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Returning client (single mom...or at least was) drops off all of her stuff....tells me "nothing different from last year". I do her return and the return for her college student daughter. Nice refund thanks to EIC and AOC. I print everything and call the client with what I think is good news. "I forgot to tell you...I have not yet changed my name with Social Security, so it should be same as last year" Huh?! "Oh yes...I forgot to tell you I got married this past September" "I did not think it mattered because he does not file taxes" We need to talk I'm getting too old for this crap.

I'd tell the client to keep the $20 and forget about it. If IRS ever discovers their mistake, they will ask for the money back. Or,if the client wants me to straighten it out, I will write all the letters they want at $50 each. They can decide when enough is enough.

Yeah, more like "one today". Lol. The one I'm working on now, the wife kept whining about having a kid in college and how expensive it is (which I don't know anything about, since I have two and 1/2 their income). I go thru all the info about what expenses are legit for the AOC, run down the 1098-T and the statement of transactions, which was like landing a plane, even though husband works for the University, and we find out the kid had 2K more in scholarships and grants than tuition and fees. "Oh, haha, I guess it wasn't as expensive as I thought."

Should that have been an "adjustment" rather than a deduction? (just askin)

HOH goes to the one who paid more than half to keep a household for a qualifying child. With a low-income couple, logic would suggest that the higher income parent would claim HOH. But WHO paid the household bills? If she paid the rent and utilities and bought food and he bought booze and motorcycle parts and rode with his buddies to Miami Beach or maybe paid his own tuition at Harvard or has huge child support and alimony payments to his previous family or.... You have to ask questions. And, yes, if I thought the lower income parent might be the one paying for the household, I'd document, document, document, knowing the IRS would take some convincing.

ONE?

Agree, it's not worth a letter, over a $20 error IN THE CLIENT'S FAVOR. They will never hear a word again on it.

Haha, I just thought of something funny about my title for this topic. Maybe it should have said "graphic contains fowl language."

His lack of planing and work is not YOUR emergency. I have let plenty of clients become "late filers" after warning them of the penalties and consequences -- in writing, by USMail, certified/return. Usually doesn't take too many iterations before they "get it" and those who don't get used to paying the penalties. I have to re-learn, the hard way, every couple of years, that I *cannot* allow myself to care more about their tax returns than they do!

Is anyone as frustrated with the clients that need their taxes completed for FAFSA (financial aid for college). FAFSA forms need to be filed ASAP but the darn brokerage companies had until Feb 18th to get out the 1099s. I have some clients that wanted me to complete their returns without their investment statements and amend later. I certainly hope at some point the brokerage houses are back to the January 31st deadline (and not need to issue corrected 1099s after the fact).

What sleep?! Corp client brought records last Friday, one h*ll of a mess, and only brought the bank statements for one of the three checking accounts the company has. He needs to borrow from the bank (like yesterday) and called yesterday to know if I'd have everything completely by tomorrow. This morning he tells me that he's been planning on working up the rest of the missing data this coming weekend. Oh ok, but he wanted his return and work completed before he gave me everything. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. If that isn't bad enough, his records reek of cigarette smoke to the point of making my office smell from them, and my hands smell after touching his papers. The only client more smelly than this was years ago, a seafood market, and their papers smelled like bad fish. Made me want to vomit.

THIS one I can almost understand, as having a new baby will frazzle anyone's brain. And if the kidlet is more than a couple months old, everyone already knows, right?

I just received this in an e-mail.... "I have a question for you. My son, 26, grad student, who didn't work, believes that he might get a refund. I say that he doesn't need to file, as he had no income. Does he need to file and would he get a refund? He only has a 1098-T form from college with his loans and cost of college." I guess I expect a bit more "common sense and intelligence from a grad student??

One client forgot to tell me she had a baby and I had to amend the return to claim the new dependent.

Sanity is overrated!! I tried it once. Worst 3 days of my life!!

I agree with both of you and that is exactly what I told this client. I guess what really irritates me, and maybe it shouldn't, is how they word the letters stating that the taxpayer incorrectly calculated the tax. This return was really simple and straight forward so I don't know how THEY screwed it up. Gotta love that guilty till proven innocent thing.

Have your boss come over and work out the problem each time you have one. It worked for me 5 years ago.... Now he doesn't question me.

