Pat Mustard

[Clinton Donnelly @CryptoTaxFixer]

When Donald Trump took office, he froze hiring across virtually every department of the federal government, particularly at the IRS, an agency that had clashed with him numerous times in the past.

Hiring was frozen, and many probationary employees were also laid off.

Back in 2021, I believe, the Inflation Reduction Act authorized the IRS to hire many more employees. The agency had hired approximately 25,000 to 30,000 people, many of whom were still within their probationary period, which typically lasts around a year. Those probationary employees were let go.

These employees were expected to perform important work because the IRS has an extremely aged workforce. The agency needed more auditors, more telephone support staff, and additional employees across virtually every part of its operations.

The IRS clearly needed help, but many of those recently hired employees were dismissed.

It is also worth noting that these employees were hired during a period when the government was attempting to meet certain diversity, equity, and inclusion hiring targets.

Some of the hiring decisions may have placed greater emphasis on characteristics such as sexual orientation, ethnic background, and other personal factors than on accounting and tax expertise.

Those characteristics may be noteworthy, but they do not necessarily improve the performance of the IRS itself.

Between the layoffs and the retirement offers made to existing employees, the IRS lost approximately 25% of its workforce. It went from nearly 100,000 employees to roughly 70,000.

However, the IRS is now hiring again.

The agency is looking to hire approximately 5,000 employees, particularly in what it describes as customer service. This includes telephone support for taxpayers, processing tax returns, and performing other administrative work.

The hiring appears to be focused less on auditors and revenue collection officers.

The IRS also hired a significant number of employees for its Criminal Investigation division, and those employees were retained.

[CryptoTaxAudit @CryptoTaxAudit]

Get defensible numbers before the IRS calculates them for you

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[MEP Sebastian Tynkkynen @SebastianMEP]

Today, Belgian police blocked me — a sitting Member of the European Parliament — from entering the European Parliament for nearly an hour.

They were on the phone with Brussels Mayor Philippe Close, who was personally directing their actions. We have video footage of the incident.

The Mayor prevented me from delivering over half a million European citizens’ signatures for the @SaveEuropeAct initiative.

This is unacceptable.

The EU is a union of 27 member states. No single country — and certainly not one socialist mayor of a single city — has the right to decide which MEPs from other nations can carry out their democratic duties.

My team and I will launch a formal investigation into the mayor’s conduct.

[Wall Street Mav @WallStreetMav]

Fact Check: True

[Eva Vlaardingerbroek @EvaVlaar]

We delivered the first half a million signatures of the @SaveEuropeAct to the European Parliament today.

We came to Brussels and made sure their voices were heard.

Whether the European Commission likes it or not.

The people want Remigration!

[CryptoTaxAudit @CryptoTaxAudit]

Does wrapping Bitcoin trigger a taxable event?

Most crypto investors assume they know the answer.

Clinton explains......

[Tommy Robinson 🇬🇧 @TRobinsonNewEra]

The European Union finally had borders put up.

To stop the invasion of Europe?

Of course not, they did it to block patriots delivering over half a million European citizens’ signatures for the @SaveEuropeAct initiative!

[Clinton Donnelly @CryptoTaxFixer]

The IRS recently issued a ruling stating that Charitable Remainder Annuity Trusts, or CRATs, are considered listed transactions.

There is nothing inherently wrong with that. It simply means that, with your next tax return, you must file a form identifying that you participated in a listed transaction.

The form is Form 8886. On that form, you provide certain general details about the trust and the CRAT arrangement.

There is no separate tax associated with reporting it.

However, if you are audited, the auditor is likely to review that list of disclosed transactions closely to make sure you are complying with the applicable rules. These transactions can represent easy areas for the IRS to examine.

Listed transactions are arrangements that are frequently abused by taxpayers. They may be legal structures in themselves, but people sometimes create aggressive or abusive versions of those structures and fail to comply with the rules.

