Several years ago John Johnson, who is in the lending business, loaned Sara $30,000 to purchase an automobile to be used for personal purposes. In August of the current year, Sara filed for bankruptcy, after paying back $1,000 of the loan to John. John was notified by the bankruptcy court that he could not expect to receive more than an additional $4,000. John has contacted you about the possibility of taking a bad debt deduction for the current year. Required:
Write a letter to John that contains your advice as to whether he can claim a bad debt deduction for the current year. Also prepare a memo for the tax files. John's address is 100 Tyler Lane, Erie, PA 16563.

The wall street journal reported that walmart stores inc. is planning to lay off 2,300 employees at its sam's club warehouse unit. approximately half of the layoffs will be hourly employees (the wall street journal, january 25-26, 2014). suppose the following data represent the percentage of hourly employees laid off for 15 sam's club stores. 55 56 44 43 44 56 60 62 57 45 36 38 50 69 65 (a) compute the mean and median percentage of hourly employees being laid off at these stores. (b) compute the first and third quartiles. (c) compute the range and interquartile range. (d) compute the variance and standard deviation. (e) do the data contain any outliers? (f) based on the sample data, does it appear that walmart is meeting its goal for reducing the number of hourly employees?