The TuRD bloodsucking fleas had a good 5-year run taking renewal commissions on accounts that someone else sold. The host is dying now. Sweet retribution...

The chief "braintrust", aka, Alberto Cassola, is now fully in charge of the "evil empire". Word on the street...

Is it true.......that he is cutting commissions to seniors - and therefore to reps-who do not sell at least one Catalog Navigator or one website "solution" per quarter. Reps who do not sell the aforementioned web "solutions have their commission reduced from 15% on renewals to 10%.

Is it true.......that they are losing big and small accounts nationwide to "The Engineering Search Engine" in rapid numbers, even though T.E.S.E. has mainly inside salespeople selling over the phone and average sale is twice that of TNet.

Is it true.......that the "evil empire's" renewal percentage of their current account base is now less than 50%....remember the 85% renewal rate touted for years with the BGB's?

Is it true.......that reps are so depressed with the economy and their reduced commisions and higher expenses....that some are finally waking up and seeing the long term prospects of this loser......

Alberto married well....but the former shoe salesman has no idea of what he's doing...and their online competitors are eating his lunch....breakfast and dinner.

We vacate the judgment and remand to correct an error in calculation and for further proceedings concerning the underpayment penalty.


Those $500 a hour attorneys from http://www.ssbb.com/ didn't do so well.......bad bet.......onward and upward........

http://www.ssbb.com/index.php/attorneys/entry/55

http://www.ssbb.com/index.php/attorneys/entry/57

Although we admitted into evidence the estate's valuation reports and treated them as credible, we regard those reports and the testimony of the estate's experts to be only marginally credible.
Goerig and Wichorek were barely qualified to value a highly successful and well-established New York City-based company with annual income in the millions of dollars.
Id. at *17-*18.
A determination as to the Estate's good faith is required. Accordingly, we vacate the Tax Court's decision not to impose an accuracy-related penalty, and we remand so that the Court can determine whether the Estate's reliance on Goerig and Wichorek was reasonable and in good faith.
For the foregoing reasons, the judgment of the Tax Court is vacated and remanded for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.

To prepare its valuation of a New York publishing company, the Estate turned to George E. Goerig of Anchorage, Alaska. The Tax Court found that an Alaska lawyer was retained so that the Commissioner's audit of the Estate would not be conducted by the Commissioner's New York staff, but by the Commissioner's office in Alaska, "where Goerig believed and apparently represented to the estate's representative that he would be able to obtain for the estate a more favorable valuation of the estate's [Company] stock." Estate of Thompson, 2004 WL 1658404, at *8. "[T]he estate had learned about Goerig from an attorney for decedent's family who had met Goerig on a fishing trip." Id.

We therefore affirm the Tax Court's valuation--in all respects but one: the parties agree that the Tax Court made an error in calculation. As set out in the prior paragraph, the Court treated $68 million in short-term investments as non-operating assets, and therefore added $68 million to the Company's capitalized income. But when the Court calculated the Company's projected income, it included the income produced by the $68 million in its projection, thus factoring in the $68 million twice. The Commissioner estimates that this error resulted in a $1.2 million overstatement in the value of the Estate's shares; the Estate (which agrees that the error was made) does not attempt to quantify its effect. We therefore remand for the Tax Court to correct this double-counting error. We affirm the Tax Court's valuation in all other respects.
V The Tax Court determined that the Estate's share of the Company was worth $13.5 million; the Estate valued its share at $1.75 million--less than 15% of the value determined as correct by the Court. 3 Under the version of 26 IRC 6662 then in effect, if the claimed value of the Estate is not more than 25% of the amount determined to be correct, the taxpayer must pay an accuracy-related penalty equal to 40% of its underpayment. See 26U.S.C. § 6662(a), g(1), (h)(1), (h)(2)(C) (2006), amended by Pension Protection Act of 2006 § 1219, Pub. L. No. 109-280, 120 Stat. 780, 1083 (2006).
With one exception, this penalty is mandatory. See id. § 6662(a) ("there shall be added to the tax an amount equal to [40] percent of the . . . underpayment" (emphasis added)).

