GeneInAlabama

Maybe lying counts as activity. If so, they will live a very long time.

Thanks everyone. I guess I was hoping for a mircle, but it didn't happen. I sometimes get too envolved with my clients. Her husband died in 2009 and she is now operating the farm by herself. She collected some insurance money, but had to spend it paying bills for the farm. She farmed all of her life and seems to be very capable, but when people you deal with don't pay you, being capable is not enough.

The gun control people are going to be claiming that guns caused the carnage. If someone else in the theater had had a gun, maybe the results would not have been quite as bad. I believe a more likely cause of what happened was the violence we see daily in the movies, on TV, and in the video games. Just my opinion.

Thanks Danrvan. I'll ask the taxpayer more questions concerning the constructive receipt. I'll let you know the outcome. 2011 would have been a very bad year if it hadn't been for the 2010 income she received in 2011. The amount received late was about 15% of her total income. About harvest time, Alabama's tough immigration law chased a lot of the workers out of the state. She took all the steps to hire legal workers, but even at that a lot of her workers left. I was surprised that tomato pickers are somewhat skilled. The workers she hired to take their place did a lot of damage to the crops and equipment. Gail, there was no disaster declaration for the area at the time. I appreciate your help.

Thanks Danrvan. Can I file an amended return to change the method of accounting for 2010? Or does the change have to be made during the current year? If this will work, it will be great.

I have a cash basis tomato farmer that received a payment of about $45,000 for her 2010 crop in 2011. She had an NOL for 2010 but had a large profit in 2011 as a result of the past due payment. If she had received the payment in 2010, she would have about broken even for both years. The NOL for 2010 wiped out income tax for 2011 but she owes SE tax for 2011. Is there any way that an amended return can be filed for 2010 to include the income that SHOULD have been received in 2010. She is a cash basis farmer. I know it is a long shot, but I'm hoping that someone knows an angle that I don't know about. I don't do a lot of farm returns.

If the IRS does decide to simplify the code - watch out! When they simplified the form 941, it went from one page to two pages.

>>And don't forget, it has long been an axiom of our profession that a refund suggests our own failure to properly advise the client.<< How much interest would a large refund draw if put into savings? How many people would actually put the difference into savings? My experience has been that the vast majority of people would just spend the difference and have nothing to show for it. Actually, I think having extra withheld is an excellent way of forced savings. I have known people who overpay and use that for their vacation (it comes at the right time of the year). A large refund can pay for a new appliance or for a home improvement which they would not otherwise be able to afford. Most of my clients do not have extra capital to work with, so a large refund is a good boost for them. I know the IRS doesn't like for people to over withhold, but I work for my clients, not the IRS.

When I was in the hospital after open heart surgery 3 years ago, I fell out of the bed while still hooked up to all kinds of tubes in trying to reach something on the table beside the bed. I told the nurses that I was just checking them out to see how alert they were and that I would give them a good recommendation to the CEO. Maybe Don was just checking you out to see how alert you are.

Maybe I'll fail the test and won't have to worry about any of this anymore. :P

They called me today and I told them I would give them an answer Monday. I think I will probably go with them this year again. You can't beat the price, especially those of us who got the lifetime $299 price. There is a preview of their in house version on their web page. I don't do enough returns to justify the ATX price, but I'm too old to learn the worksheet method of Tax Works. Everytime I ran into something different, I had to spend a lot of time to find the right way to enter it into the program.

Whew! What a relief.

>>I have also kept the first one from 2996 << I hope I didn't drop off to sleep. What year is this?

In the 2010 program I would have it happen when I would print forms and then click on it to print more forms before it was through printing. After it finished printing the first group, I could click on print again and it would then print the second group.

I LOVE extensions. I don't charge extra for extensions and I tell my clients that if they want their returns done early, they have to bring them in early. Tax season lasts from Jan 1st to Oct 15th for me. Most of my clients are OK with that. The ones that aren't get their work in early to me.

I have always had a problem understanding NOLs. I have always put the entire prior year NOL on line 21 and then figured a new NOL for the current year. It seems to make more sense.

I too have not heard anything about that. My wife does my 941s for me and she has already completed and mailed (to the clients) the ones that have gotten their PR info to me this month.

When do you get the client to sign the letter? If they are sitting in front of you when you prepare the return, do you give it to them before you start? If they drop the info off for you to do later, do you give them the letter at that time? If they mail the info to you, do you send the letter to them to sign before you start on it? It all seems very awkward. I know it's important, but after 32 years not using one, it is just hard to get started doing it. With most of my clients, I have being doing their returns for years.

I had a client like this and I just simply listed the amount paid to consignors as cost of goods sold. I looked at it as the merchandise belonging to the consignor until it is sold and then the shop buying the item from the consignor and sells it to the customer in one transaction. Looking at it this way, the shop has no inventory. The inventory belongs to each individual consignor.

I had a college professor once who spoke several languages fluently who admitted that he was a terrible speller. He said that he might try to start a movement to begin spelling words the way they sound. Apparently it didn't work out. That was many years ago.

Faxed copies are OK too.

I'm with JohnH. I encourage my clients to file extensions. I like to spread my work out over a longer period of time.

I wonder how many of the tax returns those 3 preparers prepared will be audited to prove the point that testing should be required. I sure am glad that one of them didn't prepare my return.

John, I also have TRX Pro but I have form D301 D-30 Page 1-2, D303 D-30 page 3, D304 D-30 page 4, and D305 D-30 page 5. I'm not familiar with DC forms but I assume these are the ones you want. I also have a NR - D-40B and when you click on that it shows a D-40B#1. I don't know if these are the ones you need or not. I owe TRX a big apology for my post above where I said they don't have the Alabama form 40X which I said was the amended form. I found out that Alabama hasn't used the form 40X for amended returns since 2008. Either I haven't filed an amended return since 2008 or I have done it wrong. I'm not sure which. Alabama now has a check box on the form 40 for an amended return. Sure makes me feel dumb.

Thanks Kea. I'll put the numbers in that way. The worst they can do is shoot me, and I don't think that is likely.