Because the CRAT must now be disclosed, you need to make sure the trust remains fully compliant with the IRS requirements.

Hopefully, your trustee will provide a report confirming that everything has been handled correctly.

[Clinton Donnelly @CryptoTaxFixer]

Let’s say you own an asset that you originally purchased for $100,000 and is now worth $1 million.

Option one is simply to sell it. You would have a $900,000 capital gain and would have to pay tax on that gain.

For this example, let’s assume it qualifies for long-term capital gains treatment and that your total tax rate is approximately 25%. That would result in roughly $225,000 in taxes.

That is the straightforward option. After paying the tax, you would retain approximately $775,000 for yourself, free and clear.

The question is whether a CRAT can produce a better result.

The idea behind a CRAT is that you contribute the asset, potentially the entire $1 million, to a charitable trust. You then receive a charitable deduction based on the contribution, which you may have up to five years to use on your tax returns.

However, there are limits on how much of the deduction you can claim each year. Depending on the circumstances, you may be limited to 50% or, in this example, 30% of your adjusted gross income.

The first thing you need to determine is whether you can actually use the entire deduction within five years. If you cannot use it during that period, the remaining deduction is lost.

The $1 million asset is then placed into the trust. A lawyer typically establishes the trust and may also serve as its administrator. The ongoing work may be relatively limited, apart from providing an annual report.

The trust also establishes an annuity payment structure for you. Each year, you receive a predetermined amount.

For example, you and the trustee might assume that the trust will earn at least 6% annually. On $1 million, that would be approximately $60,000 per year.

You might then receive approximately $60,000 annually as an annuity payment.

To be clear, that payment is not tax-free. You receive the annuity payment and must pay the applicable taxes on it. However, it still provides you with a regular income stream.

With a Charitable Remainder Annuity Trust, the word “remainder” refers to the amount that passes to the charity when the trust ends.

Suppose the trust is established for 10 years, although I believe it may be possible to establish one for as long as 20 years. At the end of the 10-year period, the remaining assets in the trust pass to the designated charity.

However, you are not effectively giving the charity $1 million today. You are providing an amount today that is expected to grow to $1 million by the end of the trust term.

For example, suppose approximately $650,000 today would grow to $1 million over 10 years. That amount would effectively fund the charitable remainder.

The remaining $350,000, together with some of the investment earnings, could be returned to you through the regular annuity payments.

This creates a continuing revenue stream for you, which can sound very attractive.

Here is the problem.

The IRS establishes rates used to determine the net present value of the trust. These rates are updated periodically and are used to determine whether the arrangement qualifies as a valid charitable trust.

Suppose inflation rises and the applicable rates increase from 4% to 8%. It may suddenly become much more difficult to demonstrate that the amount remaining in the trust will be sufficient to provide the promised $1 million to the charity at the end of the 10-year period.

If the trust falls outside the IRS requirements, the IRS may unravel the entire arrangement.

The IRS could treat the full $1 million contribution as your own taxable capital gain. You could owe capital gains tax, penalties, and additional amounts resulting from the amendment of prior tax returns.

You could ultimately pay far more than the approximately $225,000 in taxes that you would have owed by simply selling the asset and paying the tax in the ordinary way.

[Eric Daugherty @EricLDaugh]

🚨 BREAKING: The Senate is holding an anti-taxpayer fraud meeting right now with Nick Shirley and James O'Keefe...

...and stunning new footage shows EVERY SINGLE DEMOCRAT SEAT is *empty*

100% of Democrats on the committee were invited, 0% SHOWED UP.

The Party of Fraud. They know about the fraud and are complicit!

FOX: "We have a shot of the empty seats, all the way to the right. Empty seats where DEMOCRATS would be sitting. Dems don't care about defrauding the American people?!" 🤯

@RandPaul @nickshirleyy @JamesOKeefeIII

[Tony Seruga @TonySeruga]

🔥 TRUMP JUST REPOSTED JFK’S MOST TERRIFYING SPEECH — AND THE DEEP STATE IS PANICKING

JFK saw it coming. In 1961. And now, Trump has just made sure 300 million Americans see it, too.

