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It was called a scholarship but was paid to the student for whatever he wanted. The student has no relationship to the specific scholarship/person whose name in on the scholarship. However, the student attends the church that has the scholarship fund; only church members received scholarships. Grandfather hires me to prepare his grandkids tax returns; he's an investment banker and has invested monies for them since they were born. I talk to the dad once/year to get his return info for Kiddie Tax on his kids' returns. I'll check with dad/church member, but grandfather thinks there was no application nor essay or anything. Grandfather thinks what ever committee at that church just picks a few recipients out of their HS graduates. I'm trying to confirm or get details from dad. Prizes & Awards and taxable? Gift and not taxable?

Sounds great.

A few things I had done some country blocking with .htaccss on the old server, but never felt confident that I had a complete list of IP ranges The new server is running nginx, so no .htaccess Cloudflare keeps the traffic from even seeing the website, since they manage DNS and issue the challenge before a request to the server is made Aside from the country blocking, they're doing other bot detection magic, plus I'm adding custom web application firewall rules that are specific to the forum app. I'm a fan of doing as much of this as possible at the proxy, but I also have nginx rules set up for anything that gets through.

I tested cloudflare. Did not offer me anything I could not get from htaccess country allow. Still plenty of bots in the us which is why I added the ip testing service.

I switched and have had no issues that couldn't be resolved with a quick phone call. I did the practice returns when I first tried it and by the time tax season started for the most part I was up and running at about the same speed as ATX. It just gets a little getting use to, but overall I am very pleased.

How did the Trust determine who the $5,000 would be awarded to? Any relationship between the student and the trust? Did the scholarship specify what the money could be used for?

I'm using CloudFlare to manage DNS and as a proxy in front of the site. If I set up the rules to block traffic from outside of the US at that level, they won't even hit the web server. My only worry is that if a forum member is blocked for some reason, they're not going to have any way to let me know they can't get in. Since enabling the captcha 30 minutes ago (click the checkbox to prove you're not a robot), out of 910 challenges only 4 were solved. It may not be necessary to block the traffic completely if the challenge is effective against the type of traffic I'm trying to prevent.

Avoids issues with not meeting the EU cookie type warnings. I block my site from non desired countries for the same reason. I also use a bot/vpn/proxy testing service too. It really cuts down on the non desired access. In my case, especially for blocking access to my order form from those who use VPN to try to test card numbers (almost always actually outside the US, but using a VPN). If you are interested in what I do, send me a direct email.

I've just set up rules to issue a captcha challenge for any visitor not from the US or Canada to help with the bots and spammers. I'm interested to know if anyone on the forums gets caught up in those--if not, I may block traffic from outside North America entirely. I wouldn't normally do something like that, but this is a very US-specific site. Can anyone think of a reason not to?

You are welcome! I ironed out and documented the process yesterday, and everything went smoothly this morning.

Wow! Quick work, Eric. We appreciate your knowledge and hard work to make this move and to continue to monitor it for us. Thank you!!

Alright, everything is moved and at first glance, things appear to be working normally. A lot has changed behind the scenes--more than I'd normally like to change all at once, so please report any issues or broken features you encounter.

College student received a $5,000 check written to him from XXX Church Trust with YYY Scholarship in the memo. Taxable? Other Income? Kiddie Tax?

Hi folks, The server move I mentioned last month will begin soon: You'll know it's in progress when the forum is replaced with a static message, and you'll know it's back up when the message is gone and there's an update on this post. I've done a trial run of the migration and although it went smoothly, I expect a few bumps over the coming weeks as it starts getting real traffic. Thank you for your patience!

I agree with virtually everything stated so far in this thread. I too switched to Drake in 2012 and never looked back. It takes a little getting used to because it isn’t forms-based, but forms based software is way over-rated (especially since forms-based software still relies upon worksheets to a significant degree). Drake is great software and it still amazes me how stingy Drake is with memory. Startup is rapid, operationally it’s nimble, and backups are lighting fast. One hint if you switch to Drake. As soon as you get comfortable using it, spend some time learning how to construct “macros”. You can use them to design a lot of customization to automate numerous repetitive and routine tasks.

Good luck with that. I have a gal, have had her for years, and she is just a delight to work with.

Thank you to all who responded. The OP talked the client into claiming an office of 600 sq. ft in an 1800 sq ft. house, so the business use is 33.3% I asked the client if he could justify regular and exclusive use of his entire basement for use in administering the farm operations and he responded "of course not!" I think I can talk him into amending the office to a more reasonable 250 sq. ft, in which case we can amend both returns and still leave the 401-K payment intact since we will also reduce the other expenses for the office from 33.3% to 14%. Ringers

Of course, it seems so obvious now. Thanks for explaining, Kathy.

Follow the link Catherine posted.

I would be very interested in viewing your presentation. Can you provide a link? Thanks

They don't come to us before. Before the divorce. Before dividing assets. Before dividing children. Even my own son left all his tax return copies that I uploaded to my portal for him to give his lawyer, so his lawyer saw nothing about their partnership, nothing about the tax returns before his ex quit working, nothing about all the monies they took out of his Roth to run the partnership and to live off while the ex's TIRA kept growing, nothing. Sorry, tired and cranky today!

I called the direct number that my sales consultant gave me and it says that it's out of order. I shot him an email. I hope that he's still there. He's been a constant help the past few years that I've had him.

I agree with Judy (which is almost always the case!). I don't know that he will be better off if he took investments at the same value because we don't know the basis of the investments that he got. But for sure she gets full basis in their combined hands to calculate the gain and then 250K tax free of that gain. I don't see him getting 250K tax free gain from the investments. It could be her lawyer got her a better deal because the investments are very low basis and he will have a bigger tax bill because of it. If it was my client, I would stay out of questioning the divorce settlement. She had a lawyer to protect her interests and what came out of that is now fact. Looking back at the divvy up of assets will only run you down a rabbit hole you have no business sniffing around. Not telling you how to run your practice, but I am telling you how I would run your practice, because, well, you asked..... Tom Longview, TX

^^ This! Your client's basis is now the basis she and former spouse had as a joint couple, and there is no step-up. She is now selling as sole owner so the exclusion is only the $250K, assuming she meets the requirements for the full exclusion she is allowed.

Divorced client tells me (in advance - hooray!) of her plans to sell (in 2024) the house she got in the divorce that was final in 2023. She asked about tax repercussions of that plus some other queries. In response I asked if she bought him out, or if there was an agreement to share proceeds of the sale. Neither! She got the house and in exchange he got more of their investment assets. Total value of assets was the same. My first thought is that she gets 100% of the gain with only $250k exclusion and no step-up for "his" portion of the house. But that's just a first thought. Pub 504 and Code Section 1041 talk about basis in the property being the same as if it was a gift from one spouse to the other, with nothing about any step-up even being possible. Yet that seems to leave her with a bigger tax bill than he'll have from their investments. Making me wonder if I should be asking if there was anything in the divorce agreement that talks about equalizing basis. Any advice/references/thoughts for me?