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The 1040 e-file system will be taken off-line to perform annual system maintenance in preparation for the upcoming filing season. The last day in 2020 to e-file 2019 Federal and State Individual tax returns is Saturday, November 21, 2020. If planning to transmit on this last day, please check with your software vendor for the cutoff time for transmitting and processing returns for e-filing. Note: e-Filing for tax year 2017 individual returns ends for good on November 21, 2020. When e-filing resumes, returns will only be accepted for tax years 2018, 2019, and 2020. Taxpayers required to file during this shutdown period will have to file paper returns. The IRS has not yet released the shutdown schedule for business returns; however, an announcement with the dates and times is expected in early December.

No problems here. I had a dozen updates this week for various programs including one for Win 10, and the only issue was from an antivirus program update where it was treating one of my financial sites as an advertising site and had blocked it from fully loading. I listed it as an exclusion and everything is working again, but that's been it as far as problems go.

The actual filing date allowed for amended returns is the later of 2 years after payment if taxes are owed or 3 years from the filing date. If not on extension, then it's 3 years from 4/15 is used even if filed before the 4/15 deadline. If the return is on extension until 10/15 and is filed after 4/15 but before 10/15, the actual date filed is considered the filing date, so the amended return would have a final date of 3 years from that, and I'm assuming this is the reason why the OP said the statute would have run out 7/1/20 for the 2016 tax year. Because the statute has run out for filing an amended return for the husband, there is no acceptable amendment possible that can be filed. If the wife hasn't filed, whether or not the IRS has created a SFR (substitute for return) that she may have paid on a notice, I'd suggest that she file MFS claiming the standard deduction because an SFR isn't considered a filed return and doesn't start the statute of limitations running.

Here's a new scam targeting professional licensees. It is being done by telephone, and the scammer is able spoof caller i.d. to project the actual state agency to make them appear to be legitimate. In an abundance of caution, the State of DE Division of Professional Regulation sent out a mass email to all its licensees describing the scam in more detail. So far here in my state, the reported cases have all involved those licensed in the field of health care. I doubt anyone here would fall for such a call, but I'm sharing to make you all aware in case any of your clients falls victim to this and because I'm sure this isn't limited to only my small state. Here's an excerpt from the email that describes this in more detail:

I agree with cbslee and think "tax home" is what you need to consider. A really old topic on our site but worthy of reading the points made: This one too that is on the subject of tax home: And maybe a tidbit of info in this one:

Damn, guess I'm doing something wrong. I only get the voice messages from the Chinese Embassy wanting me to pay them to make sure I'm not deported back to my homeland.

It sounds like your email was hacked or harvested, and I agree with cbslee about monitoring credit and financial related accounts for any unusual activity. Other than that, the only bit of advice is if you can filter your emails to exclude any in foreign languages, or filter them if they have a common theme where you could filter by that subject somehow. Can you tell if they are coming from the same IP address with different sender names?

Blogs generally aren't used for Q&A sessions. You would be better off looking for an online forum focusing on Excel. I did a quick search and came up with a few that look like what you might be looking for. My search was "excel help forum" and these first two looked promising: this one is run by MVPs and/or certified trainers, looks at your specific troubles, charges nominal fee for the service: https://www.excelforum.com/ this one, straight to microsoft: https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/excel/ct-p/Excel_Cat

I've taken several courses given by Jeff Lenning and also receive his email newsletter. He is a CPA, a Microsoft Excel MVP, and Microsoft Certified Trainer. He provides online training at Excel University and is one of those listed in Lion's list above. I'm not sure that a blog is where you'll have the ability to ask others for advice though. Anyway, here is his blog site: https://www.excel-university.com/blog/

I may be mistaken and didn't research for you, but I think the rule and question asked is if you are now presently current on all returns and payments. I can't answer about questions related to becoming an EA and it's been a long time since I initially applied for my EFIN so YMMV. The only way to know for sure is to apply and wait for an answer from the IRS. It's too late for this coming season anyway, so your best bet is to try to find employment with a firm to expand your knowledge and proficiency.

@MsTabbyKats, Sara is correct that it isn't a completed gift until the son would withdraw from the account, but it would still be better for your son to get the step up in basis. @Sara EA, thanks for catching my error.

I agree with Margaret. To answer your question though, yes, 1/2 of the deposit into a new brokerage account would be considered a gift to your son if putting his name on the account. A benefit to doing as Margaret suggests is that if the account is in your name, at your death and transfer, your son would get a step up (or down) in basis and wouldn't pay income tax on that growth if he sold it.

I think the more important consideration is whether or not this business client will have nexus in Missouri and will it be transacting business there. What will be the nature of this employee's work in the state of MO? As a start, Missouri website has this on a page for foreign LLCs but is general enough to apply to all entities doing business there. Bold is mine and may not be representative of your client's actual fact pattern:

Catherine, here is a calculation I did back in 2015 for one that I had that didn't provide the calculations. This client had done another one in 2013 that had all of the calcs laid out for me that I followed. Here is the 2015 calc: charitable gift annuity deduction.pdf And here is the one that I followed that you may also find helpful: 2013 Charitable gift annuity example.pdf

I'd probably try the "paid with money not earned or generated by your business" or "the gov't footed the bill, no deduction." If that doesn't work, try "no deduction, it's the law, end of story."