The speech everyone’s talking about: Kennedy’s address to the American Newspaper Publishers Association, April 27, 1961. The CIA had just botched the Bay of Pigs. Kennedy was livid. He’d been lied to by his own intelligence apparatus. And he walked onto that stage and said something no president has dared say since.

“We are opposed around the world by a monolithic and ruthless conspiracy that relies primarily on covert means for expanding its sphere of influence — on infiltration instead of invasion, on subversion instead of elections, on intimidation instead of free choice.”

Read that again. Monolithic. Ruthless. Conspiracy.

This wasn’t some fringe radio host. This was the sitting President of the United States, on live television, telling the American people that a shadow network of power — operating through intelligence agencies, media complicity, and institutional capture — was working against the republic itself.

And then he said the quiet part out loud:

“Its preparations are concealed, not published. Its mistakes are buried, not headlined. Its dissenters are silenced, not praised. No expenditure is questioned, no rumor is printed, no secret is revealed.”

Sound familiar?

Sixty-five years later, Trump drops this video on Truth Social. No commentary needed. The speech does all the work. And within hours, the same media outlets that spent four years calling Trump a conspiracy theorist are suddenly very quiet.

Here’s what they don’t want you to connect:

- Kennedy was assassinated 2.5 years after this speech

- The Warren Commission was a joke — even the House Select Committee on Assassinations in 1979 concluded Kennedy was “probably assassinated as a result of a conspiracy”

- The files are STILL classified

- Trump has been pushing to release them, but the permanent national security state refuses, instead slow-walking the order

The timing isn’t random. This isn’t just history. JFK described a permanent national security state that has only grown more entrenched — one that operates beyond elections, beyond accountability, beyond the reach of voters.

Kennedy called it “a system which has conscripted vast human and material resources into the building of a tightly knit, highly efficient machine that combines military, diplomatic, intelligence, economic, scientific, and political operations.”

That machine didn’t disappear when he died. It got even stronger.

Trump reposting this isn’t nostalgia. It’s a signal. The same forces JFK warned about are the same forces that tried to destroy Trump — Russiagate, two impeachments, lawfare, media blackout, assassination attempts. The playbook hasn’t changed. Only the names.

And now the sitting president just reminded the country who the real enemy has always been.

The speech that scared them then is the speech they’re terrified you’ll watch now.

Sharing this because they’re counting on you not to watch it. Don’t let them win. 🎯

[JD Vance @JDVance]

Our administration owes a debt of gratitude to Nick Shirley for exposing one of the most egregious cases of fraud this country has ever seen.

If the media was worth their salt, they would take notes from Nick and other citizen journalists who care about investigating stories that affect the American people instead of trying to silence them.

[Juanita Broaddrick @atensnut]

😞😞

[Níall McCullagh @mccullaghniall]

An bhfuil cead agam dul go dtí an leithreas?

[Clinton Donnelly @CryptoTaxFixer]

When considering a CRAT, or Charitable Remainder Annuity Trust, there are several other factors to consider.

You typically work with a lawyer to establish the trust, and the cost of setting up one of these arrangements is usually around $8,000 to $10,000.

You also have annual accounting fees. The trust must file its own tax return, and the accounting is needed to demonstrate that the trust remains financially healthy and continues to satisfy the IRS requirements.

If, at any point, the tax return shows that the trust is failing the IRS net present value test, you may have to restructure the trust very quickly.

You usually return to the same lawyer to do this. The lawyer rewrites the trust terms, and you pay another fee for that work. In other words, the person who originally established the arrangement is now being paid again to correct the problem.

When the trust is restructured, you will generally receive a smaller annuity payment than you originally expected. If you made financial plans based on the promised payout, you could find yourself in a difficult position.

