Customer Reviews

J.K. Lasser's Small Business Taxes 2008: Your Complete Guide to a Better Bottom Line

5 star:		(1)
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3 star:		(1)
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1 star:		(0)

 

 

... I thought it might be. It is easy to get such impression if you've bought yearly JK Lasser tax books in the past - thick volumes, newspaper quality paper (you buy a new one each year), everything explained in the most clear fashion, nicely redundant - so that you can find and read just what you are looking for, without leafing through the whole volume. Examples of tax court cases are really helpful, giving you the perspective on how even some fairly simple provisions can be viewed differently. A few years ago our tax situation became a little more complicated (investments, small business), but with the help of that big JK Lasser book (and TurboTax!), I still do the taxes myself.

Small Business Taxes 2008 disappointed me in a way that this book does not seem to contain any more information than the Small Business section of its big sibling - which makes sense if you compare the number and size of their pages!.. There were a few places where I stumbled doing our 2007 return. To give you an example, one of them was about home office and whether you can elect to keep your entire mortgage and real estate taxes deduction all in your personal itemized deductions or you really must put the home office percentage into your business taxes (Schedule C). To my disappointment, this, as well as a few other similar "finer" points, was not covered in the book. I finally found the answer in the official IRS publication - very clearly, it was saying that no, I can't, that percentage *must* go into Schedule C.

So here we are. As much as I love JK Lasser tax books, I found that I seldom needed to use any external help outside TurboTax - which now has excellent Small Business help menu, including some tax attorney's (sorry, forgot the guy's name) free, and very nicely written, whole book. And when I do need that extra help, JK Lasser books, sadly, won't do. The ultimate resource remain those boring original IRS publications.

In the spirit of not inflating the grade, I am giving 3 stars here.

Book was in as excellent a shape as stated. Was shipped in a timely fashion. Would deal with this seller again.