Pacun

It is my understanding that you needed a log before this decision, NOT anymore. You just need the losses and winnings for the day the casino gets your social security number or when you want to comply with tax laws and report those $200 you won playing dimes and you won 5 dimes at a time. I guess that anyone who goes to a casino to gamble violates the tax laws since you should report any winning. Let's say someone goes to the casino, puts a quarter and wins $100. Continues playing and losses $200. That person needs to report $100 winnings and if that person doesn't itemize, he/she will pay taxes on those $100 if that person follows the law. Am I correct? What the wager ratio for it to be a taxable event in the eyes of the casino?

Tax Court Accepts IRS Method for Determining Gambling Wins and Losses December 29, 2009 The Tax Court held in a memorandum decision released Monday that taxpayers who were casual gamblers recognized wins or losses when they redeemed their tokens and that they could not net their wins and losses across the year (Shollenberger, TC Memo 2009-306). In this decision, the court accepted the IRS’ methodology for determining wagering gains and losses, which the Office of Chief Counsel put forth in a legal memorandum in 2008 (AM 2008-011). The taxpayers in the case were a married couple who gambled occasionally at a casino in the small town of Charles Town, W.Va. On March 29, 2005, the husband hit a $2,000 jackpot at a dollar slot machine. The couple continued gambling and lost $400 from the jackpot; they left the casino that day with $1,600 in winnings. They did not report any gambling income on their tax return for 2005, and the IRS issued a deficiency notice for $2,000 in unreported gambling winnings. IRC § 165(d) states that “losses from wagering transactions shall be allowed only to the extent of the gains from such transactions” but does not provide a technical definition of the terms “gains” and “losses.” As AM 2008-011 explains, the term “transactions” in section 165(d) could mean every single play in a game of chance or every wager made. That interpretation would require a taxpayer to calculate the gain or loss on every transaction separately and treat every play or wager as a taxable event and also to trace and recompute the basis through all transactions to calculate the result of each play or wager. Because that method would be “unduly burdensome,” the IRS legal memo allows a casual gambler to recognize a wagering gain or loss at the time he or she redeems tokens. At trial, the IRS conceded that under that method, the taxpayers should have reported $1,100 in gambling winnings rather than the $2,000 in the deficiency notice. According to the court, the lesser amount would be calculated as follows: $2,000 in jackpot winnings minus $500 in wagering money originally brought into the casino by the taxpayers minus the $400 lost by the taxpayers after the jackpot that day. The taxpayers argued that they should be allowed to offset their gambling winnings with $2,264 of other gambling losses that they claimed to have incurred in 2005. Because section 165(d) uses the term “transactions,” the court held that the taxpayers could not net their gains and losses throughout the year. Instead, the court accepted the IRS’ treatment of transactions as occurring when the gambler cashes in his or her tokens at the end of play and held the taxpayers to have $1,100 of unreported gross income for the year. According to the court, to allow the taxpayers to net gains and losses throughout the year would defeat the purpose of IRC § 63, under which losses of casual gamblers are allowable only as itemized deductions.

Nice.

Tax payer never filed taxes and had $27,000 on 1099misc for 2002, 2003, 2004 and 2005. In 2004, 1099misc had $27,000 in both non-employee compensation and fish income. IRS prepared returns for 2003 and 2004 and TP owed more than 40K. Tax payer has been paying $300 for about 2 years. TP filed 2007 and his W-2 income was about $26,000 (no other income). His son was born on December 25, 2007 and his return showed $3,150 on dependent and child care expenses. He also claimed his girl friend who lived with him the whole 2007 and didn't work since she was pregnant most of the year. He filed as HH and itemized deductions. Both itemized deductions and dependent and child care expenses were invented by the tax preparer whose name and signature are invisible on the return. Tax Preparer even provided a name and EIN for child care center. I wonder, "who in the right mind will claim dependent and child credit for a child who only lived 6 days in 2007). I prepared his 2008 claiming girl friend, who lived with him all year and TP provided whole support. He also claimed his son and filed as HH with standard deduction and of course NO dependent and child care expenses. All 3 share an apartment and no one else lives there. After tax season, I requested 1099s and W-2s from the IRS for 2002 trough 2006. Based on this information, we filed all those years. We sent a letter for 2004 when we filed stating that 1099misc had a typo and that he never received any fishing income. IRS seems to have accepted our filing for 2004 and his liability was greatly reduced for that year. In October, TP received a letter from IRS regarding his 2007 taxes. Since he was receiving a lot of correspondence from the IRS for the other years he filed, he never brought it to me. At the beginning of December he received a second letter from the IRS stating that he failed to answer within the 30 days allowed. TP's next step would be to file a court petition by February. He brought those letters to me last week. I am hoping IRS will accept a 1040X for 2007 filing as HH using the standard deduction and no dependent and child care expenses. I know it is late but I know for sure this person will never have money to open a court case. Has any one had any luck with a 1040X after tax has been assessed? I have told him that this is my last attempt to help him since there is no much I can do. Remember he failed to file his taxes when he was making money. Should I try to help him more?

