Lee B

I don't know about your state, but in my state of Oregon the answer is yes. I have a client who bought a unused school, refurbished the building and leased it a private nonprofit school and obtained the exemption.

Article on multiple news sites today: "The Marriott International hotel chain said on Friday that the database of its Starwood reservation system had been hacked and that the personal details of up to 500 million guests going as far back as 2014 had been compromised. The hotel group, which runs more than 6,700 properties around the world, was informed in September about an attempt to access the database, and an investigation this month revealed that unauthorized access had been made on or before Sept. 10, Marriott said in a statement. The hotel chain said that personal details including names, addresses, dates of birth, passport numbers, email addresses and phone numbers for hundreds of millions of guests may have been compromised. The investigation found that “there had been unauthorized access to the Starwood network since 2014,” and an “unauthorized party had copied and encrypted information, and took steps toward removing it,” the statement said. Hackers also obtained encrypted credit-card information for some customers, but it was unclear if the hackers would be able to use those payment details. Marriott said it wasn’t sure how many passport numbers and dates of birth were stolen but said that it was a “subset” of the larger number of affected consumers. The hack affects customers who made reservations for Starwood hotel brands from 2014 to September of this year. The properties include Sheraton, Westin, W Hotels, St. Regis, Four Points, Aloft, Meridien, Tribute, Design Hotels, Elements and the Luxury Collection." The hackers seem to be winning. Saw an article a day or two ago that said during 2017 one out of every 6 personal bank accounts had at least one fraudulent incident during the year.

The individual penalty ends with tax years beginning after 12/31/18, so we all will likely have clients that will have to pay the penalty one last time. All of the business related penalties remain in force, since the rest of the ACA is still unchanged law.

In the past I remember seeing a few posts on the ATX Board of users having a third party host the ATX software, which of course ATX does not support.

A new wave of fraudulent emails that purport to be from the IRS and financial institutions is trying to entice recipients to open documents containing computer malware, the agency said in its latest warning on tax scams. The malware, known as Emotet, generally is disguised as an email containing a tax transcript from the IRS, banks, and other financial institutions. The goal of the scam is to trick recipients into opening infected documents, the agency said Nov. 19 in a news release (IR-2018-226). The IRS, along with its Security Summit partners, said the scheme is especially problematic because the malware may infect a computer network and take months to successfully remove. In recent weeks, the email indicates it was sent from “IRS Online.” The scam email carries an attachment labeled “Tax Account Transcript” or something similar, and the subject line uses some variation of the phrase “tax transcript.” These clues may change with each version of the malware, the IRS said, adding that a substantial amount of malicious Emotet emails recently were forwarded to [email protected]. The U.S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team issued a warning in July about previous versions of the Emotet in Alert (TA18-201A) Emotet Malware. The group called the destructive software “among the most costly and destructive malware affecting state, local, tribal, and territorial (SLTT) governments, and the private and public sectors.” As a reminder, the IRS does not send unsolicited emails to taxpayers, including a tax transcript, which is a summary of a tax return. Taxpayers should not open an unsolicited email or the attachment. Suspected fraudulent emails should be deleted or forwarded to [email protected], the agency said. Employees receiving such emails on an employer’s computer should notify the company’s technology department. The warning from the Internal Revenue Service and its Security Summit partners was part of an ongoing campaign to provide ways to protect sensitive data and prevent tax fraud. The summit, which was formed in 2015, combines the IRS with representatives of the software industry, tax-preparation firms, payroll and tax financial product processors, and state tax administrators to fight identity theft and tax fraud. If it looks suspicious, it probably is ! Let's be very careful out there !

It's really a function of what kind of client base you have and where your pricing currently falls. All of my PTE clients are getting healthy increases, but even that varies depending on how I had them previously priced. My 1040 clients will be getting a 5 to 10 % increase. Really my pricing is more based on complexity and level of value provided.

