high-priced opinions blessing the fraud. Hanno Berger, a former German auditor who crossed over to the dark side before fleeing to Switzerland, told his legal associates, "Whoever has a problem with the fact that because of our work there are fewer kindergartens being built, here's the door." A lot of people who never saw incarceration in their future need to start getting ready for 3-5 years of being picked last for the prison kickball team.

Are you wondering why those same traders didn't target Uncle Sam? Simple — we shut down dividend arbitrage back in 2008. That's worth noting for skeptics who think our patchwork system of government agencies and self-regulatory organizations is like putting Cookie Monster in charge of the Monster's Commission on Excellence in Nutrition.

Most Americans try to think of taxes as something you file with the government and forget about for the rest of the year. But the CumEx scandal reminds us that taxes are central to every investment decision you make. Our tax planning service helps you make tax-efficient decisions, and our Tax Operating System® helps you implement them for maximum advantage. Don't miss out on the savings!

01/22/2020

"Retirement is Not in My Vocabulary"

Most people who were born on January 17, 1922, have long since passed away. Of those who are still alive, few are still working in any capacity. And only one of them is still going strong after 80 years in show business. Her name is Betty White. And last week, the actress, animal rights activist, and vodka fan, who considers herself "the luckiest old broad on two feet," celebrated her 98th birthday. And when you're blessed to enjoy 98 healthy years on the planet, you navigate a lot of tax rules over that time.

When Betty was born in 1922, the country was just returning to "normalcy" after World War I. The Revenue Act of 1922 had just dropped the top rate from 73% to 58% on income over $200,000 (about $3 million in today's dollars). Oil titans and robber barons were the ones paying those top rates, not athletes or entertainers.

Betty launched her career just months after graduating from high school in 1939, singing on an experimental TV channel. By then, we had lifted ourselves out of the worst of the Great Depression. There were 33 tax brackets, starting at 4% on the first $4,000. The top rate was a robust 79%; however, it didn't kick in until your income topped $5 million (just north of $90 million today). Most people earning up to the equivalent of about $900,000 actually paid less than they do now.

When World War II arrived, Betty joined the American Women's Volunteer Services and entertained troops before they shipped off. In 1949 she was back on TV, and in 1951 won her first Emmy nomination. (She lost to Gertrude Berg . . . yes, that Gertrude Berg.) By that point, the war and recovery had forced taxes considerably higher, with a 91% top rate on incomes over $200,000 ($2 million today).

After spending most of the 60s haunting game show panels, in 1973 Betty joined the Mary Tyler Moore Shows as "man-hungry" Sue Ann Nivens. She called the role the highlight of her career and won two more Emmys. The top tax rate had fallen to "just" 70%, kicking in on income over $200,000 ($1,150,000 today). But the average six-figure earner paid 29-33%, taking advantage of tax-free municipal bonds, preferential treatment for capital gains, and a whole new universe of tax shelters in real estate, oil & gas, cattle farming, and locomotive leasing. (Sound familiar?)

In 1985, Betty scored her second smash hit as Rose Nylund — "not the brightest nickel in the drawer" — on The Golden Girls. While she was racking up eight Emmy nominations for her work, Washington was working in a genuinely bipartisan way to reform what everyone admitted had become an out-of-control tax system. The result was the Tax Reform Act of 1986, which still frames how we pay. (If you're a millennial, try Googling the word "bipartisan" — seriously, it'll blow your mind.)

In 2010, the 88-year-old Betty appeared with the 89-year-old Abe Vigoda in a classic Snickers ad. Betty credits that commercial for yet another career reboot. She certainly doesn't need the money — her net worth has been estimated at $75 million. She's focused now on animal rights, and once told Ad Age magazine, "The whole reason I work so much is so I can pay for all those animals. So, to have all these opportunities is just wonderful." Clearly her charitable deductions are most important now!

You may not live to be as old as Betty White or win as many Emmys. But your life, your finances, and your taxes will evolve over time just like hers. That's where we come in, to help you navigate those changes with as much grace and good humor as Betty. Here's to 98!

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