Latest news with #JAVIERSORIANO
Yahoo
26-05-2025
- Sport
- Yahoo
🎥Tárrega: how he rates Valencia's season
This article was translated into English by Artificial Intelligence. You can read the original version in 🇪🇸 here. The player wanted to highlight the achievement of overcoming pressures and turning around a difficult situation. It hasn't been an easy year for Valencia in many aspects, but on the field, the players have shown they are above it all. Tárrega reflects on the role of the coach, the team, and above all, the fact of having risen after being so close to the relegation spots. 📸 JAVIER SORIANO - AFP or licensors
Forbes
02-05-2025
- Forbes
Iberian Blackout: Electrify Everything—and Have A Backup
People get off a stopped high-speed AVE train near Cordoba on April 28, 2025, during a massive power ... More cut affecting the entire Iberian peninsula and the south of France. (Photo by JAVIER SORIANO / AFP) (Photo by JAVIER SORIANO/AFP via Getty Images) When the lights went out across large swaths of the Iberian Peninsula this week, the effects were swift and strange. Guests at high-end hotels couldn't get into their rooms—not because the staff had vanished, but because the keycards didn't work. In hostels, where old-fashioned brass keys still hang behind the front desk, the night went on more or less as usual. Toilets in some places refused to flush, kitchens in others went cold. No warm food, no coffee. A true European tragedy. Yet those with gas stovetops were still able to serve up hot meals. 'We had no internet for most of the day. Power came back at around 9 pm in Madrid. Everyone was out on the streets, listening to battery-powered radios!' said Kelly Delaney, an energy expert vacationing in Spain at the time. 'Hotels couldn't check us in with no computers and no way to set up electronic key cards, and we had to scramble and find a hostel that used traditional keys. I have never thought about keys. Maybe some things should not be linked to electricity.' As the blackout dragged on for hours, Spaniards did what Spaniards do: they took to the streets. There was music, there were impromptu fiestas. In a country with a long tradition of resilience, the spirit stayed high even as the grid stayed down. But this event offers a glimpse into a larger truth: running the grid of the future—especially one powered increasingly by renewable energy—is not going to be seamless. There will be hiccups. And when everything is electrified, those hiccups hit harder. History reminds us that even the brightest minds can trip the switch. In 1965, Thomas Edison's former company, by then Consolidated Edison, was at the center of a cascading failure that plunged 30 million people in the northeastern U.S. into darkness. The blackout wasn't caused by malicious actors or massive storms—but by a faulty relay. Even high-tech systems are only as resilient as their weakest link. Look to South Africa for a more persistent warning. The country's grid struggles are not due to a lack of renewables or fossil fuels per se, but mismanagement. South Africans endured an average of 3.71 hours of load-shedding per day in 2023. When things fall apart, it's not always the energy mix that's to blame—it's how you run the system. Electrifying everything is still one of the fastest and cheapest ways to cut emissions, especially when the power comes from clean sources. According to the International Energy Agency, electrification of transport and heating could reduce global CO₂ emissions by nearly 4 gigatons per year by 2050. That's the equivalent of eliminating the emissions of the entire European Union. Still, some sectors—heavy industry, aviation—remain stubbornly hard to electrify. There is no silver bullet and running the grid on volatile renewables will have its challenges. In addition to improving how we manage the grid, which was focus of most analyses to date, there are also shades of gray in deciding what should be electrified. While hospitals and military bases usually have backup power, many everyday tools that once worked manually now rely entirely on electricity. For example, Tesla, for all its high-tech wizardry, still includes a manual door release in its cars. In a pinch, you can always get out. Contrast that with the Colonial Pipeline ransomware attack in 2021. The pipeline couldn't operate because the control systems were offline—systems that, not so long ago, could be run manually. This isn't just a technical issue—it's an economic one. Maintaining manual options costs money. Do hotels need a physical master key for every door? Should we keep horses in the barn just in case there is another oil embargo? If your system works 100% of the time, redundancy seems wasteful. But in a world of cyber threats, blackouts, and system overloads, we're beginning to see that resilience matters. The silver lining? We're having this conversation now. We're learning from Iberia, from South Africa, and from many other electric grids around the world. Electrify everything—but leave a hatch open, just in case. In energy, as in life, it's always wise to have a backup plan.
