Hahn1040

Oh I know! She bought it for $94,000 in 2003 in 2007 she refinanced $190,000 this was the THIRD refi- each time taking more cash IT looks like her insolvency will allow her to exclude pretty much all of the amount forgiven. Her adjusted basis (after depre) is about $84,000 So if she has $100,000 forgiven, then it reduces her basis to zero. the the entire amount is a gain. Correct??? I also wondered why they put FMV at $79,000 since they had a buyer at $90,000. I would love to see an example just so I can follow through each step to see that I am on track. Thanks

I have a client who sold her rental property on a short sale. I have read the IRS pub and I think I know how to do it, but would like to see a comprehensive example Does anyone have a site to suggest for examples of such a sale? I would appreciate any input Goodness the house sold for almost as much as she had paid for it, but she had taken out so much cash in refinances (not for home improvements) that the mortgage company forgave over $125,000 in debt. orig purchase: $94,000 sell price$90,000 on 1099-C box 2 $125,000 box 7 $79,000 Thanks for any guidance

That is why they are added to the W-2- because they are not deductible. The moving truck (moving your household goods) and the airfare or mileage (getting you and your family) don't have to be added to wages because they would be deductible. But the things that are not deductible: closing costs, temporary living, house hunting trips, etc. must be added to income. Ironically transporting your family pet is deductible- I always wonder if Rover is considered part of transporting your household goods or part of transporting your family. :)

NO DOUBLE DIPPING Pub 970 Chapter 1: Veterans benefit Veterans' Benefits Payments you receive for education, training, or subsistence under any law administered by the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) are tax free. Do not include these payments as income on your federal tax return. If you qualify for one or more of the education benefits discussed in chapters 2 through 12, you may have to reduce the amount of education expenses qualifying for a specific benefit by part or all of your VA payments. This applies only to the part of your VA payments that is required to be used for education expenses. You may want to visit the Veteran's Administration website at www.gibill.va.gov for specific information about the various VA benefits for education. Example. You have returned to college and are receiving two education benefits under the latest GI Bill: (1) a $1,534 monthly basic housing allowance (BAH) that is directly deposited to your checking account, and (2) $3,840 paid directly to your college for tuition. Neither of these benefits is taxable and you do not report them on your tax return. You also want to claim an American opportunity credit on your return. You paid $5,000 in qualified education expenses (explained in detail in <a href="http://www.irs.gov/publications/p970/ch02.html#en_US_2010_publink1000204341" name="en_US_2010_publink1000239102" style="line-height: 14px; color: rgb(102, 28, 128); " title="Qualified Education Expenses">chapter 2). To figure the amount of credit, you must first subtract the $3,840 from your qualified education expenses because this payment under the GI Bill was required to be used for education expenses. You do not subtract any amount of the BAH because it was paid to you and its use was not restricted.

There is! Go to the detail sheet SCROLL down (there is nothing at the top) then you will see your imported transactions if you move over several columns you will have the long/short column that is blue so that you can edit it You have to edit the form 8949 box to tell it a, b, or c- so you can do the term at the same time

My experience is that when I get the spreadsheet from the broker, the purchase date is in there so the program knows long or short But if you need to make adjustments you can do that on the detail tab. You can edit the long/short column For all of the transactions I have to go in and tell it if it is an A or a B for the 8949 box. You can do this on the import sheet tab or the detail tab For my clients,so far, the Bs far outnumber the As - so I go through and code all of the A transactions and then make sure the 8949 page matches the spreadsheet and/or 1099-B and then go through and make the rest a B. then the B 8949 should match the 1099-B and cross your fingers all of the pages add up. Today I had one that the 1099-B reported a transaction as a covered transaction - LONG term. That is a contradiction since covered transactions started 1/1/11 and thus it could not be covered and LONG. The dates clearly showed short-term. I got to use the code" T" in the Form 8949 Code column to show that the 1099 was wrong.

so now it is working! don't know what I did just now that I didn't do while struggling with it this afternoon! But suddenly everything is in place. Perhaps it was just the order of entries I made finally made it happy or perhaps it was closing the return and reopening or perhaps it was taking the dog out for a walk...

Help how do I get the expired options to flow to the 8949? I imported the file from client after getting in the codes for 8949 box and coding for wash sales and expired options the regular sales and the wash sales flow to the 8949 but all of the options are not there on the sched D the totals are part of the totals in e and f (sales price and cost) but not in h for gaim or loss I must be missing something!

