Gail in Virginia

My bet would be on multiple dates. Maybe as early as January 29 for really simple returns, then around mid-February for returns affected by extenders, or even late February if they have depreciation. And my bet would be that we might as well get used to it.

Typically, compensatory damages are not reportable because (at least in theory) all they do is restore you to wholeness - there is no profit or income. Now in this particular case, I am not sure what kind of damage was suffered that resulted in compensatory damages...

If they are not a 501( c) (3) they are most likely a 501( c)(4) from the little bit of information you provided., which is a civic league or a social welfare organization. If that is the case, they would still file a 990N if they are under the requirements for a 990EZ. I don't know why they were denied for filing the 990N. When did the IRS say they were like a rotary club if you have not heard from the application for exempt status?

I think the point might be to pay the new taxes before they get any worse, and let the statute run on the oldest. Grandparents might be able to cough up enough to pay the newer years in full, but not have a chance on the oldest year. Is he or she a candidate for OIC?

I thought they had already expanded it by requiring all tax preparers to audit custody and EITC issues.

FL is one of the states with no income tax. I agree that you can use any address without a problem as far as the IRS is concerned. But if the son happened to live in Virginia, and a federal return was filed using his address for the parents, then unless their income is less than the filing requirement for Virginia, Virginia will be in touch looking for that state income tax return. I suspect most other states that have an income tax will also. That being said, I would use the son's address and just be prepared to document where the parents actually maintain their residence when asked by the state where the son lives. I find that if I tell my clients to expect a letter they are not nearly as upset by it as they are when it comes out of the blue.

Lion, I am not sure that I agree with you. Yes, there are 365 days in a year. But if the child spent 182 nights at Mom's house, 182 nights at dad's house and 1 night at a friend's house, then the child spent an equal number of nights at each parent's home without a leap year. And in the first year of separation, if the parents lived together for two or three months, they could have an equal number of nights and yet both of them have more than 1/2 of 365 nights. I do agree that it is very, very rare that they spend exactly the same number of nights per year with each parent. Just saying that it can happen.

I just love an uncluttered kitchen - the bare design of this is great!

I knew you knew the difference, Jack, so I wasn't going to refer to your post. Sometimes when we are typing we don't always get what we mean down on the screen - but we knew what we meant!

We charge $35 per payroll up to 5 employees, and $1.50 per employee over that to do payroll. Reporting is about $75 at the end of the quarter for the 941 and VEC reports. We will prepare those reports quarterly for people that do their own payroll, but the charge is higher. On a fee basis, we probably are not very competitive. And for a few customers, we just lump it in with their bookkeeping and charge one flat monthly fee.

And if the entire amount paid as reimbursement for the cell phone and auto expenses is included in boxes 1,3 and 5 of the W-2, then it is treated as regular income and the entire amount that the employee pays for those expenses that are job related would go on form 2106 - not just the amount above the reimbursement.

Or VA.

Me too, Joan. I have been off the board for a couple of days catching up on my personal life and just now saw your post. Sorry I did not get a chance to vote for you. Remind us earlier next year!

I am too chicken to touch this conversation...

If not claiming the NOL would result in EIC, then I think you are required to claim the NOL just like you can't leave expenses off a Sch. C taxpayers return to hit the sweet spot on EIC.

Even if the lawsuit prevails, and the IRS can no longer force us to pay for our PTIN, I feel like it will be quite some time before the dust settles and so I also am going to renew as soon as I am aware that the website is available for 2015 renewals. And maybe they can't force us to have a PTIN, but I infinitely prefer it to providing my Social Security Number as identification on every tax return that I prepare. That is what we used to do, and I was very relieved to not have to do that anymore.

Jack, I did not use ATX in 2013 so this may be way off. But in 2012 when you went to the E-File menu in the task bar within the tax return, clicked on Attach PDF, and scrolled down to the state e-file info, one of the choices was to attach "other state return 1" (and 2 and 3). When I used that for 2012 it attached the PDF of the return to the proper state return and eliminated the error message. I hope this helps.

My electronic copies of signed 8879s are organized by the client, then by the year they are for. My paper copies are stored alphabetically by the year in which they were actually filed regardless of the year they relate to. That way I can burn a whole group at at a time without concern that some of them may not have been held for three years from the date of filing. But even if something gets misfiled, I should still have my electronic copies.

Thanks for sharing. Someday I may even have time to use this information!

I don't think that you can ever get in trouble for sending a 1099MISC when you are not required to, but if you fail to send one that is required there are definitely penalties. So I strongly encourage my clients who even remotely might be required to file the 1099MISC to go ahead and send it. As long as you get the numbers right, the other party should be reporting the income whether they receive a 1099MISC from your client or not, so it should not make a difference to them and might keep your client out of trouble. So why not?

Even if you purchase your insurance from the marketplace, if you are not receiving a subsidy isn't the only question still "Did you have appropriate coverage for 9 of the 12 months in 2014." And if they purchased it on the marketplace, isn't it a given that it is appropriate coverage?

And shortening the amount of time that preparers have to get W-2s filed is only going to result in more corrected W2s IMHO. We already have to have them done and out by the end of January for the employees, but we typically hold the copy for SSA for about 15 days in case the employee notices an error in his social security number or address. (He could have noticed it on his paycheck all year long, but of course they don't look at that except to cash it.)

I am not sure from your explanation if you are talking about the penalties for under-reporting/underpaying or if you are including the penalties for early distribution. I have not typically had any luck with first time abatement for this type of situation, but it does not hurt to try. And I do normally pay the penalties and interest if I feel that it was my fault. But knowing for sure if they had included the information and you missed it, or if they failed to include it and put it in afterwards is tough unless you routinely copy or scan everything they bring to your office, even the stuff that you know you are not going to use. Like MDEA, I have never used my E&O insurance - it would take a really large claim to cause me to do that instead of paying the penalties myself. I feel sure a claim would cause my rates to skyrocket.

Rev. Proc. 2014-42 describes a new, VOLUNTARY, program that if you take a 6 hour refresher course which includes a test of material with a minimum of 100 questions that you pass with a minimum score of 70%, with a total of 18 hours of CE that includes 2 hours ethics, 10 hours federal tax law and 6 hours of federal tax law updates you can receive a record of completion. The test is not required if you are an EA, CPA, attorney or have passed the RTRP exam or are licensed or registered by any state, etc. after passing an examination on federal tax matters. I don't know if you get a certificate suitable for framing (/s).

I wonder what would happen if one year all of the professional preparers decided that it just wasn't worth the hassle, and none of us prepared tax returns....