kcjenkins

LOVE IT.

Are you aware of anything in the return, totalling 7480? I know that's a basic question, but sometimes we get so into the situation, we overlook the obvious. And Marco's advice is excellent, because clicking on the input worksheet shows you exactly what went into Line 7.

Two blondes living in Texas were sitting on a bench talking........and the one blonde says to the other. "What do you think is farther ......... Florida or the moon......" The other blonde turns and says "Helloooooooooooooooooooo....can you see Florida?"

If they were present in the U.S. in F or J immigration status during the year but had no U.S. source income, you must file Form 8843. If they were in the U.S. in F or J status for even 1 day during the tax year, you must file Form 8843 for that year. Even if they have no income here, they still are supposed to file it. It is not an income tax return but an informational statement required by the U.S. government for certain nonresident aliens (including the spouses and/or dependents of nonresident aliens). PS Normally, they would file 1040NR.

Shouldn't that adjustment be entered as a negative in this case?

I'd take the expenses on both. It's basic business sense, you must maintain the property whether it's rented or not. Actually, the first one IS rented, even if he has not been able to collect.

64f3e4f95d251c7335d787e2176ce126

Some dogs fetch the newspaper. Others know how to shake hands. Then there’s Dan Cena’s Rottweiler who likes to sing. Cena took video of the talent and posted it on YouTube, showing his daughter giving a rendition of “Baa Baa Black Sheep” and “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” with the dog “Coco” chiming in. Take a look:

I once ate a fried cricket, on a dare. Crunchy, slightly salty, sort of nutty. Not gross, but not something I'd choose, unless I was REALLY hungry.

Well, that's a good one. When I was teaching accounting, I had my students put their 'unknowns in the WITTB account. For those who don't know, that's the What It Takes To Balance account.

It's gone from a seldom-used remedy for truly 'abandoned' assets, to legal theft by government, IMHO. At a minimum, the time frame should be longer than 5 years, and it should be a requirement that the banks, insurance companies, etc should attempt to contact the owners before turning anything over to the state, THEN, the state should be REQUIRED to have a reasonable and speedy system for returning seized assets to rightful owners. The worst is when states sell family heirlooms when the same safe deposit box contains identifying documents, which they do not even try to track down.

Ah, yes, QB makes it so easy, just adding a new account for not only new situations but for typos too.

LOVE ACCEPTS NO LIMITS.

And in this case, "Bankruptcy fee" might be ideal, since the signal it sends is "this guy was in bankruptcy, so even if we find anything questionable, it will probably be exempt." Auditors don't like to waste their time.

So you are saying they might be exempt?

I find the "Comments" much more valuable than the article itself.

I wish more people did that.