I have found that some times I will get an error about the telephone number When I go to that field it has ( ) in there for the area code. when I take out the ( ) and leave it blank--- it is happy This tends to happen on returns that have been rolled over for many years. It used to have the ( ) there for the area code looks like the new ones don't. Apparently it gets confused I will qualify with saying that some states require a telephone number and for direct debit it does

Some states give a tax advantage. For VA, you can deduct 20% of the sales tax you pay on an energy efficient appliance SO- you buy a $2400 frig- sales tax is $120 you get a deduction of $24. If you are in the top tax bracket for VA (5.75) it saves you just about $1 you can imagine the clients' enthusiasm when they hear this! ALSO Some utility companies offer rebates. Unfortunately if your client thinks it is a tax credit and he saves the paperwork to give you then he may have missed the deadline for applying for the rebate

Generally the management company sends the owner the 1099 that reports gross rents collected from the tenants. and they send a statement that shows the items paid through the owners account- such as repairs and it shows the disbursements to the owner

fyi: many states do not tax active duty military pay while the resident is stationed out of the state: NY, NJ, IL, CA, PA, OH, OK to name a few. There are others- these are the ones I thought of off the top of my head. For some they file as a resident with active duty pay excluded, others file as nonresident, some don't have to file at all if they do not have any state tax withheld then there are states that give some exclusion or deduction: VA if military income is under $30,000 MD for military stationed out of the country up to $30,000 others tax them the same as any other resident: GA, AL, the favorites with the military are the states with no income tax: FL, TX, WA, TN none of these lists are exclusive Your best bet for finding out how a state taxes the military is to look on the state's tax website Many states have a pub for military THEN if the military member has a spouse, there is a whole set of rules for the spouse. NEW law as of 11/11/09 : Military Spouse residency relief act: http://www.journalofaccountancy.com/Web/20092342

Confirm: She is active duty military? if yes, then NY remains her home of record Her W-2 says NY However, NY does not tax her as a resident. that is while she is stationed out of NY IF she gets order back to NY, then she is taxed as a resident again

IS your client active duty military stationed in VA? Active duty military maintains home of record when PCS (permanent change of station) see: On December 19, 2003, the President of the United States signed into law H.R. 100, the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act. This law completely rewrites the Soldiers and Sailors Civil Relief Act of 1940 , expanding many of the previous law's civil protections. IF your service member was a resident of New York when she joined the military, then she remains a NY resident. For New York tax info see: http://www.tax.ny.gov/pdf/publications/income/pub361.pdf IF your client is not in NY more than 30 days during the year, does not maintain a permanent place of abode in NY and does maintain a permanent place of abode in another state, then NY does not tax military pay. Thus no NY tax NO VA tax.

Clients can generally get an excel file from the brokerage or fund co. The client sends you the excel file electronically (email, upload to secure site, or transfer on CD or thumb drive, etc) You then save the excel file as a csv file then you can import

You can load the organizer from the return manager screen. Select the returns you want to add it to and then click: returns then select add organizer to selected clients Also to add to an open return click: forms then organizer then add organizer if it is adding the comprehensive organizer (Long one) and you want the short version from return manager screen click: option preferences select forms make sure the box for: "Use Comprehensive organizer" is not checked I just discovered this trick recently. I always had to find the short one on the "add forms" list so when I discovered this, it makes the short one the default rather than the long one. Saves a few steps. Particularly when you want to add it to a number of returns at once

Back to the CA return issue: see CA pub 1032: Servicemembers domiciled outside of California, and their spouses, exclude the servicemember’s military compensation from gross income when computing the tax rate on nonmilitary income . • Stationed Outside California – California military servicemembers who leave California under PCS orders become nonresidents of California for income tax purposes . All income received or earned prior to departure is subject to tax by California . After departure, only income from California sources is subject to tax by California . Nonresidents are generally not taxed by California on income from intangibles, such as dividends from stocks or interest from bonds or bank accounts . So what it is saying is that if the military member and spouse were residents of CA, then when they are stationed outside of CA they are considered non Residents for tax purposes and none of their income is taxed. RE the person moving overseas: As a US citizen, he must report worldwide income on the US return. his US source income is taxed no matter where he lives with few exceptions. Sometimes social security is not taxed to the US if living in a country with reciprocal agreement, Then it is taxed to the country he lives.