Thank you for your quick response JohnH. As always, it is a pleasure to hear from you. I went on line yesterday and I made a list of 1500 mailing addresses. Since, I used restricted demographics, I had to send my promotional document to infousa for approval. For less than $300, I received the list in excel format this afternoon and addresses look good. Now, I need 1500 lables, envelopes and mail stamps. If I am lucky, it will cost me 75 cents per letter and I will see how many replies I get, if any.

Are you nervous because he never signed the returns or just nervous in general?

I understand that some companies have mailing lists for each state and demographic groups for sale. I am trying to get a mailing list for people living in Northern Virginia, Washington, DC and parts of Maryland. I want to make a mass mailing and I am wondering if any of you have used any company in particular. Was it worth it? How much does it cost? Did you get labels or just soft listings? If you haven't used any but know of a company, please let me know too.

Don't you love the title and subtitle to this post? I think a lot of people will read it. A complaint to the webmaster, links are truncated when you copy and paste it to this site.

Very true computers are so inexpensive now that you only concern should be your data. If you follow the instructions I gave you above, you should be able to see the message.

Keep IRS auditors away: Earn less than $200,000 WASHINGTON – Want to keep IRS auditors away? Keep your earnings under $200,000 and they won't bother you 99 percent of the time. IRS enforcement numbers, released Tuesday, show that returns under that amount have a 1 percent chance of getting audited. Returns showing income of $200,000 and above have a nearly 3 percent audit chance. The percentage jumps to more than 6 percent for returns showing earnings of $1 million or more. The percentages apply to both individual and joint returns. http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091222/ap_on_bi_ge/us_irs_enforcement

The first thing to do is to find out what error message she gets when the computer blue screens. She first needs to right click on my computer, properties, Advanced, look for "starup and recovery" and click on settings, uncheck "automatically restart" and OK. On the dual monitor post, I gave some recommendations that could help.

Since the computer in this case is not a test computer but rather the computer that helps earn income, I will give a general (rule of thumb) suggestion to all in this community. If you need a new feature on your computer, see if a program already installed on your computer (Windows, ATX, MS Office, etc) has that feature. If not, you need to consider how much you will benefit from that feature and how frequent you will use it. Then you will make a decision to whether install or not. The problem with installing new programs for every little thing that you need is that they might conflict with core programs such as Windows, ATX, MS Office. Even if a conflict is not evident, a lot of these little programs start automatically when you boot up your computer and they stay resident all the time. Another problem is that when you uninstall a program, residues stay on your computer hard drive and registry and down the road your computer will not be as fast as before (sounds familiar?). Using a registry cleaner (which I don’t recommend) is a risky business depending on your computer and software installed. Another problem with installing and uninstalling programs is that it fragments your hard drive. One day I went to another preparer’s office and I saw she had a cool internet screen saver, I told her, “that coolness might hunt you down the road”. I told her, “You shouldn’t do that on your work computer, you could compromise it”. I explained to her that she had: Names, addresses, social security numbers and bank information for whole families, as well as employers information. About two months later, she called me and complained that her computer was not working at all because she had viruses. I explained to her that her computer was working and working hard to satisfy the demands from the viruses and that the computer didn’t have time to honor her requests. I hope no information was compromised. Going back to the case at hand, see what trash or programs are starting automatically on your computer by clicking on start, run and type msconfig and press enter. Click on the startup tab and most of those programs do not need to be resident all the time. Unselecting them from here doesn’t mean that you will remove that program but it means it will not start automatically. When you invoke the program from your short cut or from all programs, the program will start. If you unselect any program from the startup tab, you will get a message next time you reboot. Just select “don’t show me this message again” and OK. If you want to see if your hard drive needs to be defragmented, double click on my computer, right click “local disk C:” properties, defragment now, and analyze.

Turn off your computer and connect the monitor to it. Power the monitor up and the computer. When the computer boots up, you will have the exact same thing on both monitors. Right click on a blank (non icon)portion of your desktop, select properties, click on settings and click on the number 2. and select "extend my Windows desktop onto this monitor" click OK. In order to drag a program to the second screen, you have to "restore down" your screen by clicking the icon next to the red X that closes the window, then you drag it to the second monitor. If you physical arrange for the monitor is backwards with dragging and dropping, you go back to the settings scres and drag the number 2 (monitor) to the left and drop it.

