Small business owners who find themselves with a big tax bill and not enough money to pay for it must play it straight with the Internal Revenue Service, tax advisers say.True, you'll have to figure out how to pay, but don't give in to the temptation to file your return late.

A new survey released yesterday by Adobe Systems Incorporated found that American taxpayers are growing more comfortable with the Internet and more than half of those surveyed plan to file their taxes electronically this year.The survey of 1,000 U.S. taxpayers, which was done by phone during the week of Feb. 21.

More taxpayers filed their taxes electronically this year than ever before.For the first time, the Internal Revenue Service predicts that more than half of all individual tax returns will be e-filed. Through March 25, 66 percent of all returns, or 49 million, were e-filed. The increase is 7 percent over last year. “More and more taxpayers are turning to e-file and other electronic programs,” said IRS Commissioner Mark W. Everson in a statement. “This shapes up as a really strong year.

Internal Revenue Service Commissioner Mark Everson has notified the Senate Finance Committee of his concerns about possible wide-scale evasion and abuse within the rapidly expanding nonprofit sector, the Washington Post reported."We can see that tax abuse is increasingly present in the sector," and unless the government takes effective steps to curb it, such organizations risk "the loss of the faith and support that the public has always given to this sector," Everson said in his letter, which laid out the abuses his agency has uncovered.

April is often a rough month for the stock market as Americans reach into their pockets-and their portfolios-to pay the taxman, but one analyst says that trend may be offset by higher-than-expected withholding rates, MarketWatch reported.Mark Hulbert, the founder of Hulbert Financial Digest in Annandale, VA, has been tracking the advice of more than 160 financial newsletters since 1980. In his MarketWatch column, Hulbert quoted Madeline Schnapp, a senior research analyst at TrimTabs Investment Research and editor of two of that firm's newsletters, TrimTabs Personal Income and TrimTabs U.S.

Americans, in general, are not savers. Not even when the reason for saving is a good one: education. Uncle Sam has decided to try to encourage saving for education by renaming and revamping the education IRA.The new program is called a Coverdell Education Savings Account or ESA. It was created as an incentive to help students and their parents save for education expenses. Like the education IRA, an ESA is set up for a beneficiary under the age of 18.

If bribes, gambling winnings, kickbacks and money made in illegal activities can be taxed then surely profits made from selling items on eBay counts as taxable income too, right?

Most workers who choose the “default” investment option under President Bush's plan for Social Security personal accounts would do better under the existing system.That's according to Yale University finance economist Robert J. Shiller, who has concluded that nearly three-quarters of workers who opt for the “default” life-cycle accounts, which automatically make investments more conservative over time, would do worse than the traditional system 71 percent of the time, The Washington Post reported.The 71 percent figure is based on global rates of return.

Whether you are self-employed or an employee, if you use a portion of your home exclusively and regularly for business purposes, you may be able to take a home office deduction.You can deduct certain expenses if your home office is the principal place where your trade or business is conducted or where you meet and deal with clients or patients in the course of your business.