A high percentage of Charitable Remainder Annuity Trusts are ultimately unraveled by the IRS because they fail to satisfy these standards.

The calculations are also far more complicated than promoters often suggest. Specialized software is required to calculate the relevant amounts, and very few people have access to or understand how to use that software properly.

This is why I believe many promoters are effectively selling a scam. They know they may be able to sell the trust to you two or three times by repeatedly charging you to rewrite its terms.

You are unlikely to receive what was originally promised. Once you place your money into the trust, you have also effectively lost control of it.

It is often far better to keep things simple and donate the asset directly to the charity.

When you donate an appreciated asset to a charity, the donation itself does not create tax for you. For example, if you donate an asset worth $1 million, you may receive a charitable deduction based on that $1 million contribution, with up to five years to use the deduction.

The $900,000 increase in value is also no longer your capital gain.

The charity receives the asset with your cost basis, and because the charity is not taxed on capital gains, it can sell the asset without paying capital gains tax.

[CryptoTaxAudit @CryptoTaxAudit]

When you think that underreporting your crypto will go unnoticed by the IRS....

That is exactly the kind of weak spot Tax Shield is designed to catch before the IRS does.

https://t.co/ihwLwov0Fw

[Niall Boylan @Niall_Boylan]

You would an think an MEP who feels so passionate about the Irish language being included in the EU (you would think she would know that it already has been for years) would be more prepared and continued in Irish. That’s embarrassing. 🤦🏻‍♂️

[Concerned Citizen @BGatesIsaPyscho]

🚨🇫🇷 Meanwhile in Paris (Again)

France play football ✅
Hordes of African Migrants Riot ✅
Trash Shops & Business ✅
Attack Police ✅
Burn stuff ✅

The Left call it ‘Cultural Enrichment’ and a Strength.

[Clinton Donnelly @CryptoTaxFixer]

A CRAT is one particular type of trust, and there are many different types of trusts.

Within the category of charitable trusts, there are a couple of different structures. In one type, the money goes to the charity upfront. In another, the money goes to the charity at the end, when the trust is wound down. That is what the word “remainder” refers to.

“Annuity” means that a regular payment goes to you, as the person who created the trust. You receive a payment based on the interest earned by the money held in the trust.

The challenge is that the way these trusts are promoted can be somewhat insidious.

You will often hear lawyers promoting them. Sometimes the promoter may be both a CPA and a lawyer, so they operate on both sides of the process, so to speak. You need a lawyer to establish this type of trust.

Here is what can happen.

When you receive the sales pitch, you may not realize that the lawyer is describing what could happen under favorable assumptions. However, these are often very aggressive positions that could result in the trust violating the IRS’s minimum net present value standards.

When the trust reaches the point where it is violating those standards, or is close to doing so, you may need to return to the lawyer who created and manages the trust. The payment streams then have to be restructured to keep the trust in compliance with the net present value rules.

It is the same lawyer throughout the process.

I have seen fees of roughly $8,000 to establish one of these trusts. That was a couple of years ago, so it may now be closer to $10,000.

Then, two years later, if the trust enters net present value problem territory, the lawyer may contact you, explain the issue, and charge a similar amount again to restructure the trust so that it does not create a tax problem.

They have you both ways.

As a result, these arrangements can often develop into a hostile relationship, particularly when aggressive trust strategies are involved.

In my experience, I have never seen these structures produce substantial savings.

If you simply give money directly to a charity, you receive the charitable benefit immediately, and you may be able to make the donation at fair market value.

Depending on the assumptions used, you may be able to achieve a similar result while avoiding the trust altogether.

Promoters often do not show you those numbers before you sign up. Once you have committed and spent the money, they may then explain the restrictions and limitations involved.

It is, in a sense, a legal scam.

[Hard Pass @HardPass4]

Funniest shit you will read this week.

Maybe this month.

Possibly this year.