Estate of Thompson v. Comm'r of Internal Revenue
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE SECOND CIRCUIT
August Term, 2006
(Argued: April 23, 2007 Decided: August 23, 2007)
Docket No(s). 06-0815-ag (Lead); 06-1132-ag (XAP)
x
ESTATE OF JOSEPHINE T. THOMPSON,
DECEASED, CARL T. HOLST-KNUDSEN, & THE
BANK OF NEW YORK, EXECUTORS,
Petitioners-Appellants-
Cross-Appellees,
-v.-
COMMISSIONER OF INTERNAL REVENUE,
Respondent-Appellee-Cross-
Appellant.
x
Before: JACOBS, Chief Judge, LEVAL and POOLER,
Circuit Judges.
Appeal from the judgment of the United States Tax Court
(Swift, J.), valuing an estate's interest in a closely held
company and declining to impose an underpayment penalty
against petitioners.
We vacate the judgment and remand to correct an error in calculation and for further proceedings concerning the underpayment penalty.
JOSHUA M. RUBINS (Robert H.
Goldie and Kirk H. O'Ferrall, on the brief), Satterlee Stephens Burke & Burke LLP, New York, New York, for Appellants.
RICHARD FARBER (Steven W. Parks, on the brief), for Eileen J.
O'Connor, Assistant Attorney General, Tax Division, Department of Justice, Washington, D.C., for Appellee.
DENNIS JACOBS, Chief Judge: For estate tax purposes, the United States Tax Court (Swift, J.) valued one-fifth of a closely held company at $13.5 million--an amount far above the $1.75 million valuation proffered by the estate of Josephine T. Thompson ("Estate") and far below the $32 million valuation proffered by the Commissioner of Internal Revenue ("Commissioner")- and declined to impose an underpayment penalty against the Estate, principally on the grounds that the Commissioner's estimate was so high in the other direction and that the valuation issues were fairly debatable. The Court found that the Estate employed a method that exaggerated the risks associated with technological change, while the Commissioner's methodology was generally deficient. The Estate appeals chiefly on the ground that, pursuant to § 7491 of the Internal Revenue Code ("IRC"), the burden of proof on the issue of valuation shifted to the Commissioner when (as the parties have stipulated) the Estate introduced credible evidence on the issue, and that the Tax Court was therefore compelled to adopt the Estate's valuation once it rejected the Commissioner's. The IRS appeals chiefly on the ground that the Estate's underpayment was such that it was error for the Tax Court to refuse to impose an underpayment penalty.
We vacate the judgment because there is a conceded error in the Tax Court's calculation and because the Court's findings are insufficient to support the application of the reasonable cause exception to the otherwise mandatory underpayment penalty. We remand for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.
I When Josephine T. Thompson died on May 2, 1998, her estate included approximately 20% of the common shares of Thomas Publishing Co., Inc. (the "Company"), a century-old private, closely held corporation which produces business to-business industrial and manufacturing directories and publications. Descendants of the Company's founder own almost 90% of the shares; no shares have ever been publicly traded; and no stock sales had occurred in the ten years prior to Thompson's death.

Time is the enema.

The last line should say "this COMPANY will self destruct". Where was Mr. Ed in the video.

Re: Three individuals have been indicted.....

Michelle Daniels and her two cohorts are my newest heros.....

Has anyone heard about the Mirror sites from ThomasNet, help spread the word another criminal act by Thomas Hijacking/stealing traffic and continuing to mislead the sales force and their clients. SHAME

Three individuals have been indicted for stealing $667,722 from a Manhattan publishing company.

The investigation revealed that from Feb. 12, 1996 through July 11, 2005, Michelle Daniels, 47, worked for Thomas Publishing Company, LLC. Thomas Publishing is an international publisher located at 5 Penn Plaza in Manhattan, which specializes in offering regional, national and international industrial buying guides, product news magazines, information news services, and magazines focusing on industrial topics.

Tougher rules on who is an independent contractor are coming to a town near you. Obama probably wants to crack down on companies who don't overtly control their reps and how the job gets done, but do it in other ways. What a hugh source of income this would be to the government.

Next up that dismal thomasnet-TuRD model. They will become a Google network whore by years end. Then ALL the reps can be fired and they can charge $599 flat rate per year for directory inclusion. No more POP points, no more content dreams, no more favorite bloodsucking sons.

Thomas Publishing has shuttered Industrial Equipment News, a 76-year-old monthly trade title that served the engineering, design and manufacturing markets. The May issue will be its last.

In a memo to staffers, chairman José E. Andrade and president Carl T. Holst-Knudsen attributed the closing of IEN to “the challenges of the current economy.”