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Allen_Bernier

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Everything posted by Allen_Bernier

  1. Protesting your property tax is not about lowering your home’s market value, it is about making sure the county has the right number on file for tax purposes. The appraised value the county uses is not the same as what buyers are willing to pay, so protesting does not hurt your resale value. If you feel the county’s assessment is too high, protesting can put real money back in your pocket. Sometimes the savings are small, other times they add up over years. Whether you use a company or do it yourself depends on your comfort level. Doing it yourself is free other than your time, and most appraisal districts have a simple process. Companies usually take a percentage of whatever savings they get you, so if you do not want the hassle, that can be worth it. Even if you only save a few hundred a year, that is money you keep rather than giving away.
  2. This setup definitely sits in a gray area. The IRS generally allows parents to hire children as employees if the work is legitimate and the pay is reasonable for the tasks performed. The problem comes when the pay is inflated beyond what the job would normally command, because that can look like a disguised gift rather than wages. Payroll and income taxes being paid does help, but it does not erase the gift tax issue if the IRS believes the employment arrangement is not genuine. In that case, the extra amounts could be reclassified as gifts. As for the kids, if the IRS ever looked into it, they would not typically face penalties for receiving income or refunds, but the arrangement could create headaches, possible audits, and complications on their own returns. The bigger risk usually falls on the parent for structuring pay in a way that looks like an attempt to bypass gift tax rules. If this is something being seriously considered, it’s worth getting an experienced tax attorney or CPA to review the details and make sure it’s defensible.
  3. Sorry to hear about the stolen laptop, that always stings, especially when family pictures and personal stuff are involved. For large amounts of data, you’ll probably want to mix cloud storage with local backups. Services like Google Drive, OneDrive, Dropbox, and iCloud are fine for everyday files, but if you’re talking multiple terabytes, look at options like Backblaze, IDrive, or even Google One’s higher storage plans. They’re designed for bulk storage and still let you download and manage files when needed. Since you already have external drives, I’d suggest using them alongside a cloud backup so you’ve always got two copies in different places. That way, if one gets lost or stolen, the other is safe. As for the old HP laptop, a Windows password by itself is not bulletproof. A determined person could get past it with the right tools, but unless there’s sensitive financial or work data on there, most thieves are more interested in wiping and reselling the laptop than digging through files. If you had full-disk encryption turned on (like BitLocker), that would make it far more secure.
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