Lee B

Copied from the ATX Board: The program will be released later today then you should be able to download it. Sorry for the confusion. Marilyn BurttSr Business AnalystWolters Kluwer, TAA North America

Yes, it applies to 2014, 2015 & 2016.

Copy of today's post from ATX Kristin: "E-file will be shutdown the night of 11/17 (the day before) in order to allow for acknowledgements to be received"

The tax experts are already finding loopholes LOL: As the bill is currently written the owners of pass thru entities would be able to still deduct their state and local taxes on Schedule A, while no one else would.

Here is a link to a detailed Journal of Accountancy article: https://www.journalofaccountancy.com/news/2017/nov/tax-reform-legislation-details-201717798.html

Supposedly, the mortgage interest rules will only apply to new loans.

Employee expenses not reimbursed by the employer and Home Equity Loan Interest will not be deductible. The bill uses the words "Original Acquisition Debt", which may mean that we will tracking the original declining principal thru Refis etc. Headache !

pay.gov is the site where I renewed my EA License last year and also in 2014. Last year I received my license on February 21 and in 2014 on April 11th.

Every tax bill has winners and loser. Of course, everyone is talking about the taxpayers in high tax states like CA, NJ & NY. Some of the less obvious ones are: 1. Families with more than 3 children especially if they are older than 16 due to loss of personal exemptions. 2. Families with children in college due to loss of education credits and student loan interest deduction. 3. The absolute worst is the loss of the medical expense deduction: I have a 97 year old client with dementia who has been in a memory care facility for the last 3 and 1/2 years. She has income of about $40,000 per year. Her medical expenses are over $7,000 per month which are all deductible, which of course reduces her taxable income down to zero. Under this bill her medical deductions would be zero, which means that she would be paying taxes on all of her income above $12,000 since the net effect of the increased standard deduction minus the lost personal exemption is only $400. Also families with parents or children who have chronic medical conditions that require expensive drugs with be be really slammed.

I think the state of Colorado won a court case several months ago that may have broken the logjam on this issue.

I charge a minimum of $60 for 1 employee with 1 monthly paycheck.

It will be really interesting to see if they can figure out an alternate approach or if they stick with Equifax ?

I think I would file the 8919 anyway. 1. If it works, your client's situation is significantly better. 2. If it doesn't work, your client's situation is no worse. No risk to filing it, really ?

I gently suggest that filing the W - 2 "as is" would be a disservice to your client. I agree with Abby and Edsel

I hadn't heard of these so I spent some time online reading about them. This is a classic tax/GAAP grey area. Apparently they are marketed by leasing companies to businesses with truck fleets. Generally for GAAP purposes they are considered to financing leases. If carefully structured they might be considered to be operating leases for tax purposes. The leasing companies love them because if managed correctly it allows them to manage and smooth out reported earning. On the lessee side as they say the devil is in the details. Hypothetically, if structured carefully, it could be an operating lease for the lessee. However these leases are structured to benefit the leasing companies not the lessee, then promoted to the lessees. For a more technical analysis go to this link https://www.monitordaily.com/article-posts/lease-accounting-six-years-counting/

I think you should block those addresses as soon as possible ! Although, I am sure there are ways to get around the block.