Forbes
05-04-2025
- Sport
- Forbes
Tax Breaks: The Paying Less Taxes Is The 'Gooooooooooal!' Edition
TOPSHOT - Real Madrid's French forward #09 Kylian Mbappe celebrates after Real Madrid's English midfielder #05 Jude Bellingham scored his team's second goal during the Spanish Copa del Rey (King's Cup) semi-final second leg football match between Real Madrid CF and Real Sociedad at the Santiago Bernabeu stadium in Madrid on April 1, 2025. (Photo by JAVIER SORIANO / AFP) (Photo by JAVIER SORIANO/AFP via Getty Images) Hola! This week, the newsletter is coming to you from (not so) sunny Spain, where I am attending a law conference. I'm lucky enough to be in Spain during the Copa del Rey, the oldest Spanish football (soccer for those of us in the U.S.) tournament played at a national level. But that's not the only soccer news happening right now: Real Madrid manager Carlo Ancelotti is defending himself in a Spanish court against charges of tax evasion. Ancelotti is accused of failing to pay over a million euros (US$1.1 million) in Spanish taxes related to image rights. Image rights—the right to use your name, image, voice, and other characteristics personal to you—can be valuable. Ancelotti says he didn't know how the deal was structured because, "For coaches [image rights] don't mean the same as they do for players because they don't sell shirts." (He's apparently forgotten about Jürgen Klopp and José Mourinho, soccer coaches who have recently translated that success into lucrative ad campaigns.) The years at issue in Ancelotti's tax trial are 2014 and 2015 (he served his first stint as coach with Real Madrid from 2013 to 2015). His team, Los Blancos, topped Forbes' list of The World's Most Valuable Soccer Teams in 2024, generating the most revenue ($873 million) of any team. Real Madrid advanced in the Copa on aggregate after tying Real Sociedad on April 1, 2025. The game lasted nearly 115 minutes, ending just after midnight on April 2 (it was exciting–I stayed up to watch!). A few hours later, Ancelotti made his way to a Madrid courtroom to testify for over two hours in his tax trial. While he has already paid the tax that he allegedly attempted to hide using a series of offshore companies to evade detection, he proclaimed his innocence, telling the court, "I have never thought of committing fraud." Ancelotti joins a long list of Spanish soccer stars accused of tax crimes, including the most famous soccer player in the world, Inter Miami CF's Lionel Messi, who was charged with tax evasion in 2013 while he was playing for FC Barcelona. Other players who have been charged with tax crimes in Spain include Alexis Sanchez (formerly FC Barcelona), Neymar da Silva Santos Júnior, known simply as Neymar (also formerly FC Barcelona), and Cristiano Ronaldo (formerly Real Madrid). Most have settled or received light sentences. It's not just global soccer stars that need to worry about taxes—U.S. professional athletes face tricky tax questions, too. Major League Baseball players are among the highest-paid athletes in the world, and sorting out those tax bills can be complicated since they work in multiple states during the course of a season. High earners may feel targeted when it comes to paying taxes, but Steve Forbes says that polls show most Americans feel they're overtaxed. That could be one of many reasons that taxpayers still aren't rushing to file. IRS numbers from the eighth week of the tax filing season—the week ending March 21, 2025—for tax filing and processing of tax returns dipped again, a trend that hasn't changed since the season opened on January 27, 2025. If you haven't yet filed, you might want to take a look at ChatGPT. While AI is not a replacement for a tax specialist or accountant (imagine me shouting that last bit), it can help identify documents to wrangle, proper forms to fill out, as well as changes and updates to the tax code–all of which can be shared with a tax preparer. Consider these prompts which use a situational framework to benefit the average taxpayer. Each query can be customized (though remember that your answer will only be as good as the information you input). And while we may not have a tax bill for next year yet, that doesn't mean that Congress hasn't been working on tax bills. A flurry of tax-related bills focused on tax administration (ranging from deadline clarifications in disasters to changes to IRS notices) recently passed the House. Here's a quick summary of each. I'll be back in the U.S. next week with more tax news. In the meantime, enjoy your weekend (I've been promised some sunshine). Kelly Phillips Erb (Senior Writer, Tax) Articles marked with (☆) are premium content and require you to log-in with your Forbes membership credentials. Not a subscriber yet? Click here to sign up. Why do you owe? This week's question comes from a taxpayer who participated in our Reddit AMA (Ask Me Anything) Tax discussion: I seriously do not understand tax returns and when you do or do not get a tax refund. I owed the Federal government thousands of dollars this year that I do not have. This has never happened before. Could you explain why this might be the case? It's hard to tell without seeing your tax return, but I have a couple of guesses. First, more Americans have a side hustle these days. That means more money (yay!), but it also tends to involve self-employment income (what you'd get on Form 1099). With a regular paycheck from a W-2 job, you typically have withholding in the form of Social Security and Medicare (payroll taxes) and income tax withholding. But when