That is because of the special rules for divorced/separated parents. In this case, it sounds like the parents are still happily living together and not separated. If I add just a little bit more from pub 17 to my previous quote:

>>but the darn brokerage companies had until Feb 18th to get out the 1099s.<< A couple of my clients, including my self, received this from Fidelity today: *Fidelity has received a mailing deadline extension from the IRS. Mailing some original forms by this date will mitigate sending a similar number of corrected forms. We apologize for any inconvenience that you might experience. The NEW estimated time is Feb 28. (Hopefully they mean 2014.)

I do the same thing for FAFSA for my girls! You have a lot of time to update, correct or fix for financial aid.

I would try to get them to guess at FAFSA (using last year's return if appropriate, that's how I do my own) and THEY correct FAFSA later. But, if they insist on filing an incorrect return and amending it later, I guess I just made more money. Yeah, I have one client that drives me nuts with the FAFSA. Every. Year.

Or from a Farm Return where all the records have been sitting in the cow barn. Funny dark stains on the calf sales statements.. But I agree the worst is the cigarette smell. It becomes an instant Asthma Attack for me. I usually have to put the Bag O Receipts out on the deck to air out. I feel your pain!

Also, HOH may go to noone. If mother claims child and didn't provide more than half the support for the household she can't claim HOH and neither can father.

Maybe the IRS auditor was an acupuncture, they are known to be back stabbers or maybe he wanted to keep him in-line

Remember this when dealing with stupid, argumentative people and clients -

Look to the left......Do I look confused? I've been like this for over 35 years..........Someone ♣ me, Please! I see these people in my sleep..

I hear ya, but sadly, there are a lot of people out there getting refundable credits, so you never know when things will change and having zero taxable income will be subsidized for grad students. If we can give refundable credits for having children, or low income, or being good at underreporting income, we can give credits for textbooks or having student loans. Nothing would surprise me now. He was just playing it safe.

That happened to me twice - with the same client. (With one intervening year). You'd think one of us would have leaned. Now every year I ask him "are you SURE you didn't add any dependents last year?"

Thanks KC - wasn't sure if I was overthinking things. Makes sense since that's how it's done on a personal 1040 when rental properties are owned in SMLLC. Thanks for the help and quick response!

Keeping on laughing is the ONLY way to get through ta season sane, IMHO.

You have to enter the wages & allocate the amount from the home office. The return I've done already had both a Sch c home office & an employee home office. So it works, but it does taking some getting used to.

Don't forget to use eye drops if you spend the whole day in front of the computer, one tends to blink less when doing so and drys out the eyes.

You guys make my day!

Now it DOES.

I agree with Terry, but think that since Dad's whole goal is gifting his son half of the property, if he's not in a big hurry, he could gift his son 20K a year of his interest in the property, 40K if the son is married and Dad is ok gifting them both, without tax on the gift.

Seems like it ought to be the other way around. If I'm handing cash over to a teller I don't know, expecting it to be placed in my bank account, I should be the one with the right to ask the TELLER for some ID. Interesting conversation about the banks and credit unions. I was going to move my business accounts over to my credit union long ago, but credit unions can't have business accounts in NC. It's possible to circumvent that, but then there's the risk that the NCSUIF coverage might not be valid because the account is being operated under false pretenses.

Move every cent of business from them. They have obviously forgotten who pays who's paycheck and have no clue about customer service or loyalty. It is the exact same disease that is permeating the big banks everywhere. Look local, consider credit unions. We have had much luck there.

I use a small local hometown bank. I have NEVER been asked for ID when making a deposit. Big banks have forgotten who is the customer. When my kids were still in college, we would regularly make deposits into their checking account. I suppose those banks asking ID would not allow such? Monster size banks, monster size attitude, customer service non-existent. It is why we left the big bank 8 years ago.

I agree with Jack, but make sure you get a copy of the property settlement agreement and see what language was actually used regarding the $10,000. I don't ever trust what clients tell me when they are interpreting legal documents.

ATX does not have a version for MAC. Only an emulator can run ATX on a MAC. I am sticking to PC. Saving a lot of money!!!

John, do a search for "Mac" over on the Drake forum and you'll see it does run well. Look for one topic called "Running Drake on MacBook using VMware". It was a post from 2012, read to the end, says Drake runs fine.