Kea

New client in April last year. Had regular W2 job + self employment. Started going over what he needed for the Sch C. Knew he wouldn't have in time and I filed extension. Never heard back - figured the self-employment reporting requirements scared him off. He called yesterday (4/16) @ 5:00 PM: TP - May I make an appointment to file or extend for 2011? Also need to wrap to do 2010. Me - I'm not taking any more appointments right now, but if you give me income and expense totals, I'll do an extension for you. TP - OK, I'll get you something in the next couple of days. Me - Well the deadline is tomorrow. TP - I'll send you something tonight. Needless to say I didn't get anything last night. Maybe I'll send in a $0 extension (or maybe not) - depends on how I feel. I know I have no obligation to do it, but he was referred to me by his brother. His brother is very nice and had all his stuff done weeks ago. So I have no desire to cause any ill feelings.

Oh never mind. When I called Tech Support this morning they told me that the 8878 does automatically generate. I said "no, it's not on the list in Review" -- at which point I looked back at my screen and it was there! I swear it wasn't there last night. It wasn't there before I called. I mean the list only has 6 items on it, how could I have missed it? I need sleep!

Client wants to pay extension balance due by direct debit. It took me forever to get TRX to believe I wanted EFW and not send by check (I even had to mark the box for checking even though I'm still waiting on that part.) Anyway, It is saying I don't need a Form 8878 - I can't even find it in the list. Here's what their instruction letter says: INSTRUCTIONS FOR FILING 2011 FEDERAL EXTENSION FORM 4868 --.You have elected to file your extension electronically. --.Your extended return has a balance due of $5,057.00. --.No signature is required on your extension. TO PAY BY ELECTRONIC FUNDS WITHDRAWAL --.The required information has been transmitted electronically. --.Keep the following statement for your records: I authorize the U.S. Treasury and its designated Financial Agent to initiate an ACH electronic funds withdrawal (EFW) entry to the financial institution account indicated for payment of my Federal taxes owed, and the financial institution to debit the entry to this account. This authorization is to remain in full force and effect until I notify the U.S. Treasury Financial Agent to terminate the authorization. To revoke a payment, I must contact the U.S. Treasury Financial Agent at 1-888-353-4537 no later than 2 business days prior to the payment (settlement) date. I also authorize the financial institutions involved in the processing of the electronic payment of taxes to receive confidential information necessary to answer inquiries and resolve issues related to the payment. __________________________________________________________________________ I'm not sure that statement will substitute for the 8878. Has anyone else done this? I looked through my files and see I didn't have any EFW last year & no need for 8878. I did 2 in 2009 when I used ATX.

Or, if you still want to e-file the parents' return, you could put it on extension. Amend child's return. File parents' return in a few weeks. Processing time might work out about the same?

At least they are pretty easy & can be done on auto-pilot!

Thanks Lion, I do plan to check that tomorrow. But would closing the estate cause the EIN to no longer be valid (and / or match the estate name)?

Reject code that name & EIN don't match. I'll check tomorrow to see if client can send me official form to make sure everything matches. The only document I have in the estate name does match what I have. I do remember the client mentioning that the attorney closed out the estate in 2011. I'm guessing this is the source of my problem? If so, can the EIN be re-established with the Estate name? At least until the tax return is processed? Now what??

Thanks Joan. Client did file and pay estate tax return for his mother. There was some kind of discount if that was done in some short time (3 months?). He took care of that in PA. Is there still another return that needs to be filed? I did know about the pension. Just to add one more insult to this. I just found out that PA requires a "reason" for the extension. And they don't accept vague reasons like "illness" or "tax practitioner doesn't have time". I saw the info about separate property & losses in one area don't offset another (or even the same area if from each spouse). Both of these are (were) single. Thanks.

Even though I probably won't work on these until next week (or later), I wanted to bump this while there are still a lot of folks still reading the forum. Also the part-year resident sold her house there (after moving to TX but end of year). She had a gain of around $240K and met the federal exclusion (bought it in the 70s and lived there until Jan 2011). Does PA treat this differently?

Thanks!