you get a Form 1099, you won't have withholding. Not only do you have to pay income tax on that money, you have to pay Social Security and Medicare (payroll taxes)—and the worst part? With a W-2, you pay half of the total payroll tax, and your employer pays half. With a 1099, you pay both sides, which can easily increase your total tax due. A second reason? Underwithholding because of your Form W-4. You complete Form W-4 and give it to your employer—not the IRS—so that your employer can figure out how much federal income tax to withhold from your pay. It's good to look at it every year and make sure it's right–if something has changed (like you added another job, had a kid, or got married), you may need to adjust your withholding. But taxpayers don't often make those changes, which can mean you're not having enough taken out of your paycheck. The IRS has a tool on its website that can help. The AMA Tax was hosted by Forbes earlier this week. We hope to do more of these throughout the year, so watch for details! — Do you have a tax question or matter that you think we should cover in the next newsletter? We'd love to help if we can. Check out our guidelines and submit a question here. Are you worried about an audit? Statistically, very few tax returns are selected each year for audit–for the tax year 2021, for example, only 341,276 individual income tax returns were selected for audit out of more than 160 million returns that were filed. That works out to just over .2%. That said, every single return gets 'looked at' and scored by IRS computers. That review can be cursory (does your tax return match the data that the IRS has on file?) or a bit more sophisticated (does your tax return make sense based on other data, like your historic filing patterns?). If your return gets flagged, IRS employees will review and potentially select it for examination–what we refer to as an audit. (You can read more about the IRS computers and their legacy systems here.) Who gets the most scrutiny depends on how you look at the data. By numbers, for the tax year 2021, more returns (180,0386) with taxable income of between $1,000 and $24,999 were examined than in any other income bracket. IRS Audit Numbers by Taxable Income, Tax Year 2021 That's consistent with concerns in Congress that low-income taxpayers are improperly claiming tax credits such as the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC). And, it's very easy to data match relatively simple returns–those tend to be filed by lower income taxpayers. But if you look at audit rates–the number of returns examined as compared to the number of returns that are filed, you get a different picture. IRS Audit Rates By Taxable Income, Tax Year 2021 High-income taxpayers are actually audited at a higher rate. Those taxpayers may get more scrutiny for many reasons, including that they are more likely to participate in the type of tax-shelter transactions that the IRS targets. In a two part Q&A, Professor Bryan Camp takes a look at audits. In the first part, Camp explains how the IRS selects which tax returns to audit, the different types of audits, and how to handle IRS requests. In the second part, he explains more about how to avoid getting audited by the IRS, what to do if you are audited, tax-return areas that are likely to trigger an audit, and whether someone at the IRS can intentionally select you for an audit or release your tax information. One thing to keep in mind? With recent cuts to collections and enforcement at the IRS, it is likely that audit rates could drop. But that does not mean the IRS computer systems are shut down–your tax return will still likely be 'looked at' by the IRS computers. The low-hanging fruit–errors and omissions that are easily spotted–could generate notices or examinations. MCLEAN, VIRGINIA - JUNE 20: The Booz Allen Hamilton Headquarters on June 20, 2024 in Mclean, Virginia. Booz Allen is a government and military consulting company that provides management, technology and engineering services to public and private sector organizations and nonprofits. (Photo by) The security of tax data continues to be in the news as Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) proposes cutting more IRS workers and sharing data with other federal agencies. Last year, taxpayers got a glimpse of what could happen when data is not safeguarded. Charles Littlejohn, a former IRS contractor—employed through Booz Allen—went to prison in 2024 for disclosing thousands of tax returns, including Donald Trump's, without authorization. Now, David MacNeil, the founder and owner of WeatherTech, has filed a lawsuit against Booz Allen, claiming that the company failed to safeguard its computer systems and protect IRS networks and databases, resulting in the exposure of the confidential tax return information of thousands of American taxpayers—including him. He is seeking damages, alleging that the leak has caused him, among other things, reputational harm. According to court records, Littlejohn turned over returns and return information dating back more than 15 years for billionaires Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Warren Buffett, and Michael Bloomberg to ProPublica. The data contained not only tax returns but also investments, stock trades, gambling winnings, audit determinations, and many other types of financial material. ProPublica subsequently posted a series of stories using the data, including one in 2021 referencing MacNeil. In 2022, billionaire Kenneth C. Griffin, the founder and CEO of Miami-based hedge fund Citadel, filed suit against the IRS related to the disclosure. However, since Littlejohn was a contractor—and not an employee—of the federal government, the IRS argued that the law didn't allow Griffin to sue. The court seemed to agree, but allowed the lawsuit to proceed. Eventually, Griffin settled the lawsuit, resulting in, among other things, an apology from the IRS. (Other than the apology, the terms of the settlement were not made public.) MacNeil is trying a different tack by seeking damages against Littlejohn's employer. MacNeil issued a lengthy statement about the case, saying in part, 'It is time for Booz Allen to be held accountable for their constant and systemic failures to protect the confidential information of Americans, including, in this case, specifically myself.' 