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And here's to you for making my Friday into Martini Friday. Cheers, Bill

Yeah Lent Friday!!!!

Actually in my school district they have "Life Skills" classes. One of my clients is math/science teacher and when she taught this class, she taught her students about our tax system and how to to fill out and file a tax return.

In Virginia, Medicaid sends out the 1095 whatever. But every state is probably on their own as to whether they do or they don't. I'm with Jack. Check the box.

We send our children to school to learn terrific geometry problems, and solve horrific stats problems. We make sure they take sciences that they are not interested in, fill their calendar with Spanish classes they will never use, and make sure they have at least 2 "arts" to graduate, or something dumb like that. But no one teaches a child about basic cooking skills, how to keep a checkbook, what interest on credit cards looks like, the implications of student loans, and especially income tax and how to fill out a W4. It is a huge problem in our schools, and we continue to ignore basic stuff in lieu of math - that personally I cannot figure out why they need it these days after they learn the basics! We have computers! I've done a few amends myself. Grumble mumble...grumble mumble.....It's been a very long week.

Check the box. Then sleep well tonight. They were all covered for 2016. Don't overthink it.

Okay I do handle a few 1065 rental returns. The partnership can have ordinary expenses outside of the rental expenses. Some of those can be legal fees related to the partnership itself, annual report fees for the State, here in NC anyway, office supplies and accounting/tax preparation fees that should be on page one of the 1065 form. Your client should keep a separate mileage log for each property to properly allocate the expense. Mileage and auto expenses are not deductible on a rental, just travel mileage to and from to perform services on the rental property. Only meal deduction would be to entertain new business and is only 50% deductible reported on the M-1 and K-1 resepctively as a non-deductible expense for the other 50%. If any evictions take place, those expenses are allocated to the individual property. Remember, the partnership is an entity filing form 1065 that can experience ordinary operating expenses. If your client has improperly reported previous expenses, you should advise them to amend with the explanation they are responsible to file an accurate tax return. If they choose not to amend, then move on as it is not your problem. With that said, if incorrect depreciation has been taken, then the same approach but use form 3115 to correct it. That would be a requirement that would determine whether I took on the client or not.

There is that ugly word .............. assume. Those fees and taxes are ultimately your client's responsibility. It would probably be prudent to at least ask the question.

She is actually using a service that books all of her reservations and collects the money then in turn gives her the net proceeds, so I would assume they are collecting any state fee's ect....

don't have to allocate to each property, set up an extra property called admin building and put them all there. same results less hassle and we do about 1000 returns like this per year, no issues with irs.

It happened again. Tax return rejected for SS used on another return. Turns out the kid who had $600 of income and $30 of withholding filed his own return to get his money back. Now he gets to pay me to amend the return, and I am going to charge him more than $30 to fix the problem he caused his parents. College kids are so smart. They get advice about taxes from Jerome the gardener at the college. Jerome is real smart. Tom Newark, CA

Guess I am 'old school' but it seems to me that the home is the place to learn basic cooking skills and the other things you list here. Schools and teachers are charged with an overwhelming range of tasks to teach already. I had Home Economics way back when for a few weeks but already knew much more than taught in that class. Parents and other adults around maybe could assume 'Life Skills" teaching. I could understand maybe an elective in high school but a short time but these things I learned at home. Yes, back in the 50's and 60's with non-college educated parents who both worked full time.

There is no requirement to issue a 1099 Misc to Trustees of estates or an executrix administering an estate for the fees they charge. Even if they are in the business of administering estates and trusts the same applies. The executrix or trustee includes the fees received on line 21 of form 1040. There is a difference if the estate or trust was engaged in any non-related business activities including rental activities may have to issue the 1099 Misc for those related activities only. Not sure which scenario applies to your client.

A couple of spanish banks, Santander for instance, have branches in the Northeast U.S. If your client has accounts with Santander, or another spanish bank with branches here, perhaps the refund could be direct deposited to the U S bank and then the client could arrange for transfer to their spanish branch account.

Now so many schools don't mail forms. ask kid if it is available on online account.

I just now figured out that you meant would you really report the mobile home rental on Sch C and not would you really report RV rental on Sch C. I was really struggling trying to figure out with what you were trying to accomplish there. LOL. Three. In 50 states. Three.

Client has already submitted W-2s and discovered "short term" employee that did not have wage reported and another employee with under reported wages. It appears the cure is to submit a new W-3 that includes only the omitted W-2 and submit a W-3C for the corrected W-2. Can anyone confirm that is the correct procedure? Thanks

What I meant to say was: send only the corrected W-2c with the W-3c, and send only the omitted W-2 with a new W-3. Thanks for the reply Rita.

Many of these problems are also caused by people not READING what's on the screen. They just click away. And then they never LOOK at the completed return to see if it makes sense. I had one this season where the parents efiled the child's return and never realized they allowed her to claim herself. Couldn't even blame the kid in this case. I told them there's a reason we only charge $50 for dependents' returns--so this kind of mess doesn't happen. Now they can wait 3 months for their refund from their paper return, and they had to pay me to amend the child's and re-do their returns. Bet they don't try that again.

You may see more of this in the future. Many of the trailer/motor home magazines are advertising this is a way to make money off your RV when you are not using it.

If they rented it multiple times during the year like that - I'd call it schedule C. They are in the personal property rental business. Plus I agree on the 5 years.

I agree with your analysis.

Any body else? Also if on schedule E is it treated as residential rental at 27.5 years? Or is it motor vehicle 5 years? I've never had one of these and frankly don't really know which way to go. Any suggestions?

I charge per hour with a 1 hour minimum but the time it takes can be reflective on many issues (like what the previous preparer charged). Charging by the form makes no sense to me since even a schedule C or E can be 5 minutes or 4 hours. I have clients who hand me a single Quickbooks print out and want a 1065 generated on a single rental property. It might be $200 normally but since they hand me 8 of them at one time, I charge $130 each and they take <30 minutes each. I'd suspect I'm in the $675 range like Rich but I couldn't really tell. Had a prospective client who had 30 rental properties and EVERYTHING was run through paper books. I told him $45 per property on his Schedule E and he about fell over dead. He found a EA who would do it for $600 and I about fell over dead.

Hi Rich, you are absolutely right that fees depend on many things. I'm just saying that some mighty good tax preparers may not be giving themselves enough credit for their work and their knowledge and experience. The OP seemed stunned at the fee he was thinking of charging. I think it's very reasonable for the work described in the post. That said, I still think it's difficult to learn how to prepare business returns and fees should include the recoupment of all that previous time and effort we've spent.

You guys are seriously undercharging for 1120S. I can whip one out in an hour if the info is good from the client. But, it took me YEARS to be able to do that. No Turbox program is out there for these returns. No franchise tax company is going to charge less than $1200. It's not like the competition costs less, and over time these returns are easy for us, but it was LONG HARD WORK for us to get to the point where it became easy.