Beginning yesterday, I have adopted a new policy on comment moderation. I have always moderated comments on this blog to prevent inappropriate comments. I have not moderated for relevancy of the comments to the blog entry involved. The result is that the comments sometime veered into issues that were not relevant to the blog entry involved. I have decided to restrict comments to comments that are relevant to the particular blog entry. There are several reasons for this. First, it is distracting to readers who usually read a blog entry and its comments because of the topic of the blog entry rather than off topic diversions of other readers. Second, as best I understand how the search feature works in this blog, it picks up only the blog entry itself and not the comments. Thus, off topic comments will be orphaned unless appended to a relevant blog entry. Third, and related, by appending comments to blog entries for which the comments are relevant, the comments can be most useful to all readers and are likely to draw more useful responding comment.
Accordingly, I urge readers to exercise the discipline to make their comments relevant to the blog entry in question; if the comment is not relevant, please find another blog entry for which the comment is relevant. If readers cannot find such an entry, please email me the comment and, if I also cannot find a relevant blog entry, I will consider posting a new blog entry on the topic that can then draw relevant comments and discussions.
I appreciate the readers' comments. My exercise of discretion not to post a comment does not in any way mean that it is not a good comment but is just not relevant to the blog entry involved.
Finally, I urge all readers, particularly readers who are not tax professionals or students to read the limitations page at the top of the right hand column. This is intended as a discussion blog and not a legal advice blog. Indeed, this blog expressly disclaims any reader's attempt to rely upon what is said in the blog as legal advice. Tax professionals and students should be able to understand this limitation and not rely upon anything said, but to use the blog entries and comments as tools to reach their own informed conclusions. Lay readers are not trained to do that and hence should never rely upon anything they read in the blog entries or comments but should seek independent legal advice before embarking upon a course of conduct that is fraught with risk.
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Comments are moderated. Jack Townsend will review and approve comments only to make sure the comments are appropriate. Although comments can be made anonymously, please identify yourself (either by real name or pseudonymn) so that, over a few comments, readers will be able to better judge whether to read the comments and respond to the comments.