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From holiday greetings to pickles, that's what this season is all about, friends sharing with each other. We'll always have pickles together!

If anyone happens to be preparing payroll reports with NC withholding, there's a new wrinkle this year. For the past 2-3 years, NC has been requiring that the Copy 1 of W-2 (accompanied by the NC3) be filed electronically by Jan 31. However, around mid-December they have been granting waivers from the electronic filing requirement because their portal wasn't ready for filers of small quantities of W-2. As of Dec 24, 2018, there has been no waiver granted for 2018 forms. This means that there's a $200 penalty for filing paper copies of NC3/W2 even if you only file a small number of the forms. The NCDOR is still working on a way to manually enter the W2/NC3 information using a specially-designed spreadsheet. The 2018 spreadsheet was available for trial use until a couple of weeks ago, when they took it down for "maintenance", stating that now it won't be available until Jan 2, 2019. Assuming they get it back up and going, this will mean that employer data and individual NC withholding data will need to be entered manually if the filer uses the spreadsheet (unless of course they grant another waiver in the upcoming week).

Five more days and we'll all be in a pickle (trying to extract W-2 info from clients who think nothing's due 'til April 15th).

Thanks for the heads-up John. I have two clients that I will be compiling the required documents to file the enc3 and this information is very helpful. I did see where they have closed down the enc3 filing until Jan 2.

Not a user of their software. If you have not contacted the software vendor for suggestions, do so. They are the experts on their software... All I can offer is a programmer's perspective. Any sort of data input, when the data must remain open for changes in another location, as well as updated with changes on your end, and at any other location, has to be slow. Data collision is the issue (who has the latest, and when, and what to do if more than one tries to change the same piece at the same time). Testing for data collision is slow, as is keeping all possible parties updated in a live manner. Slow is a relative term. Even I can type faster than data can safely be shared, but a two finger typist may not have enough speed to notice the time taken for data updates and security.

I got an email from TT today. It said hours were flexible. They actually called my home a couple of years ago during tax season. I told them that I didn't have any spare time and if I did I would spend it sleeping.

I've been getting that solicitation for at least 3 years. Saw a company on Facebook advertising that they were looking for EAs and CPAs to do expat tax returns and some offer in compromise work from home. They wanted only full-time type workers and they paid you a portion of what they collected (something like 30%). It was a good hourly rate that they "predicted".

As close as I could find: "on camera" costs such as wardrobe, make-up, or hair" are deductible. Tips would be part of "hair" costs. There is a rub in that who pays the costs, employer or employee. Source MSSP: entertainment