Facts
Morbid Funeral Home, Inc. is an accrual basis taxpayer who sells preneed funeral contracts. Customers pay Morbid in advance for goods and services to be provided at the contract beneficiary’s death. Under state law the payments are refundable if the contract purchaser requests them any time until the goods and services are furnished. Morbid, for both financial and tax accounting purposes, includes the payments in income for the year the funeral service is provided. Morbid insists that the amounts it receives under the contracts are customer deposits. The IRS agent insists that the payments are prepaid income that is subject to tax in the year of receipt.
Issue(s)
1. Can Morbid continue to account for the preneed funeral contracts as deposits, and recognize income in the year service is provided?
2. If Morbid cannot account for contracts as deposits, must they account for funeral
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In the case, Perry Funeral Home also entered into preneed funeral contracts where payment was received in advance of the goods and services being provided. Perry was also mandated by state law to provide refunds at the buyer’s request. The Tax Court ruled in favor of the taxpayer stating that payments received under preneed funeral contracts are includable in gross income only upon the provision of the goods and services. Perry Funeral Home, Inc. v. Commissioner, 86 TCM 713 (2003). This case has not been cited in another case, but heavily relies upon the ruling in Indianapolis Power & Light. This case is significant for Morbid because it extensively deals with income recognition of preneed funeral contracts, and it took place in the Tax Court. Morbid will have an opportunity to take their case to Tax Court as well if they cannot work out the disagreement internally with the IRS, and they receive a 90 day
Case name: Peter K. Dementas v The Estate of Jack Tallas, 764 P.2d 628 (1988)
Court stated that “if a hospital functions as a business institution, by charging and receiving money for what it offers, it must be a business establishment also in meeting obligations it incurs in running that establishment.”
We all know that living is an expensive experience. You’re required to pay taxes, pay for food, and pay for shelter. The counterpart of living, however, can also be quite expensive. In fact, Death is one of the most profitable events in life generating about 15 billion dollars a year (Qtd. In Crawford). With profit, however, comes greed and the Mortuary business has it’s fair share of corruption. Although a profit is necessary to maintain a business the extent to which some morticians go to maximize their profits is disgusting. While laws that Morticians must follow exist, their lack of enforcement renders them useless. That being said, these issues need to be addressed and solved.
There are two things in life that are inevitable: death and taxes. The coroner system was founded upon both of those undeniable facts of life. The kings of the middle ages initially created the position of a coroner to investigate the suspicious deaths of people and also to collect the death tax on the deceased’s estate. In the United States, we have two positions that work in the field of death investigating, obviously the coroner and the medical examiner. These positions are widely different in how they run.
“In most human society's death is an extremely important cultural and social phenomenon, sometimes more important than birth” (Ohnuki-Tierney, Angrosino, & Daar et al. 1994). In the United States of America, when a body dies it is cherished, mourned over, and given respect by the ones that knew the person. It is sent to the morgue and from there the family decides how the body should be buried or cremated based on...
To our governments credit the efforts of a decade ago didn’t break sprits of our lawmakers who still feel that asset shifting is a unjust practice. Four states have already implemented the new Partnership Program, which allows a consumer who buys, 100,000 in long term care to exempt that sum before claiming the rest of their assets, which would in turn allow that person to preserve money for their heirs and/or purchase the long-term care of their choice.
Minsker, N., & Ziaja, A. (2008). ACLU of Northern California's Report "The Hidden Death Tax". Retrieved from http://http://www.deathpenalty.org/article.php?id=42
Being a consolidated funeral home they can offer cheaper services for those without a great deal of income, but they can also provide the top-of –the-line funeral service for those who want to pay for it.
Horkan, Thomas. "Legislation That Complicates Dying." Eds. Gary McCuen and Therese Boucher. Hudson: Gary McCuen Publications, 1985. 69-72.
The change which is outlined in this paper relates to how early referral of terminally ill patients into a hospice program results in better patient outcomes, in particular, with regard to pain management. PICO format question will be used , along with a supportive body of evidence regarding the fact that early onset into a hospice program is helpful with providing end of life pain control. Hospice programs available, and options associated with them will be discussed as well as common concerns associated with early admission to hospice. The methods used for payment of hospice, and how one qualifies for entrance into a hospice program will be explored. A literature search will be performed and its results detailed within the body of this paper. Recent publications on the subject matter and associated issues such as moral and ethical questions as well as the change question will be discussed. Planning, implementing and evaluation of the change proposed will be explored within this paper.
HealthSouth is A Public company who is providing outpatient rehabilitation services, They noticed that the business is not that great as they proclaimed, business is not so profitable and it also have too much expenses which this will end up taking away from the profit and they will show lower earnings that expected so they came up with a fraudulent idea to create false entries in their books by claiming that the expenses they have is not real expenses, they called it investing like everyone understands when a business is buying a building its not called a expenses which will show the business less profitable ,it is the opposite the business is growing, the same think they did with entering regular expenses like payroll or utility expenses
According to the textbook, memorial services are becoming increasingly popular in many Protestant churches. This coincides with my family’s faith; we belong to a local Presbyterian church. The memorial will take place at The West Metro Chapel, part of the cremation package through Newcomer Funeral Homes and Crematory. This will reduce the costs significantly, consolidating the facility rental fee to only $675. Considering their will be no open casket or closed casket display the cremation will take place shortly after death, making the date of the service more flexible ensuring everyone who wants to attend the service can make it. Cremating the body will also be universally ideal for any condition the body is in from the cause of
Imagine yourself as a mortician, certified as an embalmer, retort operator, funeral director, and a funeral cosmetologist. You get a call late at night, there’s been a terrible accident and someone has died. You arrive at the hospital and are directed to a small room where the body of the deceased is being held. There’s blood all over the sheets as the doctor and coronary assistant zip up the body bag and inform you the body was badly mangled in a car accident, which is going to make reconstructing the deceased very difficult. Your assistant puts the body on the stretcher and loads it into the hearse while you talk to the wife of the deceased man. She tells you they plan to have a funeral so you give her your card and a reassuring word before leaving the hospital and driving back to the funeral home. Now your job begins, not only will you have to reconstruct this man’s disfigured body, but you must meet with the family, discuss funeral arrangements, and deal with the family’s emotional trauma that comes with losing a loved one. Although working in the funeral business can be emotionally draining, it’s a satisfying feeling to see mourning families able to say goodbye to their loved ones. Despite the fact that working so closely with the deceased can be chilling, Mortuary science can be a thrilling field to work in.
Locke, Mandy. “Study: End Death Cases, Save Money.” The News and Observer (2009). ProQuest. Web. 22 February 2010.
Estate taxation is a highly controversial issue in the United states tax code, and has been appropriately debated from before and since its introduction in 1916. Wether its existence be referred to as the “death tax”, or its absence as the “birth tax”, those for and those against have long argued its fundamental validity and appropriateness, its effectiveness, and its contents.