Lee B

Meta's website doesn't explicitly say, but how it appears to work is that Meta will let businesses use the programmable Pixels for free in return for receiving the information, which Meta then uses for marketing and advertising which is how they generate revenue.

Think of Meta Pixels as next generation programmable cookies, which Meta provides to business users to "enhance the users online experience" with the information then being shared with Meta, which includes Facebook, Instagram and to a lesser extent Whatsapp. Meta Pixels are apparently very hard to avoid and very difficult to get rid of. Supposedly Google some similar tracking but not at this depth. "The Markup found sensitive data sent to Facebook on the Education Department’s federal student aid application website, crisis pregnancy websites, and the websites of prominent hospitals. " "The Markup tested the websites of Newsweek’s top 100 hospitals in America. On 33 of them we found the tracker, called the Meta Pixel, sending Facebook a packet of data whenever a person clicked a button to schedule a doctor’s appointment. The data is connected to an IP address—an identifier that’s like a computer’s mailing address and can generally be linked to a specific individual or household—creating an intimate receipt of the appointment request for Facebook." Unless we go completely off grid or avoid other parties websites like the plague we are all being tracked.

"Major tax filing services such as H&R Block, TaxAct, and TaxSlayer have been quietly transmitting sensitive financial information to Facebook when Americans file their taxes online, The Markup has learned. The data, sent through widely used code called the Meta Pixel, includes not only information like names and email addresses but often even more detailed information, including data on users’ income, filing status, refund amounts, and dependents’ college scholarship amounts. The information sent to Facebook can be used by the company to power its advertising algorithms and is gathered regardless of whether the person using the tax filing service has an account on Facebook or other platforms operated by its owner, Meta. " Surprise, Surprise! Another reason to never use Facebook!

Why would you do that and make your situation more complicated?

I had to wait for the second MFA code for about 5 minutes, otherwise it went very smoothly, about 15 minutes in total.

I did get one last month while I was logging in from Kauai on a two week vacation.

Just to clarify, Drake did not buy TaxAct. A Cinven umbrella holding company owns Drake and TaxAct. According to Cinven's website, they own equity positions in 140 different businesses around the world and on average they hold their investments 4 to 5 years. Cinven's mindset is a strategy of maximizing their investment, which is not an operating strategy.

Marilyn, You are a better person than I am. However from my point of view "loyalty is a two way street"!

Optimistically by the end of 2023, realistically by the end of 2024.

I have been gradually downsizing and raising my fees hasn't resulted in any clients leaving. Every year I send out letters telling selected clients that I won't be able to prepare their tax returns, or payroll or etc.

For us the big benefit of the gridlocked divided government for the next two years will be, minimal tax law changes which will hopefully allow the IRS to finally get caught up

"The four big-dollar tax issues at the center of the debate are: The expansion of the child tax credit after Democratic advocates were unable to include it in the Inflation Reduction Act. Reviving a version of the deduction for R&D costs that allows companies to reduce tax liability in the same year they incur the spending. This would benefit manufacturers, drugmakers and tech companies. Reinstating a more generous deduction for interest expense writeoffs that expired at the end of 2021. This would benefit highly leveraged companies, including private equity and venture capital firms. Renewing a tax break known as "bonus depreciation" that allows businesses to write off their equipment purchases in a single year, benefiting companies with large capital expenditures."

You don't say what kind of entity was involved, but if your client sold his uncle's business after the uncle passed away the assets of the business would get a step up in basis.

Just noticed sometime recently, Drake raised their regular price from $1,825 to $1,895.

"The IRS reported in the latest update this week on the status of its mission-critical operations during COVID-19 that of those 4.4 million unprocessed returns, 1.9 million require error correction or other special handling, while 2.5 million are paper returns still waiting to be reviewed and processed. The work typically doesn't require the IRS to correspond with taxpayers, but does require special handling by an IRS employee so, in those cases, it's taking the IRS more than 21 days to issue any related tax refund." "In total, it has over 6.3 million returns in suspense, with about 2 million in unpostable status, 1.1 million processing rejects, a half-million in error resolution, and nearly 3 million still waiting to be worked for potential identity theft. Most math errors involved reconciliation of the Recovery Rebate Credit or the Child Tax Credit, and through Oct. 10, the IRS had sent nearly 14 million notices mostly concerning those issues."

"Tax Exempt Organization Search tool As people are deciding where to make their donations, the IRS has a tool that may help. Tax Exempt Organization Search on IRS.gov is a tool that allows users to search for charities. TEOS provides information about an organization's federal tax status and filings." Definitely useful, last year I had a client make a $1,000 donation to a non profit which was not a charitable organization for purposes of taking a tax deduction.

Thanks for the alert, I will definitely wait until next month.

The draft instruction for these Forms have been released. The due date for providing these Forms to employees is March 3, 2023. The due date for paper filing the employer copies fof these forms has changed from January 31, 2022 to February 28, 2023. Yeah, I get one more month! Having to finish these by the end of January while also trying to finish W-2s and 1099s was a big pain!

Almost all organized religions have staff at the national level that will assist with the process every step of the way.

I agree, I still wonder whether your client is confused?

Drake's survey of 3200 preparers said they expected to increase their fees by 10 %

"Similar to the 2022 instructions for partnerships, the IRS has expanded relief and clarity by adding a new "domestic filing exception" for S corporations' draft instructions for the 2022 tax year schedules K-2 and K-3. The domestic filing exception for S corporations is very similar to the one for partnerships. However, unlike the four criteria partnerships must meet, S corporations are required to meet three tests. The one requirement omitted relates to U.S. citizens and resident alien individuals, domestic trusts and estates; S corporations aren't permitted to have the latter entities as shareholders." https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-dft/i1065s23--dft.pdf

Then there things in the tax code like "Carried Interest" taxed at 15 % protected by the large campaign contributions made by Wall Street. Some members of our population are more equal than others.

"The Internal Revenue Service's Criminal Investigation unit opened more than 2,550 criminal investigations, identified over $31 billion from tax and financial crimes, and saw a 90.6% conviction rate on cases accepted for prosecution during fiscal year 2022, even as its agents came under political attack, according to a report released Thursday." "The conviction rate in fiscal 2022 was similar to other fiscal years. Of the over 2,500 criminal cases initiated, 71.7% of investigations were tax or tax-related crimes. The remaining crimes included financial crimes tied to narcotics, human smuggling, child pornography, bank secrecy and money laundering. Lee noted that in April, IRS-CI led the takedown of Hydra, one of the largest darknet marketplaces of narcotics and other illicit goods in the history of the U.S. government, and in February it seized $3.6 billion in cryptocurrency from the Bitfinex hack of 2016. "That was the largest single financial seizure in the history of government," said Lee." "IRS-CI also handled 840 cases of COVID fraud in recent years and is just shy of 400 indictments, part of a 98.9% conviction rate in that area, with an average sentence of three years for the 180 cases sentenced to date."

On the other hand the Social Security Benefits paid to people at this level of AGI wouldn't have been taxable.