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Is your computer on a battery backup surge suppressor?

Don't worry about the name at this point. I can get to within $1 of your taxable SS, but playing with the numbers, I can't get to the AGI you have. I get close to your AGI number if that were on line 9, but with that taxable SS not being the full 85% of the gross benefits, I get a lower AGI than you provided. I would need each of the lines 1z, 2b, 3b, 4b, 5b, 7 & 8 from the 1040, if there is any tax exempt interest income, and whatever might be on Sch 1 to get the correct numbers flowing to the MAGI worksheet. If you want to post that, or send privately by PM, email, or call me on the phone, I can send you my contact info. I am still willing to work through this if you think I can still help in some way.

I just got off the phone with the IRS. A refund check will be issued in about 4 weeks. After my initial call, I spent about 30 minutes waiting for a call back. It took about 10 minutes to verify my client and my own identity. It took another 10 minutes for the agent to go into another system and schedule the refund check. He didn't know why the scheduled Direct Deposit never happened.

I had to uninstall and re-install my ATX software. Not sure if the thunderstorm is exactly why, but I am blaming the thunderstorm. So far I have only had to deal with 2023 and 2024. Haven't tried to open anything older yet. Kind of a pain. Has anyone else had trouble lately?

Total AGI 61531 Gross SS 16860 Taxable SS 13736 The only other thing is that I cannot get her name on the top of the 8962 without reversing the names in the setup.

If you want, I will plug in the new income numbers. If you give me: total AGI with the taxable SSA included, gross SSA, and taxable portion of the SSA I should be able to get the worksheets to show the amounts on their proper respective lines. Nothing else changed?

Marilyn, I'm surprised that ATX doesn't calculate the MAGI for you. If you give me revised figures I can have a new result for you in a couple of minutes. At least you will know what to aim for. The other thing I realize is that you are getting a variety of error messages because you are deleting the 8962 with each reject instead of trying to use the rejected one and fixing the error it generated. There should be "2" as the family size on line 1 of the 8962, but on the spouse's alternate worksheet the family size should be "1". You shouldn't have any entries anywhere for the husband except how the joint MAGI and joint poverty level affects the calculations in the first section at the top of the 8962 and where the joint MAGI is divided in 1/2 on the spouse's worksheet. Are you willing to try again?

The original MAGI that I gave you did not include the addback of the portion of SS that was not included in taxable income. Who knew? Would it be advisable to paper file this return and put it to rest?

https://www.journalofaccountancy.com/issues/2019/sep/tax-claim-child-dependency-by-noncustodial-parents/

"Dianne" comes to me to have her taxes filed. "Jack claims Toddler in odd years, and I claim him in even years." [me] "Did Jack give you an 8332?" [Dianne] "Oh no. We sorta just agreed to that." So we don't have an 8332 and we go ahead and file electronically without one. My question: Will the IRS hold up processing the return? Researching to see whether "Jack" has claimed Toddler?

I charge $$ for answering these letters. Over 50% of IRS letters are totally wrong or wrong in part. I do charge, but somehow I can't seem to charge enough. Clients don't understand why it takes so long to write a response, plus produce statistical information which is almost always needed. And the clients aren't really anxious - they feel if they just file their taxes correctly once a year, and do nothing wrong, that should be enough.

Unless you are changing or adding items of income that are affecting MAGI, I really don't understand how the spouse's monthly contribution amount keeps changing. That makes no sense to me.

I hope you have been paid. And I hope you will send this client packing! Any client who makes my fee dependent on their tax outcomes is not someone I want to deal with. If you let them get away with making that statement, they will make it again the next time they don't like the outcome. Tom Longview, TX

They have substantial losses which will shield them from federal and state income tax for years. The tax due was SE tax for which they have no protection. After deducting 2024 expenses along with depreciation they owed that. She came in today and had reconsidered her objections.

We rejected again. We redid all of the calculations and came up with a slightly different number of $55; so tried that. If this fails, I have no idea what to do. I do not have an option to change the 8962 to her name without changing all of the main information entry. It will not allow me to override. This has been the horror story of 2024. I hope I never have another one of these.

My other thought is to make sure that the 8962 entry area indicates "S" that it is only for the spouse and that whatever entries are there are all for the spouse (if it requires entries for her name, SSN, dates of coverage, etc) so that nothing indicated relates to the taxpayer. That would be something easy to overlook if you've deleted the input and reentered multiple times. Sorry that I can't see your input to help directly with whatever ATX thinks it needs to make this work.

That is the exact same rejection error that Jason, the OP of this topic, had started with. Make sure that ATX produces these results: 8962, line 1 is a "2" box 9 is "yes" box 10 is "no" page 2, part V - should be blank for the taxpayer and filled in only for the spouse. In other words, make sure that ATX isn't calculating any alternative calculations for the taxpayer, it should be creating those only for the spouse. It sounds like somewhere along the way you have made an entry for the taxpayer to be included in the alternative calcs for ATX to be producing that error. How much of the alternative worksheets does ATX require you to manually enter, or is it producing my results based on very limited input from you?

The rejection this morning said "Form 8962, Line 36b 'Monthly Contribution Amount' for the Spouse must be equal to the amount comuted using the Form 8962 instructions." As far as I can tell, they are equal at $49. I totally don't know where to go with this. Thank you for trying to help.

I think these partnerships that investment advisors purchase, especially within IRA’s, must pay really generous commissions. After all, SOMEBODY needs to benefit from all this mess created by the k-1’s.

I did get your results and changed everything; one step at a time. I get a different rejection notice every time. I change what they want changed and the next time it is something else. I just refiled it again. Sometimes it comes back with several of the numbers changed. I am furious. This time it was just one number that had to be changed. I will let you know in the morning. I am tempted to just let it go; but in my heart I know that she doesn't owe all that money. Once they didn't like the $49 and changed everything to $79. I changed everything back. They found something else they didn't like. One more time, I will delete the 8962 and start all over. There has to be a solution.

That makes a twisted kind of sense, @Gail in Virginia. Got another one a little while ago, about documents for tax consulting (yeah, right) and when I hovered my mouse over the sender name the originating email was from -- just guess now -- an onlyfans account!

I don't see how any of us could verify someone else's identity, client or not. I have never found the third party check box to be of any use

I read somewhere that the errors in these phishing emails are intentional. They are not looking for sophisticated educated people to respond because they are less likely to fall for what they are selling. Instead, they want people who read carelessly or are not very educated. The errors in the emails help them to weed out the people unlikely to fall for their scam.

Got my first ID verification letter for a client. Why can't I call and verify for the client since I have the 3rd party check box marked, have my PTIN and CAF and copies of all the old returns to walk through it all? I know people on here had difficulty with the id.me system, why would think assume taxpayers want to sign up for that? The entire system just seems intrusive

Got this "request for help" this morning. It's not even good enough to be AI-generated.