Do Good & Save Money on Taxes: 2017 Arizona Tax Credits- CompassPointCPA

Arizona individual taxpayers can direct their state income tax dollars to a variety of Arizona charities through the use of Arizona tax credit contributions.  Taxpayers do not need to itemize to claim the Arizona tax credits. A couple filing a joint return in Arizona can qualify for as much as $4,777 of tax credits for 2017.

Contributions to certain charities or public schools will also qualify for a federal charitable contribution deduction.  However, you have to itemize your deductions on your federal return to take advantage of this.  Check here for Tax Services in Northern Arizona

You can actually make money by donating to a Qualifying Charitable Organization (a charity that qualifies for both the Arizona tax credit and federal charitable deduction) or public school.  Say you donate $100 to a Qualifying Charitable Organization; you will receive a dollar-for-dollar Arizona tax credit worth $100 plus a charitable itemized deduction on your federal return worth between $10 to $39 depending on your federal tax bracket.  If you’re in the highest federal tax bracket then you will receive $139 of tax benefits in return for your $100 contribution.

A taxpayer can contribute and take all the credits, subject to the amount of state tax for any particular year. The credits are non-refundable. Unused amounts of credit carry forward for five years, except for the military credit, which does not carry forward.

Contribution to Qualifying Charitable Organizations

Charity must be on this list:

https://www.azdor.gov/Portals/0/RefundCredits/CertifiedCharities2017.pdf

Single, Head of Household, or Married Filing Separate $400, Married Filing Joint $800

Can make contribution up to April filing deadline for prior year credit

Read complete Post here:  Tax Strategies

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Equifax Data Breach- CompassPointCPA Tax Services in Arizona

In recent days the world has become familiar with perhaps the largest data breach event ever known to humanity. I’m referring, of course, to the Equifax data breach.

The incident, as summarized by Equifax Security, potentially impacts personal information relating to 143 million U.S. consumers – primarily names, Social Security numbers, birth dates, addresses and, in some instances, driver’s license numbers. In addition, credit card numbers for approximately 209,000 U.S. consumers, and certain dispute documents with personal identifying information for approximately 182,000 U.S. consumers, were accessed.

Information potentially stolen by the hackers, including Social Security numbers and dates of birth and names, could put people at risk of identity theft for the rest of their lives, credit experts warn. 

So how did such a massive breach happen?

USA Today notes that hackers took advantage of an Equifax security vulnerability two months after an industry group discovered the coding flaw and shared a fix for it, raising questions about why Equifax didn't update its software successfully when the danger became known:

"The Equifax data compromise was due to (Equifax's) failure to install the security updates provided in a timely manner," The Apache Foundation, which oversees the widely-used open source software used by Equifax, said in a statement.

At the time of USA Today’s article publication, Equifax had not responded to questions about when the patches were used to fix the security weak point, or if the patches were used at all.

It only made this statement: "We continue to work with law enforcement as part of our criminal investigation and have shared indicators of compromise with law enforcement.”