Cincinnati Tax Resolution Powered by Toph Sheldon 9200 Montgomery Rd., Ste. 7B Cincinnati, OH 45242
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INSIDE
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Toph Learns the Ropes as a Third-Grade Basketball Coach
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Make 2026 Your Healthiest Year Yet Toph’s Tax Triumphs: A Waiting Strategy That Worked Wonders Ashley’s Corner: Finding Time for Her Family and Herself Jalapeño Popper Soup
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Toph’s Tax Nightmares: An IRS Attack Decks 2 Comedy Icons
THE IRS TAKES DOWN 2 COMEDY GREATS TOPH’S TAX NIGHTMARES!
As America went to war in the 1940s, Bud Abbott and Lou Costello were among the highest-paid and most popular performers in the world. The stars of the burlesque-era comedy team, Abbott and Costello, were famous for their rapid-fire dialogues. Millions of Americans tuned in to their radio shows during the 1940s. Abbott and Costello were also national heroes. In 1942, they toured 78 cities in a little over a month, at their own expense, selling war bonds to help the government. The Treasury Department credited them with contributing $85 million to the war effort.
and those habits eventually caught up with them. Less than 20 years after their heroic nationwide fundraising tour, the government turned on them. The IRS slapped Abbott with a total tax bill of $750,000, the equivalent of about $8.25 million in today’s dollars. (The top marginal income tax rate in the 1950s was 91%, hitting taxpayers at Abbott’s and Costello’s six-figure income level very hard.) Abbott sold his home in Encino (California), his 200-acre ranch, and his wife’s jewelry and furs to make inroads on the debt, and also pledged his share of profit from Abbott and Costello’s past movies. Costello died in 1959, shortly after the IRS struck, but he also sold off belongings to pay back taxes.
Despite the IRS’s late-in-life sack, the pair left behind an impressive cultural legacy. They appeared in 36 films from 1940 to 1956. In their best-known sketch, “Who’s On First?” straight-man Abbott, a baseball player, tries to explain the day’s lineup to a confused popcorn vendor, Costello. With players named Who playing first base, What on second, and I Don’t Know on third, but the pair’s conversation soon devolves into a hilarious shouting match. In 1999, Time magazine recognized “Who’s On First” as the Best Comedy Sketch of the 20th Century. A clip of “Who’s On First?” from Abbott and Costello’s 1945 film, “The Naughty Nineties,” plays in a continuous loop in the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York.
Abbott and Costello were also known as free spenders who loved to gamble, however,
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