The IRS is enhancing processes to address the discrepancies between the deductions taken by alimony payers and the income reported by alimony recipients. This is in response to a report of the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration issued March 31, 2014 (TIGTA #2014-40-022).
Alimony is a payment to or for the benefit
In an April 14, 2014 decision of the United States Tax Court, Judge Ronald L. Buch upheld the disallowance of an alimony deduction where the payments were terminable, among other events, upon the high school graduation of the taxpayer’s youngest child.
After more than 15 years of marriage and 3 minor children, Allen Johnson and
The required C.S.S.A. recitation in an oral open-court stipulation by which the parties explain why they have agreed to a child support obligation varying from the presumptive C.S.S.A. formula may not have to be as “precise” as that required in a written stipulation. Such appears to be the holding of the Appellate Division, Second Department, in its January 22, 2014 decision in Rockitter v. Rockitter.
On August 9, 2010, the parties had entered two stipulations to settle their divorce action. A written stipulation covered the parties’ joint custody of their two daughters. The second stipulation was oral, made on the record in open court and concerned child support and equitable distribution. Both stipulations were subsequently incorporated, but not merged, into the parties’ judgment of divorce.
Approximately 18 months later, the ex-wife commenced this action seeking to vacate the child support provisions of the oral support stipulation and the judgment of divorce. The ex-wife alleged that the support stipulation failed to comply the Child Support Standards Act because the parties did not make the required recitation of the reasons they chose to deviate from C.S.S.A. guidelines. Nassau County Supreme Court Justice Norman Janowitz granted the ex-husband’s motion to dismiss the complaint. The Second Department affirmed.
The C.S.S.A. requires that any agreement varying its presumptive child support formula contain specific recitals:
Continue Reading C.S.S.A. Recitiation Requirements Relaxed for In-Court Child Support Sipulation
Whether the payment of union dues is to be deducted for the purpose of determining C.S.S.A. income is to be decided on a case by case basis. Rejecting the deduction in S.H. v. S.H., a June 17, 2013 opinion withdrawn from publication, Supreme Court Clinton County Acting Justice Timothy J. Lawliss held that the father failed to meet his burden to show that those dues did not reduce his personal expenses.
In this divorce action, the father was employed at a union plant and paid monthly union dues to the United Steel Workers.
This opinion concerned only whether or not union dues paid by the father should be deducted from the father’s gross income prior to calculating the father’s income for child support purposes.
Domestic Relations Law §240(1-b) sets forth the methodology the Court must follow to determine the non-custodial parent’s child support obligation. Pursuant to D.R.L. §240(1-b)(b)(5), income for support purposes shall mean, but shall not be limited to, the sum of the amounts determined by the application of clauses (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v) and (vi) of that sub-paragraph, reduced by the amount determined by the application of clause (vii) of that sub-paragraph.
Union dues are not a specifically allowed deduction under D.R.L. §240(1-b)(b)(5)(vii), nor does the subsection contain a catch all “other” category leaving deductibility to the Court’s discretion. The question before the Court, then, was whether or not union dues qualify as a deduction under the only possible category: “unreimbursed employee business expenses except to the extent said expenses reduce personal expenditures” (subsection [vii][A]).Continue Reading Union Dues Do Not, Here, Reduce Income For C.S.S.A. Purposes