The end of the year is fast approaching, and its’ a good time to remind everyone of a few basic things they ought to do before December 31. I appeared last year on CNBC’s On the Money to talk about my five best tips for taxpayers.

John W. Scherer, founder of VideoProfessor.com. Do you want this guy to profit at your expense?

Have you seen the Video Professor on television? Nice infomercial type advertisements where you’re offered all sorts of computer software for free.. just pay shipping and handling.

If you’re like most people, you probably thought the company made its money on the shipping and handling fees. They gave out cheap CDs of software that cost them a couple of bucks to make and ship, and they charge consumers $6.95 or $9.95 for shipping, netting them about $5 to $8 in profit.

UPDATE: Overstock.com just issued a press release in which Patrick Byrne calls Grant Thornton a bunch of liars. Add them to his list of “miscreants.”

No longer can Patrick Byrne, wacky CEO of Overstock.com (NASDAQ:OSTK) claim that those pointing out his lies and materially misleading financial statements are just “miscreants,” operatives of an imaginary “Sith Lord,” or [insert any of a number of Jewish slurs that Byrne is prone to use].  Now national auditing firm Grant Thornton is calling Patrick Byrne and his clowns liars. He’s collecting quite a slew of admirers.

Yesterday, Overstock filed an 8-K with the Securities and Exchange Commission regarding their firing of Grant Thornton. Here’s what Overstock.com has to say about the accounting issue that led to the firing, and I have placed in bold the most important part:

My second book, Expert Fraud Investigation: A Step-by-Step Guide, was recently reviewed by my colleague Michael Goldman for The Value Examiner, the magazine published for the National Association of Certified Valuation Analysts. It’s read by consultants who work in the areas of business and asset valuation, business fraud deterrence, detection, and investigation, litigation consulting, and financial forensics.

I thought Michael’s review was very kind. And for the record, he and I had never met until a few days ago, so I didn’t have a chance to influence his review in any way. I love reviews like this because they really help prospective buyers of the book get a better idea of whether the book has what they need.

Michael’s review…

It’s interesting to note that TheStreet.com (NASDAQ:TSCM) is apparently having trouble keeping its books, especially since Jim Cramer is one who loves to rant about companies with shoddy bookkeeping. It’s troubling, of course, because Cramer suggests that you should sell the stocks of companies that don’t keep up with their regulatory filings, and TheStreet.com is now delinquent on filing its 10-Qc for 6/30/09 and 9/30/09.

From their recent press release:

Much to my surprise, the Federal Trade Commission appears to be taking action against Pre-Paid Legal Services (NYSE:PPD) for making misleading representations in connection with its Identity Theft Shield and Affirmative Defense Response System products.

Sam Antar has often referred to Overstock.com and CEO Patrick Byrne as the gifts that keep on giving. And he sure is right! There is never a dull moment when it comes to wacky conspiracy theories and accounting woes that never end.

Last week, Overstock (NASDAQ:OSTK) announced that it wouldn’t be filing its 10-Q for the third quarter on time. The reason? Patrick Byrne had created another clever (but completely wrong) accounting treatment for another accounting error recently discovered, and the auditors wouldn’t sign off on it.

This week Overstock.com (NASDAQ:OSTK) notified the public that they wouldn’t file their third quarter 10-Q on time. The reason:

The registrant has been unable to complete its financial statements for the quarter ended September 30, 2009, as it is continuing to analyze the proper accounting treatment for $785,000 the registrant received during the first quarter of 2009 as repayment  under a new agreement with the vendor for amounts the registrant overpaid to the vendor in 2008 and early 2009.  The registrant believes the amount is properly recognizable in the first quarter of 2009, when the cash was received.  However, the registrant is continuing to review the issue, and may ultimately conclude that the amount should have been recognized in 2008.

Robert FitzPatrick of Pyramid Scheme Alert is bombarded every week by consumers who want to ask him, “What about this MLM?”

You see, the marketers of multi-level marketing companies have gotten very savvy. They know that plenty of us have figured out their con game. They now have consumers convinced that theirs is “one of the good ones.”  They’ve convinced consumers that they’ve seen the “bad” MLMs, and that theirs is surely one of the “good” MLMs. (Yet they never tell consumers which ones are the “bad” ones, do they? Why is that?)

I wrote last week about my opinion of the fraud that is our federal government’s stimulus programs. Our government has a vested interest in making us think these programs are successful. How else can an agenda of “wealth redistribution” and socialism be promoted? They must have “success” on their side to justify continuing on this destructive path.

And now more news reports are coming out about how phony the stimulus “success” numbers are…