Last blog, I wrote about taxes. Yes, even as summer was ramping up with the approach of July 4^th (and may you have had a wonderful holiday and enjoyed a longer weekend), there was something to be said about taxes.

Of course, I would like to think that this is the time of year when I have nothing but extended weekends and do not need to spend time worrying about taxes. We do have to do that, though, and that is what makes us so good at what we do.

You may not have to worry about taxes at this time of year, but we still are. That means that come tax filing time, you still do not have worry about taxes and can entrust your return to us because we are worrying now.

Sometimes this means interesting stories come across our radar that you may not have seen. I want to bring you a couple of those this week. That’s right, a second tax article at the height of summer. We must be into this stuff or something.

First, I am sure many of you at some time in your life received an IRS Form 1099. Essentially, this comes for any income you received that did not come through a W2 employer, so taxes were not automatically paid from it. It thus is well known for any self-employed person or independent contractor.

But can you imagine one being sent to a strip club?

In an interesting accounting trick, it recently came to light that boxer Floyd Mayweather Jr., did just that, sending a 1099 form for more than $20,000 to Larry Flint’s Hustler Club in Las Vegas. From a tax perspective, how this plays out between how the tax burden on the club or the dancers is interesting. From a layman’s perspective, hey, who can’t see the humor in Mayweather’s audacity and strict accounting when out at the club.

It isn’t the typical way that 1099s are used, and Forbes.com’s Robert W. Wood sums up the situation:

More than a few observers are probably wondering how they too can start issuing IRS Forms 1099 to turn the tax tables on someone. Issuing a Form 1099 is something businesses do to verify that payment was made, and to help support tax deductions. Of course, by issuing a Form 1099, you are generally also sticking the recipient with paying taxes on the item. In that sense, some IRS Forms 1099 may conceivably be issued with a kind of punitive intent.

I guess some people out there can afford to try to be a little more punitive after those situations when they couldn’t believe what they did the night before.

Inherent humor aside, this story highlights the complexity of tax issues and how something that seems obvious like a 1099 can be turned and used in situations that we never imagined. Those entanglements lead to time being spent navigating the tax waters, but just how much time?

Taxfoundation.org recently published some research that looked into this question and determined that an astounding 8.9 BILLION hours are spent complying with tax filing requirements every year. In a fairly extensive breakdown that you can look at by viewing the article, it is determined this costs $409 billion a year.

With such tactics and numbers abounding in the tax world, aren’t you glad that we are paying attention?