I will tell you the steps in a generic way. The easiest way is to buy a docking station and two monitors. You dock your computer and make one of the monitors your primary one and the second one you make it extended. You could use the monitor of your laptop as your secondary monitor and only buy one monitor. The problem with this set up is that Windows sometimes forgets the settings and you need to redo them from time to time. The other problem is that laptop screens are smaller. If you do not want to spend a log of money, you can simply attach a monitor to your laptop and make it as your secondary/extended screen. The problem with this set up is that you need to be connecting cables each time you bring your computer to your desk. If you tell us what computer you have, maybe you will get more replies. Also tell us if you are planing to buy a docking station and 2 monitors.

Let me rephrase the question... Is this a house that the TP built based on the IRS definition or it is a house that was purchase new or used? If we agree that he built this house, then he qualifies for the credit, if not, then he doesn't.

You need two steps: to send the ICON to the desktop and change it. Right click on the icon that opens the program and send it to desktop. Then you need to right click on the icon from the desktop and select properties, change icon, click browse and see what icon you would like.

Another way, add a reply to the old post.

Copy old post, open a new post and paste.

I am just going to air my opinion so your post gets more replies. My opinion is that they do not qualify for the credit because the date on the purchase receipt (which for prefab fixed houses is called HUD-1) is the only date that matters. As you know, if you want to purchase a house in your block, that house is a prefab house, some of them were prefab in the 70's. So I don't see the difference. Let's say that someone bought a regular/fixed house in October 2009. The HUD-1 has the closing date in October 2009. TP gets the keys and before moving in he requested minor repairs from the seller, they agree and it takes about 2 weeks for the repairs to complete. Tax payer moves to his newly purchased house in November 10, 2009. I think the IRS will only take the date on the purchase papers and not the date tp actually moved in.

Before you dump any customer data to this back up e-facility, make sure you follow the IRS and privacy guidelines.

I guess your answer or opinion is that they do not qualify for the credit, correct?

I am running Windows 7 Enterprise on a test machine and I love it. When Windows Vista came on board, I suggested this forum NOT to upgrade at the beginning or on the middle of tax season. With Windows 7, I am not that concerned. I have not read any bad comments on Windows 7 as I did with Windows Vista when it was released. The company I work for skipped Windows Vista and stayed with Windows XP. Again, Windows 7 is the best Windows OS ever released!!!

On this topic, I would like some input. This mother lived with her children and these children could be the qualifying children for the grandparents, correct? Now, since support is not considered for qualifying children as long as they lived (and are related) with the TP, how could the IRS denied EIC? Let's say that the children were the qualifying children for the granparents, the mother could win the tie breaker, correct? My only conclusion is that the mother was the qualifying child of her parents and therefore could not get EIC. Or the IRS felt that she was not reporting the tips she got as hair stylist. Can someone elaborate, please? I do understand that we don't have all the information about this case on the newspaper article.

Imagine for a moment that the IRS never communicated with any of the taxpayers. So they came to your office to file because wife didn't file a return. After reviewing the information, you suggest that they should file jointly. Since husband already filed, you will need to amend his return from MFS to MFJ and add her income and deductions. Regardless of what documents they have, you should file form 4506-T for both taxpayers and you should file POA. Now, let's go back to reality. Since you know that there is an SFR, you need to send your return to a special address. This special address is provided for forms that need reconsideration. You need to call IRS and ask them where you should file form 1040 if an SFR has been prepared by the IRS. When asking for the address, make sure you do not mention the fact that you are sending a 1040X because that will confuse the IRS agent. Remember that you are filing 1040X because you want to file jointly, otherwise you would be filing a plain 1040 form. You mentioned that she didn't file 2003-2008. If there is a year when the MFJ benefits are not significant, you should just file a plain 1040 MFS for that year and send it to that special address if an SFR exist for that year.

Based on this article, it is an old virus. UPS Virus Warning (UPS/Fed Ex Delivery Failure) Tuesday July 15, 2008 June 2009 Update: Newer alerts about the same security threat described below are circulating under the header "UPS/FedEx/DHL Virus." These warnings are mostly accurate and should be taken seriously. If you receive messages from any of these parcel delivery companies directing you to open an attached "invoice," simply delete it. Do not open it. The file could contain a virus. http://urbanlegends.about.com/b/2008/07/15/ups-virus-warning.htm