If it was used for qualified education expense, it is not taxed and not reported on the return. If it was NOT used for qualified ed exp, then it goes on line 21. If it is taxable, then it may also be subject to the penalty.

As active duty military- military pay is not taxed to OHIO: Military pay earned while on active duty and stationed outside of Ohio is exempt from the Ohio income tax and may be deducted to the extent it is included in federal adjusted gross income. Details on how to take this deduction are found here. See: http://tax.ohio.gov/divisions/ohio_individual/individual/military_tax_provisions.stm

I use AFSB: http://afsb.net/ IT costs less than $300 per year with no set up fee. I had signed of with CCH site builder at an NATP state conference in 2010 in order to check it out. Right away I could see that I could get everything I need from AFSB at one third the cost. The main reason I did it was for the secure portal for sending client info back and forth. Many of my clients used it right away and are very happy for the security. It is very easy to use. I don't have any web building skills, so I use the templates that they offer. Someone with some knowledge could certainly customize it for themselves. Laura

It is not a percent of the gross. It is a set monthly amount based on amount employee paid in, age at retirement and the year he retired. Look at the Simplified method. It has changed several times over the years, so the year of retirement is important. example: if he retired after Nov 18 1996 and before 1998, and he was age 56-60 then you use 310 months calculate his contribution $3659 divided by 310 months = $11.80 per month x 12 months = $141.60 per year. This amount remains the same until all of his cost has been excluded. If the annuity start date is before 1987 then you continue to take the monthly exclusion even after the cost has been recovered. For those that retired in the early 1980 they may have used the three year rule in which case there is no exclusion

Often scholarships will cover more than qualified tuition and fees. Room and board are not qualified education expenses for determining tax-free scholarships. IF the scholarship is greater than the tuition and fees, then the excess is added to THE STUDENT's income (line 7). In many cases the student had a part-time job and made well under the standard deduction, so adding some to line 7 does not cause the student to owe. I did have a case a couple of years ago where a young woman had a FULL scholarship to Columbia. She had a summer job that was already greater than her standard deduction, So she did end up paying some tax- The mother was quite put out that the child owed tax. My thought was, "Goodness- she is going to Columbia on a free ride! SO you pay a couple hundred dollars of tax!" I'm sure she worked very hard and is very deserving- but still free is free! Pub 970 has a very good chart which shows what expenses qualifies as tax free.

William and Mary is a Virginia state school. My second daughter will graduate in May. First daughter graduated in 2009. This last semester's tuition was just over $6,000. Actually W&M is one of the most expensive of the Virginia schools. But a fraction of what neighbors pay to go to Washington and Lee or George Washington! Plus they have had the tremendous experience of spending four years in Colonial Williamsburg!

Provided that he qualifies : no perm place of abode in NY, maintains perm place of abode out of ny for entire year and did not spend 30 days in NY during the year- use the non resident form 203 on the worksheet for income allocation, take the military wages out of the income from new york state sources column then there will be no NY income and no tax

See New York Pub 361: http://www.tax.ny.gov/pdf/publications/income/pub361.pdf If you meet all of the conditions in either Group A or Group B, you are considered a nonresident for the tax year. The military member files the nonresident return to receive a refund of New York Tax with held. Group A 1. You did not maintain any permanent place of abode in New York State during the tax year; and 2. you maintained a permanent place of abode outside New York State during the entire tax year; and 3. you spent 30 days or less (any part of a day is a day for this purpose) in New York State during the tax year. Group B 1. You were in a foreign country for at least 450 days during any period of 548 consecutive days; and 2. you, your spouse (unless legally separated) and minor children spent 90 days or less (any part of a day is a day for this purpose) in New York State during this 548-day period; and 3. during the nonresident portion of the taxable year in which the 548-day period begins, and during the nonresident portion of the taxable year in which the 548-day period ends, you were present in New York State for no more than the number of days which bears the same ratio to 90 as the number of days in such portion of the taxable year bears to 548. This condition is illustrated by the following formula: Number of days in the Maximum number nonresident portion x 90 = of days allowed in 548 New York State Publication 361 (1/11) 7 The pub gives specifics of what qualifies as a "permanent place of abode"