June 21, 2014 By Jeff Stimpson Love them or hate them, there’s one thing everyone can agree upon about the major government-mandated changes sweeping through the world of health care insurance: They’re confusing. And since so many of the changes involves taxes, don’t be surprised if your clients expect you to have all the answers. The Affordable Care Act, a.k.a. Obamacare, mandates penalties for lack of health insurance: 1 percent of a client’s yearly household income above the tax filing threshold; or $95 per person for the year ($47.50 per child under 18), with the penalty maxing out at $285. The penalty is pro rated based on how many months an individual lacks coverage; annual increases are also built into the law. Only a little more than half of small businesses understand and are prepared for the changes required by the ACA, according to a recent survey by payroll service provider Paychex. Nonetheless, clients aren’t exactly beating down doors with questions – yet. “The only questions I have had so far (and they have been very few) center around the tax credits associated with employer provided health insurance,” said Stephen DeFilippis, an EA at DeFilippis Financial Group in Wheaton, Ill. “For the 2013 year, we haven’t seen too many of these questions in our practice,” said Twila Midwood, an EA at Advanced Tax Centre in Rockledge, Fla. “Most clients are currently covered under a plan. We are advising them, however, that should their coverage change, to contact us or a health insurance provider to ensure that they meet the requirements to maintain minimal essential coverage or to at least be aware of the requirements and possible penalties.” Clients are “not particularly” asking for health care advice from EA Stephen Jordan, in Salem, N.H., “although it is a popular discussion topic at tax prep meetings. Clients seem to know what they are doing well enough and are accomplishing things on their own. I refer clients to an insurance consultant I work with if they need further help.” Proactivity Some preparers have worked ahead with clients concerning the ACA. Becky Neilson, of Neilson Bookkeeping in Sheridan, Calif., for example, is a Certified Enrollment Entity and a Certified Enrollment Counselor, one of the first in her state when she completed the requirements last fall. “I’ve seen how horrible the system can be from both sides, as a consumer and counselor,” she said, “with all the headaches involved in signup online and with lost or unprocessed paper applications. California is still backlogged on the Medi-Cal enrollments for those who didn’t qualify for Affordable Health Care.” As Neilson worked with tax clients doing 2013 returns, “I reviewed their coverage and the requirements. … Some clients chose to accept the penalties but the majority wanted health insurance coverage,” she recalled. “The cost for those not eligible for premium assistance was shocking. Many couldn’t understand why their premiums were so high compared to their old programs. I had to explain that the new minimums for all plans to meet the new standards was causing the problem. They no longer could tailor their health care to meet their minimum needs and were stuck with the options available.” A few clients refused to accept Affordable Health Care, she added, “thinking it would be repealed before they needed to do their taxes.” Neilson’s self-employed clients “plan on checking in with me in early July to see if we need to do adjustments in their estimated tax payments,” she said. “They all plan to visit me at the end of each quarter. Hopefully I can keep them ahead of the game by tax filing in 2015. I plan to include updates on the health coverage in my bimonthly newsletters.” Clients seem more likely to show up with questions if they or their spouse lose or change employment. Midwood, for example, added that her firm has received questions from those who’ve become unemployed and concerned about being subject to penalty for failure to have insurance. “Some of these individuals realize that, for now, any potential penalty would be less than the cost of coverage,” she said. Future points Chuck McCabe, founder and president of Peoples Income Tax and The Income Tax School, recently spelled out for preparers some of the issues of Obamacare and the nature of help clients might soon expect. Among his points: The next open enrollment for Obamacare begins November 15. Some clients may qualify for the special enrollment period while the ACA insurance marketplace is closed. This applies to people who had a “qualifying life event” such as changes to family size or a “complex situation related to applying in the Marketplace.” Those exempt from the individual responsibility payment include clients uninsured for less than three months; those for whom the lowest-priced available ACA coverage exceeded 8 percent of household income; those who didn’t have to file a return because of low income; and members of federally recognized tribes or those eligible for services through an Indian Health Services provider, among others. Clients who have obtained health care coverage through the Marketplace may be eligible for a premium tax credit. Preparers should bone up on what forms are and will be needed concerning the ACA, how to verify clients’ compliance, and any penalties for preparers who stray from ACA compliance.

New York (June 23, 2014) By Ellen Rosen (Bloomberg) To everyone but tax attorneys, the disclaimers referring to “Circular 230” that appear in the legends of most law firm e-mails are inscrutable as well as ubiquitous. The Internal Revenue Service has now changed its rules so that those disclaimers can be deleted permanently. Circular 230 is the Internal Revenue Service’s compilation of regulations governing tax practice by lawyers, accountants and other professionals that became effective in 2005. The rules resulted from the tax shelter abuses of the 1990s, Christopher Rizek, a tax attorney said last week in a phone interview. Circular 230 established minimum standards of conduct “with respect to written tax advice,” threatening disciplinary action or even disbarment for those who fail to comply. As a result of the broad language, disclaimers stating that e-mails don’t constitute tax advice “wound up on everything,” Rizek said. “Once law firms agreed on language, then firms had to question what to put it on—either just on e-mails for which it really applies or on everything,” he said. “Even those that say, ‘Can you make lunch at 1 o’clock?’” contained the language. New rules issued by the IRS on June 12 include this statement: “Treasury and the IRS expect that these amendments will eliminate the use of a Circular 230 disclaimer in e-mail and other writings.” Rizek expects law firms to continue to incorporate broader disclaimers that specify that communications in an e-mail aren’t legal advice. As of last week, many professional services firms evidently hadn’t gotten the memo, since most hadn’t deleted the Circular 230 wording.

