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Washington, D.C. (April 22, 2015) By Michael Cohn The American Institute of CPAs recommended to the Internal Revenue Service that the de minimis safe harbor threshold amount under the tangible property regulations for small business taxpayers without an applicable financial statement be increased from $500 to $2,500. “The AICPA believes the requirement that a taxpayer have an AFS to use the $5,000 de minimis threshold unfairly discriminates against smaller taxpayers, and recommends an alternative test to allow such taxpayers to use the de minimis rule,” AICPA Tax Executive Committee chair Troy K. Lewis wrote in a letter Tuesday to the IRS. The AICPA recommended that the Treasury Department expand the definition of an approved applicable financial statement, or AFS, to include a reviewed set of financial statements, which are in accordance with Statements on Standards for Accounting and Review Services and provide reasonable assurance that there are no material modifications that have been made or should be made for them to be in conformity with the applicable financial reporting framework. Lewis explained that outside third parties, such as banks and creditors, often rely on reviewed financial statements to provide them comfort in the financial statements of a company. “We also recommend adjusting the threshold amount on an annual basis for inflation to maintain the fairness and incentive of the intended benefit, and to expand the AFS definition to allow more taxpayers to benefit from the higher $5,000 threshold,” Lewis wrote.

I turned away parents of my kids' classmates. The wife once told me about their refund and how they didn't make estimated tax payments. I know their lifestyle cannot be supported by EIC level income. When she asked if I was taking new clients, I told her no. The kids get lots of grants to go to college, too. Don't get me started, this is rampant here.

My issues with San Jose State started with the transfer process. My son followed every instruction given at the orientation he attended. One of the instructions was to send an official transcript from his Community College. He received the transcript on June 1st and immediately sent it on to SJSU. 3 weeks later, he still could not enroll. Numerous phone calls and emails later, with no response from the admissions department, the professor in charge of his scholarship calls him and asks why he has not enrolled? Classes that he needs are filling up, and he cannot get approval to sign up. I finally called and was told that only the student can make inquiries. So I left a blistering message on the voice mail of the head of admissions phone. I got a very nasty response from her on my vm telling me that my son failed to follow directions. They also called my son at work and left a vm for him that his father had gone off the rails and that he needed to call them. By that time, I had called back and had a long conversation with the head of admissions, who finally admitted that they did have everything, and that it simply had not been processed by staff. She chewed me out for my manners, and never apologized for her staff not doing their job. It was 3 more days before my son could sign up for classes, and what was left was early morning and late evening classes, which left 3-6 hour gaps in his schedule 5 days a week. Problem #2 with SJSU My son goes into his advising session with his counselor and is promptly told that he will never be able to complete his degree in 4 years, because as a transfer student, he will not be able to withstand the rigors of a real university education. He is given a list of the classes that are allowed to transfer in from his community college and told what he needs to take to complete his degree. There is a class on the transfer list that is a pre-requesit for other classes he needs to take. In semester two, he tries to sign up for one of his classes, but is told he does not have the pre-requisit class and so is not allowed to enroll. He goes back to the department and shows them the transcript from his community college and the counselor list of transferred classes to show them that he meets the requirements. They tell him that yes, the class transferred for credit, but not for content and that his advisor should have told him that. Without that class, my son had to push all his classes back 2 semesters. Now he has a 5th year with 2 classes, 9 total units over a 1 year period (one 3 unit one semester class and his senior project which is a one year, 6 unit class). Had he been properly advised on the transfer classes, he would be graduating in 4 weeks. BTW, my son has a 4.0 GPA at SJSU, was hand selected by a professor for a research project, and tutors Calculus and Thermodynamics at the school. Did that dirty bastard with a cushy counseling job and benefits the rest of us could only wish for have any repercussions for the crappy job he did? Does he have to pay for costing my son a year of his career? Did he even get reprimanded or have to go through training so this would not happen to the next transfer student? Hell no, there is no accountability for the admin staff at SJSU. They are protected by their union and are hired for their diversity rather than the quality of their work. Rant over. NO it is NOT....I HATE SJSU. AND YES I AM SHOUTING. Rant over. Tom Newark, CA

Also known as the "Oh-No-You-Are-Not-Single-Sweetheart-And-Your-Standard-Deduction-Is-Zero."

