> I pay all of my taxes due, and I expect the same from other taxpayers... What are "taxes due"? And at what point does "Creative-but-legal accounting" turn i

> I pay all of my taxes due, and I expect the same from other taxpayers... What are "taxes due"? And at what point does "Creative-but-legal accounting" turn into "Tax fraud"? The tax code is complex and arcane enough that if you give a suitably complicated set of taxes to several different tax preparers, they will almost certainly all come back with different numbers - all of which are "correct," in the sense of being compliant with tax code. But at some point, which honestly isn't that much annual income, it becomes worth having your own private accountant to wrangle your side businesses and such for the tax benefits. A friend of mine did this out of college (accounting/finance major) - on paper, he was responsible for doing some freight routing for trainloads of raw materials, but in reality he was about 25% that and 75% "keeping up with the details of the company owner's side businesses, all of which were legal and legitimate, but all of which served as tax breaks for the owner's hobbies." Hunting guide company? A reasonable amount of your firearms expenses are tax deductible for training, practice, equipment evaluation, etc. Fishing company? Same for a lot of your boat expenses and such. I'm not sure if that really needs fixing or not, but a $50k/yr dedicated accountant is cheaper than taxes fairly quickly. Especially if they can do other work for you too.