I debated with myself posting this in the Politics forum, but decided it is about more than politics, it's about the administration of the tax code fairly and equally. I think we all need to be aware of any variation from that line, and to know that there is still some alternative to just 'taking it' when it is not.

Ken McIntyre June 24, 2014 Two years after activists for same-sex marriage obtained the confidential tax return and donor list of a national group opposed to redefining marriage, the Internal Revenue Service has admitted wrongdoing and agreed to settle the resulting lawsuit. The Daily Signal has learned that, under a consent judgment today, the IRS agreed to pay $50,000 in damages to the National Organization for Marriage as a result of the unlawful release of the confidential information to a gay rights group, the Human Rights Campaign, that is NOM’s chief political rival. “Congress made the disclosure of confidential tax return information a serious matter for a reason,” NOM Chairman John D. Eastman told The Daily Signal. “We’re delighted that the IRS has now been held accountable for the illegal disclosure of our list of major donors from our tax return.” The Daily Signal is seeking comment on the settlement from the IRS and Justice Department. Update: At 5:28 p.m, IRS spokesman Bruce I. Friedland emailed: “Privacy law, specifically Section 6103 of the Internal Revenue Code, prohibits us from commenting.” In his order entered this morning, District Court Judge James C. Cacheris granted the settlement of NOM’s suit against the IRS, which was represented by the Department of Justice. In February 2012, the Human Rights Campaign posted on its web site NOM’s 2008 tax return and the names and contact information of the marriage group’s major donors, including soon-to-be Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney. That information then was published by the Huffington Post and other liberal-leaning news sites. HRC’s president at the time, Joe Solmonese, was tapped that same month as a national co-chairman of President Barack Obama’s re-election campaign. Eastman said an investigation in the civil lawsuit determined that someone gave NOM’s tax return and list of major donors to Boston-based gay rights activist Matthew Meisel. Email correspondence from Meisel revealed that he told a colleague of “a conduit” to obtain the marriage group’s confidential information. Testifying under oath in a deposition as part of the lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, Meisel invoked his Fifth Amendment right not to incriminate himself and declined to disclose the identity of his “conduit.” To get at that fact, Eastman said, the National Organization for Marriage has asked Attorney General Eric Holder to grant immunity from prosecution to Meisel. The $50,000 to be paid by the IRS represents actual damages NOM incurred responding to the illegal disclosure, not punitive damages, since the marriage group was unable to prove disclosure of the confidential records was deliberate after Meisel took the Fifth. Meisel provided the marriage group’s tax data to the Human Rights Campaign, documents found as part of the investigation show. HRC is among organizations and activists advocating same-sex marriage that routinely describe NOM as a “hate group” or “anti-gay” for making the case for preserving marriage as the union of one man and one woman. “We urge other groups that have suffered similar problems with the IRS to keep pressing until they, too, are fully vindicated,” Eastman said. Eastman was referring to ongoing congressional probes and lawsuits over IRS targeting of tea party and other conservative groups that sought tax-exempt status. In a draft press release on the settlement and admission by the IRS of wrongdoing, Eastman said: It has been a long and arduous process to hold the IRS accountable for their illegal release of our confidential tax return and donor list, which was ultimately given to our chief political rival by the recipient. In the beginning, the government claimed that the IRS had done nothing wrong and that NOM itself must have released our confidential information. Thanks to a lot of hard work, we’ve forced the IRS to admit that they in fact were the ones to break the law and wrongfully released this confidential information. Eastman, a lawyer and law professor, also is a member of the ActRight Legal Foundation team that brought the lawsuit against the federal government and the IRS on NOM’s behalf in October 2013. He said at the time that the Human Rights Campaign removed “redaction layers” from the electronic documents showing they originated at the IRS. In May 2012, Eastman and NOM President Brian Brown asked the Department of Justice to investigate and prosecute the case. Eastman appeared last June before the House Committee on Ways and Means to testify about the illegal disclosure o the marriage group’s donors. Unauthorized disclosure of confidential tax information is a felony offense that can result in five years in prison, but the Department of Justice did not bring criminal charges. “We urge the Congress to explore this issue with the appropriate government officials,” Eastman said. “It’s imperative that all those who have engaged in corrupt practices and illegal acts in the IRS be identified and held accountable.”