Pacun

If there is no form signed by the custodial parent, and the child lived with the custodial parent for more than 6 months in 2010, the IRS does not care if the divorce court said that on even years the non custodial parent will claim the dependent. The IRS will not even use the tie breaker rule for for that year and give the exemption to the custodial parent. That's true even if the non-custodial parent has paid child support religiously.

Since you generalized, I will too. You are correct, it doesn't apply to everybody. For example, number 3 doesn't apply to everybody and my clients know that. I thought my clients were not that smart but they know that if they don't have any children, they cannot hire their children. They might ask "can I hire the child of my neighbor and use number 3"? but they know they cannot hire their own children. Anyways... My point is that there are a few items on the article that are good. For us, tax professionals, sooner or later will will have clients who, combined, will be able to benefit from about 14 items on the article. Also, 1,2,5,7,8, 11, 17 are GOOD suggestions, agree?

Based on their behaviour, I would ask for receipts. Remember you are dealing with gamblers, so they will gamble that the IRS will not audit them.

When will the IRS hold its annual Tax Forum in Hawaii, so I can use suggestion number 4? "Some of these will apply to last year. All of these apply to this year. 1.- Eliminate the word "friend" from your vocabulary. From now on, these people are sources of business, so start talking business and asking for referrals over meals or beverages, when playing golf or going to the movies. 2.- Operate as a one-person S corporation to save self-employment taxes. 3.- Hire your children (deductions for you, nontaxable or low-tax income for the children; also, wages paid by parents to children are exempt from payroll taxes). 4.- Combine business and personal trips so that the personal side of your trip becomes part of your business deduction under the travel rules (for example, traveling by cruise ship to a convention on St. Thomas). 5.- Properly classify business-expansion expenses as deductions rather than nondeductible capital costs. 6.- If you are single, operate as a C corporation to obtain medical deductions. 7.- Properly identify deductible start-up expenses rather than letting them fall by the wayside (a common oversight). 8.- Properly classify entertainment that qualifies for the 100% deduction rather than the 50% deduction. 9.- Identify the vehicle deduction method that gives you the largest deductions (choosing between the IRS mileage method and the actual expense method). 10- Know the entertainment facility rules so your vacation home can become a tax deduction. 11.- Know when you can deduct commission rebates. 12.0 Use a 1031 exchange to defer and defer and defer taxes (perhaps until death, when, say the assets are marked up to fair market value and the income taxes are forgiven). 13.- Qualify your office in your home as an administrative office. 14.- Use allocation methods that make your home-office deductions larger. 15.- Install a section 105 medical plan to move your deductions to Schedule C for maximum benefits. 16.- Operate as a C corporation to save Social Security benefits. 17.- Properly identify your maximum business miles so you deduct the largest percentage of your vehicles. This is not a complete list, but it should give you some ideas that will get you started on your savings. Keep in mind that putting tax-planning ideas into practice is like benefiting from an annuity: You get the benefits every year you are in business."

As years pass and you install programs, a lot of little programs run on the backgroup either at full force or they constantly check for updates. Acrobat and java are very notorious for that. So, even if the program is closed, a part of it runs all the time. Click on start, run, type msconfig and press enter. Click on the startup tab and see all the programs that run all the time on your computer. ALSO, click on start, all programs and startup.

My brother asked his lawyer to get those forms signed for many years. Either the judge or the other attorney didn't want to do and it wasn't done. I thought that a smart lawyer will not make such a request because my brother has to hire her again each year if he wants his ex- to sign the form. I believe this is done because the IRS rules or forms might change or because it doesn't make sense to sign a form today that will be used in 15 years. Many, many things could happen between now and 15 years. Child support in DC is 21 years. As for contempt, let's say that a judge orders that until the child reaches 18 years of each, the mother will have the child from 8AM monday until 9PM of Fridays. The father should pick up the child every Friday, no later than 10PM. Do you think both parents will be in compliance 15 years later?

This is a hard one. Now I go back to the intent. I think the intent was to limit each student to 4 years. Your client will use only 3 by amending. I think you should be OK but I am not certain. I will have an answer for you in a day or so.

You will solve this problem with $1,200. I had that problem and I bought a Windows 7 32bit machine with 4G of RAM. No more problems. Your computer is getting old and it is short on memory.

Yes, you should.