Doesn't the program still allow one to be the ERO without being a paid preparer? I think that used to be a checkbox or something like that in the e-file setup. Or you can try removing the paid preparer entry directly through the preparer manager, used to be in the tools section. See if removing that eliminates the program requiring the 8867.

Sarcasm alert: I'd guess they'll do all of the analytics using printouts spewed by a computer, confirmations that will be assigned to the most recently hired junior staff person, about an inch of checklists to document their thoughts and prayers... and then do a cut & paste of an auditors' report template from a reference book onto the financials and notes that Tom supplied. Hopefully the auditor will remember to change the name in the template from "XYZ Company" before it is issued. /endsarcasm My highest level at this point are review statements, and it IS a lot of work even without the all of the documenting of the work I do, but I don't have all the fancy programs and have designed all of my workpapers and analytics on my own in Excel that I update each year. All of that flows directly to the financials, again of my own devising that I tweak each year as needed or required. I'm scheduled for my 3-year peer review on that work between now and February too. It truly is a lot of thought and work that goes into it, but all the clients see are the final resulting statements and notes that, to them, look much like they did 30+ years ago. In almost 40 years of practice, I only remember one client that truly had a complete set of financials including a complete all of the required disclosures, and that was in 1986 for a 72-store regional chain of pharmacies with a huge bookkeeping dept headed up by a someone with multiple degrees and many letters after his name. The only question for the accounting firm was for us to recheck his MACRS depreciation because the law was new at that time. I helped with that but was not involved in the overall audit at year-end. I did work on the separate audit of its pension plan though. That company was ultimately swallowed up by one of the well known national chains.

Found this old post that was updated this summer with a different link, and someone commented that it worked last month. Maybe it will help, or not. Don't know. Check out the last 2 posts here:

You shouldn't sign on the company's bank accounts because the IRS could actually hold you responsible for unpaid trust fund taxes.

The difference is that Tom asked for suggestions for books or resources to prepare the notes to be submitted to the CPA, and the CPA is the one being engaged and paid to be auditing and ultimately issuing the statements. In your case, iirc, you were the one being engaged for pay and asking for direct help for work that was then going to be "issued" by the company's bookkeeper directly to the bank. There is a difference.

The idea of this calculation and limitation is to adjust for the difference between between our ordinary tax rates and the capital gain rates that a foreign gain is actually being taxed at. It sounds like you are doing it correctly though. If you'd like to read a more detailed explanation of how and why this is done, I've linked to an article from The Tax Advisory that delves into all of this. Keep in mind that the article is several years old and the multiplication percentages for the rate differential calculation are different now, but the overall concepts are still valid: https://www.thetaxadviser.com/issues/2017/jul/foreign-capital-gains-losses.html

Yes, the returns will just be filed late. IRS MeF will accept the current and prior 2 years (2019, 2018, 2017) up through the date of shutdown that occurs sometime in mid- to late-November. When e-file reopens in Jan 2021, you will be able to file returns for 2020, 2019, and 2018 at that point.

Controllers are allowed to compile a set of financial statements for management's internal purposes, and is typically part of the job requirement to do so. To be clear, the statements Tom asked about are not being issued directly by him to any third parties. Company management would be handing them over to the company's outside CPA that has been hired to audit them. The outside CPA firm is the party that is "issuing" the audit report as part of the complete set of financial statements by doing a lot of work that gives reasonable assurance that the monetary amount and other disclosures fairly represents the position and results of operations of the company and are not materially misleading to the reader. Except for very large clients, I really wouldn't expect anyone other than the CPA firm, or in-house CPA or CMA, to write the notes to the financial statements, especially with the complexity of today's reporting requirements. Sounds too much like someone is passing the buck here, and yet the CPA firm will still be required to go through its disclosure checklist to verify that everything is adequately disclosed, and if something is missing, they'll still have to address it in communication with management to have it corrected. Tom, I agree with PapaJoe that you can start with updating from last year. Basically, that is what the CPA firms do to update from the prior year's statement, and then add or modify as needed. The problem with the CPA asking you to write them is that the auditing firm expects you to know what disclosures are required, and exactly what information on those subjects must be included, either in the financials themselves or in the notes.

OID in box 11 is reported as tax-exempt interest. Box 6 shows the amortization of premium for the year on those securities, and it would reduce the amount of the OID income reported. The broker can either report the OID income net of the amortization and would leave box 6 blank, or report both numbers and make the preparer reduce the OID income by the amortization. This doesn't affect the amounts in boxes 1 or 8. Those are reported as they appear on the 1099.

GAAP, partnership, audited financials. Knowing the specific industry may also be helpful if there are specific guides for it. Fwiw, I use only the guides from PPC (Practitioner Publishing Co) through Thomson Reuters. If looking at its products, I'd start with the guide called "Preparing Financial Statements" that goes through each major item on each statement and has a chapter on disclosures that includes summary and comprehensive checklists of required disclosures, either in the statements themselves or in the notes. The appendix to that chapter also has some illustrative notes. PPC also has a "Trends" volume that I believe is also included with this particular publication that has complete financials submitted by practitioners that includes the notes. The index to that guide allows the user to look up examples of individual notes by subject also. PPC guides are the only ones I've ever used, and I'm sure other publishers of reference materials will have something along similar lines, including WK/CCH, and the AICPA. PPC non-subscription products have a 30-day satisfaction guarantee. Those on recurring subscription have a different cancellation policy.