mcbreck

I do this also. I'm in a state with VERY low muni bond yields so if it's added to a mutual fund, it's almost certainly junk. If I was in Illinois, California or New Jersey, this would be an issue and this method would not work. I look through the list of tax exempt income and see if anything specifically says it's from my state but that doesn't take long.

"The IRS will only allow you to claim losses on your business for three out of five tax years." I tell people we can take a loss for 3 years and I've lost multiple clients in year 4.

How many employees are you talking about? Manually entering a bunch into Medlin could be rather time consuming compared to Quickbooks. You can do multiple companies with Medlin but only one computer. I used to do one company on one laptop and another on a different laptop and they did an upgrade and demanded I buy a second license. It's not a big deal but it was just how I liked it previously. My sister-in-law did payroll for a school district, what a nightmare job. She had a lot of interesting stories though.

Husband has a rather substantial tax bill coming and will likely be filing for bankruptcy within the next year (multiple lawsuits he will be losing and a criminal case he lost with hefty fines) and wife wants to file separately. I don't file an 8857 claim for Innocent Spouse Relief if I'm filing MFS do I? The instructions say it is only if you filed joint and have some sort of previous unpaid tax bill due. The husband's attorney insists an 8857 must be filed and I don't see it. They didn't have an unpaid tax liability in previous years (husband hasn't reported income for a while). Now they might if the IRS decides his tax deductions 4 years ago were invalid but that hasn't happened yet and as far as I know he's not being audited. He also has next to nothing in assets left. We aren't in a community property state.

If you donate cash from the sale, the profit would have been subject to MEDA and SS taxes whereas if you donate product you avoid those taxes? Where else does the IRS allow that?

Never have had that. https://turbotax.intuit.com/tax-tips/tax-payments/who-can-garnish-an-income-tax-refund/L7cPPzDyc Federal law allows only state and federal government agencies (not individual or private creditors) to take your refund as payment toward a debt. The Treasury Offset Program (TOP) is administered by the United States Department of Treasury's Financial Management Service (FMS) and allows federal and state government agencies to collect outstanding debts owed to them by garnishing, or offsetting, your debt with your tax refund.

https://www.irs.gov/businesses/what-to-do-with-form-1099-k

I've seen the argument as: A signing bonus is paid to employees and reported on the W2 because they begin working imminently or they sign a contract. An incentive payment is paid to people you want to hire in the future and reported on 1099. For example if you pay it to me and I don't show up to work for 1-2 months, I'm not an employee. My brother was laid off and received a huge package (18 months salary) with the agreement he'd pay most back if he got a job within 6 months. He receive an "incentive payment" at three months from a company which declared he'd be hired at a future date that met his 6 month period. Tom specifically wrote "prior to employment" so how could it be on a W2 if they aren't an employee?

If they came into the office in February, when did they sign the 8821? Did you just offer it as an option if they don't file? Did you charge for an hour of work, not charge at all, charge for 1/2 hour? (everyone has a different rate so I don't want to get into a bragging match about how high each person's rate is) I have an attorney I do her taxes in Oct and every year she's looking up 1099s on her phone in my office. I'm sure we are missing things. Does it really take until October to get all the data on the transcript?

Do you make it a common practice to get a signed 8821 from each client or many clients? Spoke with a tax attorney who casually mentioned that all clients sign an 8821. When I asked about it he said that ALL clients sign the form and then in June, July and August he pulls everyone's tax transcripts and compares them to the returns. It's part of their service, charge accordingly and it is mandatory. You have 120 days from the date of signature to file the 8821 so you can get the signature in March and upload it in July. I don't think I want to get into that routine and I'm not sure clients want it but maybe I'll offer it. What would you charge for that? Your normal 1 hour rate?

Forgot all about her. She was EVERYWHERE for about 2 years when I got into the business. Got pitched to invest in opening a tax office for her firm.

At this point, why wouldn't you have it done regardless? You were supposed to have done it by Jan 1st (extended to yesterday) and it takes 15-30 minutes to complete. Saw in an article that less than 1/3rd of companies who should be doing this have actually done so. I'd estimate most of those are Schedule C companies who have no clue.

I'm already done with my 2025 CE!

Does the client even want to declare as single or are you presuming? Is his wife a US citizen and filing returns in the USA? My wife's ex-mother in law (they still talk all the time) has been legally separated from her husband for about 30 years. They talk 2x per day, see each other several times per week and she takes him to doctor appointments but they can't stand living together.

I was wrong. I've been having clients take them but our investment firm doesn't provide a hard RMD on inherited IRAs subject to the Secure2.0 act. It has a "suggested" RMD. I usually distribute a little extra since they've gained about 30% easily the last two years in account value.

The custodian is only there to make sure you don't take action which is restricted by IRS rules. They aren't there to aid the investor. I'm pretty sure the IRS ruled you don't HAVE to take an amount every year of the 10 year period on traditional or Roth IRAs. It's just usually a good idea on Traditional IRAs.

Got mine last night!

I think you need to contact your continuing education provider. You either didn't give them the correct number or they haven't uploaded to the IRS yet. Some upload daily, some weekly and some monthly. Or and it's actually possible - you didn't use an IRS approved provider for your license. If you do CPA courses it may not qualify for an EA.

I do the returns for about a dozen clients while they wait. It's actually very enjoyable and I enjoy talking with them as I do the returns. I could totally see the benefits of going that route but I can't imagine doing a complicated return that way. Most of my clients it is a system of drop off today and pickup in two days. How many people actually pick up / drop off for clients? Most evenings I have a few stops to make on my way home from work. Senior clients LOVE having that service.

I have 2 monitors plus my laptop screen. Both external monitors are plugged into a splitter that then plugs into a USB port. Plugging into my HDMI port presented issues so I used the USB.

Do you keep a pdf copy (or physical I guess) of your client's tax return or do you just use the tax software to generate one later if you need one?

When did you have this webinar with the IRS? When it first started, Google Drive wasn't fully encrypted. Not the case today. Per my family member who works at Apple and a client who works at the FBI, you should assume they have full access to your files stored on their servers.

Did you get into Windows Contacts because you used Outlook? I got into google Contacts because of Gmail and then it exploded with my first Android phone about 15 years ago. I stopped using Outlook about 1997ish and was still using my physical phone book at that point.

Looking at spam I have an email that came from [email protected] which is their actual email (I cut and paste it into the google bar and it's real and not a fake letter like your example). I keep getting emails from my web site host saying my payment was rejected and I need to update my credit card - email says it came from their domain - it is fake. The first time I saw it I freaked but thankfully I googled their website and went in that way and realized I'm all paid up. My heart sank that I could have easily clicked their link. I kept the email saved and looking at it there is no obvious sign it's fake. With the credit card thing - the real kicker was that ebay had just rejected an order because my credit card had expired. I'd updated my credit card so it was still on my mind.

Like $200,000+? These scams are getting good and I've gotten called a few times and it worries me I'll fall for them when I get older. I hang up on them quickly but the old standard that you can look at the email address and figure out it's a scam is pretty much gone. Some of those emails are shockingly good looking and the email addresses are spoofed / say the name of the company.