You are right!!! We will have this problem as long as the tax preparation profession doesn't raise their standards. The problem is that not all of us are at the same level academically or ethically. Have you noticed that doctors don't have any problems with prices or situations like this? Do you wonder why? Because they all charge a lot and no one talks bad about other doctors. Some tax preparers, in order to get more clients, they talk crap about the preparer who is right. Some of them do it because they don't know much and some others do it because they are crooks. When my clients come to my office and start saying things like... the other preparer said... I stop them and I say: If I am going to prepare your taxes, I will do it the right way. If you prefer, you can go back to the other preparer. I have 5 templates ready to go. New people, I work from those templates and I tell me how much they will owe or get, rather quickly. If they don't like my figures, I give them back their W-2 and they go away. I do that for all new people. In the past, I have worked on a return for a while, when I get the final product, they start saying... "but last year I got more than that"... "the other preparer entered my mileage and now you are saying they are commuting miles", etc. At that point, I would give them their papers and tell them, "in that case, I cannot prepare your taxes". My templates save a me lot of time.

Actually... even if the non-custodial parent is current with child support payments, the custodial parent has to sign the form allowing the exemption for the non-custodial parent. So, the stament from the custodial parent "the husband cannot claim the kids as dependents because he is late with child support" IS VERY true because she will not sign the release. We have a saying in spanish "With what face" will the father go to the judge and complained about the wife not signing the release form when he didn't pay child support ordered by a judge?

I would use $150,000 since you have documentation to that effect. The FMV is not real when there is not a person willing and able to buy. This is a matter of time and matter of decision. Maybe if he left the property on the market it would be sold but he didn't have time to wait. The fact that the government is taking a position that the FMV of the ocndo is $150K and the owner is paying taxes on that amount will give enough grounds to hold your position.

You are correct. MFJ: If both have ITIN, credit is 0 MFJ: If both have SS#, credit is $800 MFJ: If one has SS# and the other has ITIN, credit $800 MFS: If one has SS# and the other has ITIN, credit $400 on the return with SS# and credit is 0 on the return with ITIN.

I don't have an answer but I was going to ask a similar question. To me, this is not deductible. That course will prepare him for a new profession. I was thinking that if he had opened a corporation and he was going to be an employee of the corporation, maybe you could use that expense as employee training and amortize it.

Also, this is part of the regulations: "Student must be pursuing an undergraduate degree or other recognized education credential" If the rule would say "the credit is available while you get your bachelor's degree", a lot of people who take 8 years to finish a bachelors degree would qualify to take the AOC for 8 years. Who would get a degree in 8 years you would ask? Tax preparers could take at least half time in in the summer and fall every year. That will give them opportunity to concentrate from Jan to April doing taxes and then go to school. They would qualify for 8 or 10 years of the credit and that's why it is limited to 4 years. How about those excellent students who finish their bachelor's degree in 3 years and then they go to grad school in the 4th? Do they qualify on the 4th year? I think they DON'T. Wouldn't be nice if the regulation would say... Bachelors degree or first 4 years, whichever happens first? That statement would make it clearer.

Thank you KC.

How will you reflect that on the 2441 form? I think it is about 200 per month while on school. How will ATX calculate that?

I believe you could efile if the client has an ITIN, but poster didn't specify wether the return will be filed with ITIN or SS#. You cannot efile if the client is filing with a SS#. I had a client who has a SS# and by mistake his employer had a typo on her w-2. ATX didn't let me efile.

Regardless, you have to paper file.

People with ITIN are residents if they live in the U.S. Do not confuse green card holders with residents. Sometimes they mean the same thing, but in others instances they don't.

The intent was: Bachelors degree or first 4 years, whichever happens firts.

As long as the unit was ready to be occupied and advertised for renting AND he was active participant, he can deduct losses.

I tried to received acks while the system was being backed up on Sunday. It hanged and I close the program using the OS. Then it kept saying that the transmission was still active. This error message is very common on network computers when two people try to efile at the same time. The first one goes through and the second one get the message but it becomes ready in seconds. In my case it hanged for 24 hours because the communication between my computer and the ATX server didn't finish gracefully.

After 24 hours, I decided to call ATX support. It took me two minutes to solve this problem. I needed to delete a line on the ini file.

Ask employee for paycheck stubs to see if amounts are correct and paper file attaching both W-2s.