Subject: HOW ASPARAGUS GOT ITS NAME HOW ASPARAGUS GOT ITS NAME; MAKES SENSE TO ME... A sixth grade child was asked to write a book report on the entire Bible. Here is what he wrote; The Children's Bible in a Nutshell In the beginning, which occurred near the start, there was nothing but God, darkness, and some gas. The Bible says,"The Lord thy God is one," but I think He must be a lot older than that. Anyway, God said, "Give me a light!" and someone did. Then God made the world. He split the Adam and made Eve. Adam and Eve were naked, but they weren't embarrassed because mirrors hadn't been invented yet. Adam and Eve disobeyed God by eating one bad apple, so they were driven from the Garden of Eden ... Not sure what they were driven in though, because they didn't have cars. Adam and Eve had a son, Cain, who hated his brother as long as he was Abel. Pretty soon all of the early people died off, except for Methuselah, who lived to be like a million or something. One of the next important people was Noah, who was a good guy, but one of his kids was kind of a Ham. Noah built a large boat and put his family and some animals on it. He asked some other people to join him, but they said they would have to take a rain check. After Noah came Abraham,Isaac, and Jacob. Jacob was more famous than his brother,Esau, because Esau sold Jacob his birthmark in exchange for some pot roast. Jacob had a son named Joseph who wore a really loud sports coat. Another important Bible guy is Moses, whose real name was Charlton Heston. Moses led the Israel Lights out of Egypt and away from the evil Pharaoh after God sent ten plagues on Pharaoh's people. These plagues included frogs, mice,lice, bowels, and no cable. God fed the Israel Lights every day with manicotti. Then he gave them His Top Ten Commandments. These include: don't lie, cheat, smoke, dance, or covet your neighbor's stuff. Oh, yeah, I just thought of one more: Humor thy father and thy mother. One of Moses' best helpers was Joshua who was the first Bible guy to use spies. Joshua fought the battle of Geritol and the fence fell over on the town. After Joshua came David. He got to be king by killing a giant with a slingshot. He had a son named Solomon who had about 300 wives and 500 porcupines. My teacher says he was wise, but that doesn't sound very wise to me. After Solomon there were a bunch of major league prophets. One of these was Jonah, who was swallowed by a big whale and then barfed up on the shore. There were also some minor league prophets, but I guess we don't have to worry about them. After the Old Testament came the New Testament. Jesus is the star of The New Testament. He was born in Bethlehem in a barn. (I wish I had been born in a barn too, because my mom is always saying to me, "Close the door! Were you born in a barn?" It would be nice to say, ''As a matter of fact, I was.'') During His life, Jesus had many arguments with sinners like the Pharisees and the Republicans. Jesus also had twelve opossums.The worst one was Judas Asparagus . Judas was so evil that they named a terrible vegetable after him. Jesus was a great man. He healed many leopards and even preached to some Germans on the Mount. But the Democrats and all those guys put Jesus on trial before Pontius the Pilot. Pilot didn't stick up for Jesus. He just washed his hands instead. Anyways, Jesus died for our sins, then came back to life again. He went up to Heaven but will be back at the end of the Aluminum. His return is foretold in the book of Revolution. (Nothing bad will happen if you don't forward this, but if you do forward this delightful story you'll make someone LAUGH today, and they'll keep spreading the laughter by sending it on!!)

I've been off the board for several days--still dealing with the second of two kidney stones that slammed me back in early April (great timing!). I've been working on a new pricing model for both my tax and accounting work. It nets out to about a 25% increase on tax work and 20% on accounting work. I'm giving existing clients a 10% discount the first year to ease the pain a bit. I'm also going to scale way back on the freebies (I'll ask then to at least contribute enough to cover my overhead). Comparing it to the responses to Yardley CPA's Fee Schedule posting (great idea, by the way. I had the same idea a couple days ago but having been hurting too bad with the stones to post it. Was really happy to see that someone beat me to it). Anyway, based on those responses it appears my new fee structure will be much closer to what many of you are charging. I'll still be just a bit under the big boxes but I can live with that. As I project it out (even allowing for a 5% lapse rate) I feel pretty good about where I'll land over the next year or two. Thanks again for all the great counsel and for giving me the kick in the seat that I needed to make this happen.

This was posted elsewhere with this caption: "Sometimes you just want to take your teddy bear into the pool and drift away from all your troubles." Yes, yes I would. Warm weather and that chocolate would be nice too.

As a factual matter I have never reported but two folks in 30+ years. This one is so egregious if he moves on I will report him. I do not usually identify myself so I really can't expect a call.

Nope, they have to give me their financial information in order to prepare the return. On the due diligences I check "Business Records". Some people have spreadsheets, others Qbooks and some just numbers written on a piece of paper. I am not a Auditor, it's not my job to do their books and make sure their numbers are the same as mine

Yes, do it now. (Don't the regs say something along the lines of When the error/omission is discovered?) In fact, if you discover any other changes, now is the one year you can do almost anything on one 3115 without a user's fee due to the "simplification" of the new repair vs. capitalization regs.

