Tax Advice - How to Account for Stolen Property

The IRS has clarified what would have been an otherwise murky part of tax law recently. Each year the IRS publishes various pdfs that are available online in order to help people stay current with tax laws. This particular gem comes from publication 17, page 90 and relates to stolen property: 'If you steal property, you must report its fair market value in your income in the year you steal it unless in that year you return it to its rightful owner!'

Check out the publication here: http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/p17.pdf

I cannot believe that we are paying people to write up text like this into these publications? This is published by a government agency for pete's sake!

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