Tax Forms

Now the governor wants Marylanders to give their money to the state.Besides asking the General Assembly for millions in new taxes, Gov. William Donald Schaefer today proposed that taxpayers should get the opportunity to donate money beyond what they owe.Mr. Schaefer's plan calls for three new tax checkoffs to be added to state income tax forms, with the additional money earmarked for crime victims, the arts and programs that help children in trouble.An aide to the governor said Mr. Schaefer also is likely to support other legislation to add checkoffs for such purposes as reducing the statebudget deficit or directing additional money to primary and secondary schools.

Armed with a cup of coffee and a No. 2 pencil, Robert Durham set out to break the habit. He spread his receipts and canceled checks across the dining room table, but three hours later he knew this year would be no different.Mr. Durham is an admitted tax procrastinator, one of the hundreds of thousands of Marylanders scrambling to meet today's filing deadline. And although this year he set aside a Saturday morning in March for his unsuccessful try to do it himself, it wasn't until yesterday that the White Marsh man found his way to Teddy's Tax Service.

The second tax-evasion trial of Bel Air attorney Lester V. Jones has gotten under way with much the same script that produced a deadlocked jury in the first trial last July.Only the judge and jurors have changed.Federal prosecutors have promised no surprises, and defense attorney Stephen H. Sachs has again blamed Mr. Jones' former accountant for inaccurate tax returns that led to indictments against the former state delegate and Baltimore County prosecutor.Mr. Sachs said during the first trial that the accountant, Ronald Dochter, lied under oath as a prosecution witness.

Three defense witnesses have testified that a government star witness in the federal income tax evasion trial of Bel Air attorney Lester V. Jones is a liar.The defense then rested its case after half an hour yesterday in U.S. District Court in Baltimore.The prosecution rested earlier yesterday, after presenting testimony from an IRS agent that Jones cheated the government out of nearly $200,000 in taxes in the early 1980s by failing to report hundreds of thousands of dollars in taxable income.

They're back.Some 1.9 million federal income tax return booklets, on the heels of a like number of Maryland tax booklets, are being mailed out to Marylanders beginning this week, federal and state officials said at a news conference in Baltimore yesterday.Taxpayers will find few noticeable changes in their federal tax forms, said Domenic J. LaPonzina, a spokesman for the Internal Revenue Service's Baltimore district. Because Congress has largely kept its hands off the tax code lately, the forms are about the same as those we have come to know and love over the past five years.

WASHINGTON -- These are very busy days for workers at the federal agency detested by many Americans."We're being deluged with calls," says Dom LaPonzina, spokesman for the Baltimore district office of the Internal Revenue Service. "The phones are ringing off the hook."Nearly 900 IRS employees in Baltimore find themselves caught in the tax-filing frenzy as Marylanders race to complete their 1993 returns by the April 15 deadline."This is something we go through every year," Mr. LaPonzina says.

Not again. You may recall that Congress last year extended several tax breaks too late to meet the printing deadline for tax forms. Tax filers had to know to claim those tax breaks on lines for other deductions. Congress is well on its way to blowing this year's printing deadline, too. Legislators have yet to agree on a temporary fix to the alternative minimum tax. Without it, an extra 21 million tax filers will be hit with the AMT in the coming filing season and pay on average $2,000 more in federal taxes.

At some Baltimore-area tax preparation offices, deadline day was proving anticlimactic. The big rush had come not on Tax Day but in early February, said Vince Williams, manager of Liberty Tax on East Coldspring Lane. The deadline for both federal and Maryland income taxes is Monday. "It's been a weird tax season," Williams said Monday morning. "Everyone started late because of the fiscal cliff. " Because of the last-minute tax deal to avert the fiscal cliff, the Internal Revenue Service was delayed in releasing some tax forms.

Members of the Maryland Association of Certified Public Accountants are answering readers' tax questions through April 15.Q: I refinanced my mortgage in 1994 and incurred closing costs. Are those costs deductible from my income on my '94 return? Are all closing costs deductible?A: Usually closing costs incurred when refinancing a home include points and recording fees. The points (pre-paid mortgage interest) are deductible, but the total amount must be spread evenly over the life of the new mortgage.