Client just approved a draft of their return. I had not included an 8879 because there was one weird piece of info. Turns out it was correct and client sent e-mail asking me to file the return. He included "please consider this my electronic signature" and gave me a 4 digit PIN. I've not heard of accepting an electronic signature from a client. But before I e-mail him back saying that's not allowed and oh, buy the way here is the 8879 with MY electronic signature, I wanted to verify. (I want to head off the question of "why can't I if you can".) Thanks!

That is fabulous news! I'll have to learn how to do that -- this summer!

I haven't yet. So far I've just been typing since I know that works. I, too, am very interested to know if this is working for others. Also, can TRX import broker statements to avoid attaching a .pdf. I see the ATX folks doing that. I did have more clients this year with lots of sales. I've put it on my summer to-do list to learn how to handle in TRX (both methods).

Scary. Don't need that this time of year. I hope I don't see another one -- especially this week (or in October!)

I had that happen last year (but with younger client). It looked so strange to have $0 tax on substantial taxable income. It took me a few minutes to trace it to the Sch D. It's just not something we see very often -- usually LTCG tax breaks have less significant impacts on the total tax. Very few of my clients have the bulk of their income from capital gains. It looks odd. It's perfectly understandable to question it this time of year!

Thanks for the update. That's exactly my issue. I tried just duplcating the file -- no good. I tried re-proformaing -- no good. I started from scratch and problem solved. Thank goodness it wasn't a very complicated return & nothing terribly important to roll over. (So I never did call support about it.) Did they know what caused the problem in 2010? Any way to know which files will have this problem?

Hey Joan - I like your version better! With my version, I had to keep reminding myself that I meant the file, not the client.

Just wanted to see if there was anything special I needed for these 2 returns. Both had investments (interest, dividends). For decedent, do I nominee out after death div & int like for Federal? At least one bene does not live in PA. For part-year, do I prorate based on number of day or do I need to see what dates the they were earned? Thanks.

Every time I get to mark a file "completed," I hum "Another one bites the dust..."

The IRAs I inherited are paying out RMD based on my lifetime. (They seem to think I have around 38 years left. Yeah, right.)

I have one file that won't let me peek or review. It won't show me the summary totals in the bottom left pane. It will let me edit and it will keep the changes. At the bottom, next to the name / SSN, it says "Processing" and it just stays there (on other files it only stays a few seconds). If I click on peek or review, the box next to "processing" says "Re-issue command when processing complete." This sounds like just this file is corrupt since I'm not having this error with other files. I guess I'll try copying the file or even re-proforma-ing it and re-creating it. As a last resort, I'll call tech support. Anyone else have this problem? What solution worked for you?

Just saw this notice when I logged in to the EF Center: The EFile Center will be undergoing maintenance on April 10, 2012 between 2:00 AM and 5:00 AM MST Bad day to do it, but at least it shouldn't be a very busy time of day (relatively speaking for this time of year). Maybe they'll fix the green text problem?

I haven't seen that on the ones I've done today. Could it be a monitor issue?

I've noticed some forms (sometimes) won't show me their info when I "peek" - seems like it's usually when the form isn't needed? I hate that because I like to see the current status of, say, Sch A to see how close it is. I haven't noticed any lines printing on paper that don't show up on peek or review.

Even if it wasn't trustee to trustee, if he rolled it into an inherited IRA it would still be tax free. Ask your client if he received the money or what he did with it. I had a similar one this year. Client inherited mom's pension. 1099R showed all taxable and code 4. Client said that the bank took care of it so that it wouldn't be taxable. I talked to the person at the bank (yes, signed written permission since I had to discuss an inherited trust issue at the same time). She pulled it up on the computer and saw that she had transferred it to the client's IRA, caught the error and transferred it to an inherited IRA. Even though she thought she had fixed the error (at that time) and coded it correctly, the 1099R still showed all taxable. She printed the transactions showing that everything was moved to the proper places. (It's kinda nice when your client uses the same bank as you and you both know the person who can help when these questions come up! Also means you can take care of it while making your own deposits and don't have to make a separate trip.)