Wall Street Journal consistently turns our quality finance articles, this no exception….

In general, people who are employees and have side businesses are often in the best position to maximize the tax code’s benefits, say experts. Mr. Stives calls this “the best of all worlds.”

…Tax rules allow him to work for only three days of a 11-day trip and write off the airfare and a majority of other costs, he says. “To deduct the airfare, you have to spend more than half your working days on business, but travel days don’t count, and neither do weekend days you wouldn’t work anyway,” says Mr. Stives. “So I can leave on a Friday, teach for three days midweek, and return the following Monday.”

….”The most important lesson I teach my students,” he says, “is that just because something is deductible, that doesn’t make it free.”   more

You’re now almost four times as likely to conduct your tax audit by mail, as you are to sit down with the tax man.

Of the more than 1.6 million Americans who were slapped with audits last year, 78% dealt with correspondence audits, while only 22% were asked to come in for an in-person examination.

That is a 13% rise in audits-by-mail from 2009, and a 93% jump compared to 2003. In 2000, the chances of getting a correspondence audit were less than 2 to 1.   more