This story has been out there on tech sites for a little while and just found it way to the mainstream media. I have been using online SaS accounting and payroll software for sometime now, but not tax software. Stories like this one are making me reconsider whether that is a good idea ? Tribune News Service WASHINGTON _ Just as hurricane trackers chart storms in the Atlantic before they make landfall, cybersecurity researchers track viral infections that threaten mayhem. They've found a doozy. A massive zombie robotic network, or botnet, has expanded to infect "an estimated million organizations" and could bring corners of the internet to its knees, an Israeli cybersecurity company, Check Point Software, says. "The next cyber hurricane is about to come," Check Point says. Several cybersecurity researchers Monday confirmed Check Point's findings, saying the botnet could replicate, and perhaps dwarf, the Mirai botnet that almost exactly a year ago took down major websites on the Atlantic Coast, crippling a part of the internet's backbone and slowing traffic to a crawl. The botnet, which has been named either "Reaper" or "IoTroop," was first detected in mid-September. A Chinese cybersecurity firm, Qihoo 360, says the botnet is swelling by 10,000 devices a day, forcibly recruiting foot soldiers in an ever-larger invisible rogue army. Cybercrime gangs form botnets by infecting internet-enabled devices, often wireless cameras or routers with weak security features. Once corralled, controllers can send commands for the botnet to overwhelm a target, knocking its website off line or crippling the internet.The new botnet has spread across the United States, Australia and other parts of the globe, researchers say, although Check Point notes that "it is too early to assess the intentions" of those propagating the infection. "It could be something that's meant to create global chaos," Maya Horowitz, threat intelligence group manager at Check Point, said in a telephone interview from Israel. "But it could be something that's more targeted," perhaps aimed at a country or industry. She said it is unlikely that cybersecurity experts will be able to halt an eventual attack. "The chances are pretty low for that," Horowitz said, adding that like an epidemic of infectious disease, "each infected device is looking for other devices to compromise." Criminal hackers are assembling increasingly powerful botnets. "They are getting bigger and badder," said Robert Hamilton, director of marketing at Imperva Incapsula, a Redwood Shores, California, cybersecurity firm that offers technology to mitigate botnet attacks. "The motive more than ever is money," he said, adding that criminal gangs send ransom demands to companies threatening to hit them with a distributed denial-of-service, or DDoS, attack unless paid off "We had a client that received a letter that said 'if you don't pay us, we are going to bring your websites down with a DDoS attack,'" Hamilton said. "This was a client that you'd definitely recognize their name," declining to specify the company. Last year's Mirai botnet attack hit Dyn, a New Hampshire company that provides backbone services for the internet. Imperva says it found 49,657 infected devices spread over 164 countries. The top infected countries were Vietnam, Brazil and the United States. Scores of major companies were hit in that Oct. 21, 2016, attack, including Netflix, Twitter, Spotify, HBO, Amazon, CNN, ancestry.com and Comcast. The new botnet is based on the source code for Mirai, Horowitz said, "but about 100 different functions have been added ... and it has the potential to reach many, many more devices." The malware creating the botnet is infecting a variety of Internet of Things (IoT) devices but has been found with functions to target networking gear or routers manufactured by D-Link, TP-Link, AVTECH, NETGEAR, MikroTik, Linksys and Synology, Check Point said. "Since Reaper is exploiting a number of known vulnerabilities in different IoT devices, this botnet could definitely be much more disruptive than Mirai," said Merike Kaeo, chief technology officer at Farsight Security, a San Mateo, Calif., cybersecurity firm. "Known security issues in cameras, televisions, home routers, and any other internet-connected devices need to be addressed and fixed." Consumers can do their bit by checking to ensure that "all of their internet-connected devices, especially home routers, have the latest firmware upgrades and security patches installed," Kaeo said. (c)2017 McClatchy Washington Bureau. Written by Tim Johnson

I took a look a the Forbes article and the paragraph that you quote has no substantial support. It falls in the arena of educated speculation. Plus Illmas has already said that a distribution was made and that the owner takes a "very small salary from another business." In my mind that creates a scenario for a very winnable audit for a competent revenue agent. If it was my incoming client, I would explain everything to the client and strongly suggest that he needs to pay himself compensation from the 2nd business. If not, I would turn down the work and clearly explain why!

That doesn't make sense to me since the the taxability of income from an S Corp is based on S Corp profits not on whether income is distributed. You should take a good look at all the components of reasonable compensation for this client .

I also wonder how your client will make the cash flow work paying for all the labor and construction expenses then having to wait for 12 to 18 months . He will definitely need quality legal advice plus an ironclad contract.

In the last 4 or 5 years, I don't think the IRS has announced the date until early November. The date for 1040s has been sometime during Thanksgiving week.

Read a lengthy IT security article yesterday, which said that a security flaw has been found in one of the predominant chips used in many encryption devices. In conclusion, the article said, "There is no way to participate in and use modern technology without the risk of being hacked."

From the recent Security Summit: "In 2018, a new Verification Code box will appear on all official W-2 forms for the first time. Many taxpayers will see a 16-character code on approximately 66 million Forms W-2 to help authenticate the W-2. Taxpayers preparing their own returns and tax professionals will be urged to enter the code if the box contains the 16-digit number." 1. I notice the entry of the code is not mandatory. Until it is ??? 2. How will the small businessperson buying their W-2 forms at Staples and preparing them manually ever comply ?