Lee B

The point is you are trusting them with every piece of your personal identity. "and releases them to third parties, along with location, occupation, language, the list of pages browsed at ID.me, and the URLs visited before and after using ID.me" which is the same thing that google does.

ID.me's policy states, "by utilizing your ID.me Account at Third-Party Websites, you are expressly authorizing [ID.me] to share certain Personally Identifiable Information or Sensitive Information tied to your ID.me Account with such Third-Party Websites." ID.me originated as a competitor to Groupon marketing deals which they still do. Now they also promote their own Digital Wallet which they actively market.

Would you be surprised to know that ID.me uses the information they accumulate to grow their revenue and profits just like Equifax!

I guess getting advice like this is very expensive. Supposedly his fee for helping was $ 1 Million

"Houston tax lawyer Carlos Kepke had been tutoring rich Americans like Robert F. Smith for decades on how to move assets offshore when an undercover agent posing as a bar owner turned up in 2018. The goal was to gather evidence for a tax fraud case against Kepke. It wasn’t hard. As the wired agent recorded the conversation, Kepke bragged about placing assets in offshore trusts, notably in the Central American nation of Belize. Clients move money and claim to yield control, in keeping with federal law. But they decide how it’s used, not the foreign trustees. “You never lose control,” Kepke assured his visitor. “You’re just playing with bank accounts.” That assurance, and others like it, are spelled out in a newly public affidavit in Kepke’s case. It sheds light on the Internal Revenue Service’s two-decade pursuit of Kepke, a player in the global network of lawyers, accountants and financial advisers who help hide billions of dollars in offshore money havens. And it opens a rare window into how the schemes function." https://www.accountingtoday.com/articles/the-sting-that-snagged-the-tax-lawyer-to-a-pair-of-billionaires?position=editorial_2&campaignname=ACT Tax Practice-07122022&utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=V2_ACT_TaxProToday_20210503%2B'-'%2B07122022&bt_ee=xGJK6MJlr5NSrROCOhZxHw4kjEiAXC9BJC9wqB1NCub4vbjFD3qqroDEE2tRpKrj&bt_ts=1657641643456

My client turns 70 next month, so at this moment I am assuming that it was triggered by his applying for SS, like what happened to Abby. Still waiting for a copy of the letter.

I believe the number of returns that you can open depends on the amount of useable RAM available in your computer at that moment.

I have a business client for whom I have done all of their Accounting, Payroll and Tax Work since the middle of 1993. One of the owners just received a letter from the SSA wanting verification of his 1992 W 2 information. Are you kidding me? Very few people keep documents from 30 years ago. I wonder if they will remove the 1992 earning from his 35 year earnings history?

"In February, a U.S. accounting watchdog fined PricewaterhouseCoopers’s Canadian partnership $750,000 for weak controls that saw more than 1,200 employees participate in “improper answer sharing” in internal tests from at least 2016 to early 2020. Rival Big Four auditor KPMG paid a $50 million penalty in 2019 after the SEC found it had used stolen information to prepare for regulatory inspections, while some of its auditors “manipulated an internal server” to lower the pass mark in training exams." Surprise, Surprise !

Unbelievable, you have clients who aren't 100 % honest? I am sure they just weren't able to remember?

"Revenue departments in Colorado and Utah are implementing programs to enable businesses and individuals to pay their tax bills with virtual currencies such as Bitcoin, Ethereum and Dogecoin, targeting implementation within a few months. The two Western states look to be outliers, however, and still face some logistical hurdles before their programs launch." This would make scheduling estimated tax payments an interesting challenge, since the value of cryptocurrency changes every day

Thanks, Eric, Medlin and Abby. Excellent Advice.

If your client has documentation of his basis and the sale of his investment, then it sounds like a capital loss. Were 1099s filed with the IRS?

I may be wrong but after reading the article several times, I get the impression that this applies to new applications or the additional of new principals to a current application.

Wouldn't the rental income on Schedule E only offset the rental expense on the business entity.

These are the most difficult clients, it's like bailing water from a leaky rowboat.

You can depreciate Land Improvements perhaps a driveway or a graveled parking lot. You can deduct maintenance. Curious investment since he could have rented parking space for a few hundred dollars a month which is deductible.

Another big memory hog are full blown Security Suites like Norton

So you don't have a copy of the 2017 Tax Return. How about a copy of the CP 261 S Election Acceptance letter or the original 2553. A a practical matter having to redo the returns as 1065s might have little or no effect on their personal tax returns. Can you get more information from who prepared the 2018 return?

Here's the spin: "Because it's their job to hold others accountable, Ernst & Young — one of the "big four" accounting firms — says it holds itself to a high standard of ethics. In fact, the firm's entire global code of conduct is based on an "ethical" framework. "At EY, nothing is more important than our integrity and our ethics. These core values are at the forefront of everything we do," Brendan Mullin, a spokesperson for Ernst & Young, said in an email to NPR. "Our response to this unacceptable past behavior has been thorough, extensive, and effective." Many of the employees interviewed during the federal investigation said they knew cheating was a violation of the company's code of conduct but did it anyway because of work commitments or the fact that they couldn't pass training exams after multiple tries."

IMHO, problems tend to arise when CPA Firms are providing multiple services to clients i.e., Auditing, Consulting and Tax Planning/Preparation, because conflicts of interest develop which can result in bad decisions being made.

Actually Microsoft "Patch Tuesday" was two weeks ago. Hey, eventually I got it right.

Sorry, Microsoft "Patch Tuesday" was last week not today.

The message suggest that one of the values your ATX program is looking for while launching is not there or has been corrupted. Today is Tuesday, it's possible that a MS update is causing the problem. You need to call Support.

"Ernst & Young, one of the top accounting firms in the world, is being fined $100 million by federal regulators after admitting its employees cheated on their ethics exams. For years, the firm's auditors had cheated to pass key exams that are needed for certified public accountant licenses, the Securities and Exchange Commission found. Ernst & Young also had internal reports about the cheating but didn't disclose the wrongdoing to regulators during the investigation. "It's simply outrageous that the very professionals responsible for catching cheating by clients cheated on ethics exams of all things," Gurbir S. Grewal, director of the SEC's Enforcement Division, said in a release." After Enron, Worldcom and Global Crossings should we be surprised. The pressure on partners in large CPA Firms to obtain and keep clients apparently creates a corrosive atmosphere