"The IRS released Notice 2018-92 on Monday, providing interim guidance for 2019 on the income tax withholding rules in the wake of the decision to delay the overhaul of the Form W-4 until 2020. The notice also asks for comments on some of the new withholding procedures. It indicates that the IRS is planning further regulations to update the withholding regulations to reflect the changes made by the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act." I am sure we will all forward a copy of this 13 page masterpiece of clarity to each of our wage earning clients, who will thank us profusely for our timely assistance.

Our community has a very successful nonprofit called Nextstep that recycles everything electronic or electrical including household appliances, resells the ones that are still functional and reduces the nonfunctional to the recycable components.

Have not used as a tax preparer, but I have used it as a recipient for several legal documents. It seemed to work fine.

Not so fast grasshopper. Let us remember the list of proposed technical corrections to the TCJA, on which Congress has shown no urgency to deal with. Same Old Stuff !

According to what traditionally is known as "The First Thanksgiving," the 1621 feast between the Pilgrims and the Wampanoag at Plymouth Colony contained waterfowl, venison, ham, lobster, clams, berries, fruit, pumpkin, and squash.

There was a good thread discussing scanners earlier this year.

i have purchased every computer that I have used in my office for the last 25 years and have never had to call Dell once in those 25 years.

I am also running Win 7 Pro and have had the device driver error message from time to time, although I only run 1 monitor. The most i have ever experienced is 2 or 3 times in one week. Recently it's only happened once or twice in the last 6 weeks. Most of the time I think it has happened, when I have spun the scroll wheel on my mouse too aggressively or I have clicked my mouse with an imprecise location perhaps confusing my computer.

First, never buy the "Home" or "Home Premium" version of Windows, always buy the Professional version, which is optimized for business usage. Myself, I have always purchased a Dell Optiplex from the Dell website during one of their promotions, paying about 40 % less than what you are considering. I am a one person office also and I find 8 Gig of Ram and a 256 GB Hard Drive comfortably adequate.

I disagree, the police report is not an attempt to collect, it is the report of an alleged crime.

Upon further reflection, I don't believe this meets the definition of a casualty loss. Since your client is not in the business of loaning money, it also doesn't meet the requirements for the deduction of a business bad debt. I believe that the only deduction it qualifies for is a capital loss.

Is this pre or post TCJA ?

My largest client has about 70 employees and does not offer health insurance. They received a proposed penalty for 2015 in June 2018 which was triggered by an employee going to and receiving a PTC from the marketplace. Fortunately they only received the credit for 5 months. The IRS proposed penalty was way bigger than it should have been I recalculated the penalty supported by the 1095s, which I had filed, which was about 70 % lower than the proposed penalty. They accepted the penalty that I calculated. They have yet to receive any letters etc for 2016.

I have seen several tech articles which explain in detail how to upgrade to Win 8 and avoid the forced upgrade to Win 10.

Without any numbers its like shooting.shooting in the dark. The problem is with companies like these, the profit/cash flow stream along with any intangibles are usually the most valuable assets. Therefore an appraisal becomes almost mandatory. In my state of Oregon like Minnesota, the Estate Tax kicks in when a valuation exceeds $ 1,000,000 so it's a whole different ball game.

The IRS announced that Saturday, November 17th will be the last day for the efiling of Form 1040 returns.

Copied from Accounting Today: "The final regulations implement tax law changes from 2015 expanding the scope of the tax return preparer due diligence penalty so it also applies to the Child Tax Credit, the Additional Child Tax Credit and the American Opportunity Tax Credit as well as to the eligibility to file a tax return or a claim for refund as a head of household." Please note the last phrase as the final regulations state, "as well as the eligibility to file a tax return or a claim for refund as a head of household." Woah, how pages will the due diligence documentation worksheets expand to now ?

In my experience, very few taxpayers with similar problems have the fortitude to make the lifestyle spending changes necessary to pay off debts of this magnitude, which is the very reason they ended up in big trouble in the first place. I have reached the point in my life where I really have no interest in working with clients with these problems.