Just a drop in the sea of fraudsters. Until Americans are weaned from "immediate" refunds, this problem will not go away. All attempts and processes to reduce them are only a scratch on the surface of the problem. Americans dependency on the tax refund as a savings account is the source of the problem.

Anyone who has a client over the 400% of federal poverty rate that owes all subsidy back will get the dreaded "When Line 6 is 'No', the taxpayer does not qualify for a credit. Discard any information entered on lines 11-23 in columns A through E." There is no way to make it work. Tech support (sic) had me send the return to them and "This will have to be referred to the developers to see what is wrong. Nothing will happen before Monday." This form was updated today. GGGRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR :wall: If you get this error, don't waste any time trying to work around it. I am on the warpath with this one!!

My puzzled wife gave me an envelope from Republic Bank that had a check for $7900 payable to both of us. It was our tax refund. The only problem is that we haven't filed a return yet! The bank bounced a direct deposit and sent the check to us instead. The slimeballs had everything correct except for a slight error in our address. I'm really looking forward to having this to deal with now. Of course, the return was done with Tax Act online so there's no EFIN to trace. I always thought that we were less at risk as we don't do business online and we don't even have a credit card, but obviously I was wrong. I'm in such a good mood that I almost bit the dog when I left for work this morning. Happy, Happy!

Hope your weekend is better!

Already told hubby I want wine tonight. It's been one of those days.

Still people go there for tax preparation. I believe that you should charge enough for your hard work and training. I do.

The account that the bank refused was not mine. That's why Republic issued the paper check. The name on the account was not correct.

I KNEW IT! All those times you said you were scared of me you were just being sweet. I knew it. I love you, Tom.

Ditto and likewise! My daughter got sent an official (but generic) "information on graduation logistics" email from her school -- replete with grammatical mistakes a 7th grade student should not have made. Neither of us was impressed. No, I take that back -- we *were* impressed -- just not the way they would have wanted us to be.

Your organization(s) are by far the minority of all universities around the country. I wish you had been working at the university my daughters attended!!

I work for a public university as my day job. I can't speak for anyone else's competence, but I know my Idunno what's up with these other places, but here we've seen enrollment drop consistently for quite a few years. I have no idea what portion of our funding comes from the state, but I've been told that as a percentage of total income, it's become less of the pie. I have no idea if that's true or not. This particular institution has had relatively modest tuition increases as a result of the dropping enrollment, but much more drastic changes are being made elsewhere. Maine has a system of public universities that includes 7 mostly autonomous campuses. Every campus used to have it's own IT department, now there's a single system-wide IT department that serves all 7 campuses. Every campus used to have its own HR department, now we're moving toward regional HR employees that travel between campuses. Next is Administration and Finance. After that, they're talking about removing academic programs from some campuses to reduce overlap between campuses. I don't know if any of these things sound like a big deal, but when you consider the rural location and geographical isolation of the top half of Maine, there are significant hurdles to making these changes work. If it sounds like I'm complaining, I'm not. I just wanted to explain that not every university is bloating up their administrative workforce and increasing tuition to cover it. In fact, we were named one of the top 5 universities in the north (a region that spans 11 states) for graduating students with the lowest debt load.

I filed this form reporting a preparer who was taking my law enforcement clients by promising bigger refunds. He was deducting haircuts, meals, and non-existent deductions (ammo never purchased, non-existent magazine subscriptions, etc.) and they always exceeded the 2% floor. He told them not to worry because it was legit and he had a ruling from tax court that police officers were entitled to a "standard deduction" for employee expenses and no receipts were necessary for expenses under $250. One officer was smart enough to ask for a copy of the decision and the preparer refused to give it to him saying he had to pay a lot of legal expenses to litigate the matter and he was not going to give it away for free. Three years later he is still in business and doing the same thing.

I am retiring from practice, gray hairs and all. I hope I can still drop in and chat with ya all, from time to time. Thirty seven years is long enough I think. Although I will still have to prepare mine,.. going back to pencil....NO SOFTWARE Giving away all my office furniture and equipment to charity today, hope they can use it or sell it. All in all it has been a rewarding career. I may miss it for a time, but I guess all things come to an end. My best wishes to every one of you pro's. Elrod

You can certainly stay on the board, at least now and then. We will miss you if you don't.

I retired before this tax season, but still do my return & two daughters'. TaxAct is the program I use--it only costs $9.99. Better than pencil & paper

And maybe a nice frozen margarita, while I am drifting in the pool with my teddy bear in the sun. *sigh*

Eh, when you're in a six year divorce and the other side refuses to proceed to the Halls of Justice, you start Googling.

http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/f3949a.pdf

  Learning to navigate a bureaucracy is one of the most important things you'll do in college.  You'll use that skill for the rest of your life.   I mean, you're tax prepares, it pretty much defines your profession!