📅 April 15, 2025. Due date for most taxpayers to file an individual tax return—or apply for an extension. 📅 May 1, 2025. Due date for individuals and businesses in the entire states of Alabama, Georgia, North Carolina, and South Carolina and parts of Florida, Tennessee, and Virginia affected by severe storms and flooding from Hurricane Helene (☆) and Hurricane Milton. 📅 June 16, 2025. Due date for individuals living and working abroad to file their 2024 federal income tax return and pay any tax due. 📅 September 30, 2025. Due date for individuals and businesses impacted by recent terrorist attacks in Israel. 📅 October 15, 2025. Due date for individuals and businesses affected by wildfires and straight-line winds in southern California that began on January 7, 2025. Currently, individuals and households that reside or have a business in Los Angeles County qualify for tax relief. 📅 May 8-10, 2025. American Bar Association Section of Tax May Meeting. Marriott Marquis Washington, DC. Registration required. 📅 May 13-14, 2025. National Association of Enrolled Agents 2025 Capitol Hill Fly-In, Washington, DC. Registration required (NAEA members only). 📅 June 16-19, 2025. Latino Tax Fest. MGM Grand Hotel & Casino, Las Vegas, Nevada. Registration required. 📅 July 18-19, 2025. Tax Retreat 'Anti Conference'. Denver, Colorado. Registration TBA. 📅 July 21-23, 2025. National Association of Tax Professionals Taxposium 2025, Caesars Palace, Las Vegas, Nevada. Registration required. In 1942, Walt Disney Studios created a short film for the U.S. Treasury. In the film, what star learns their tax dollars are going toward the war effort? (A) James Cagney (B) Donald Duck (C) Ronald Reagan (D) Shirley Temple Find the answer at the bottom of this newsletter. In a letter to the House of Representatives, the American Institute of CPAs (AICPA) endorsed four bipartisan bills, all of which have received overwhelming support in the House. These bills, which were also included in the recent Senate discussion draft, will improve transparency and fairness for taxpayers and are strongly supported by the AICPA. (You can find out more about the bills here.) The American Bar Association (ABA) Section of Tax submitted comment on the Proposed Regulations related to section 7602(c) of the tax code. Section 7602(c) provides rules relating to the advance notice that the IRS is required to give a taxpayer when contacting third parties with respect to the determination or collection of the taxpayer's tax liability. The Proposed Regulations would create certain exceptions to the 45-day notice requirement, including three broad exceptions that reduce the notice period to just ten days. Kostelanetz LLP welcomes Victor Suthammanont as a partner in the New York City office focused on securities law, commercial litigation, and white-collar criminal defense. Previously, Suthammanont served as Senior Trial Counsel at the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Deloitte LLP is planning to lay off employees in its consulting business, according to the Wall Street Journal. The accounting firm didn't say how many employees would be targeted, but said that 'modest personnel actions' would be taken in the coming weeks. Wiggam Law has added associate attorneys Clay Childress, Patrick Hanson and Tyler Lussier, junior paralegals Sade' Henry and Rebekah Weyman, and enrolled agent Rochelle Whiles to its practice. Childress, Hanson and Lussier will focus on tax controversy matters, IRS debt resolution and audit representation. Henry and Weyman will support the firm's legal team in case preparation and research, while Whiles will assist clients in navigating IRS and state tax challenges. — If you have tax and accounting career or industry news, submit it for consideration here or email me directly. Here's what readers clicked through most often in the newsletter last week: You can find the entire newsletter here. The answer is (B) Donald Duck. After the bombing of Pearl Harbor, Congress needed to raise money to pay for the war effort. The Revenue Act of 1942 significantly expanded the tax base. To motivate taxpayers, Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau asked Walt Disney to produce a new film to explain taxes to American taxpayers. The result was The New Spirit, starring Donald Duck, who learns that you pay 'taxes to beat the Axis!' You can watch it here (it's about 7 minutes long). In the short film, Donald Duck learns how to pay taxes. He lists three dependents (nephews Huey, Dewey, and Louie) and pays $13 tax on his movie income of $2,501. That translates to $254.48 in tax on $48,958.53 in wages in today's dollars. How did we do? We'd love your feedback. If you have a suggestion for making the newsletter better, submit it here or email me directly.
