Leaderboard

I give everyone a physical return but the reality is through the year they want pdfs because the originals were lost and they want some sort of financing or tuition deal.

CPaperless has "Signature Flow" that does e-signatures. The only fee to you is per-signature, unlike many services that charge monthly. Since we only do ...maybe a dozen? e-sigs per year, a hefty monthly fee would be prohibitive for us.

I also did a streamlined filing for two clients (sisters). In their cases, they are dual citizens but had not lived in the US since they were young teens. All their adult lives were spent in Europe. We filed 6 years of FBARs and three of 1040's (all wages excluded under foreign earned income, "taxable" income of a couple bucks' worth of bank interest wiped out by std deduction). No penalties. Bank accounts and securities accounts, small balances, and an entire wage-earning history of being outside the US; where were they to have heard of requirements? And every year we do the 1040 and they do the FBAR. I think I only charge them enough so they don't feel like they are being given charity. Once I got my English-Czech "cheat sheet" so I can read their docs, it all takes me about twenty minutes each.

I dress from the shoes up a lot too - but more for comfort than looks. I love that necklace - and the shoes, although i don't wear heels anymore. Your wife has great taste!

This coming year, I will also give them a paper copy plus I will offer them a pdf copy on a DVD or a Thumb Drive. I will not email any clients or third parties pdf copies of their returns ,password protected or not ! Email over the internet is way too insecure !

In my client's situation during the amnesty program we did the Streamlined filing and explained that the failure to file was non willful and by proving (with death certificate) that the taxpayer had passed away and he was the one in charge of family financial matters. Since he had years of cancer treatments he wasn't thinking straight. We filed the required 3 years of amended income tax returns and 6 years of FBARs but they did not charge any penalties. Also balances weren't large compared to some of the oligarchs out there. Balances were under 300K.

Portals are portals, to move information more securely than other options back and forth. To get verified signatures that the IRS accepts on forms such as 8879, you need something designed to the IRS specs for signatures. What all are you trying to do in one software? eSign will deliver verified signatures and it does deliver the tax returns to your clients. You can use it, at a lesser fee, to collect other signatures without verification, such as your engagement letter. But, it won't work for your clients to send their tax documents to you. FileShare will let you upload any documents to your clients, including signature pages. It will let your clients upload any documents to you. It does not verify signatures.

Hey, I still use snail mail when there isn't any time pressure

Also the invite is just to set up their end of the portal. It doesn't specifically invite them to send you anything, but once set up it's pretty easy both directions. I set myself up as an individual and sent myself the invitation and played with it going both ways so I could better help my clients. They loved it!

Under edit client there should be a box to check to send an email invitation. The screen shot is if starting with new client, but after selecting your client there should be an edit button which will open up and you can look for the box to invite.

With a mess like this, and what I assume was a "self-prepared" return, he might be better off to try to explain the situation himself to whoever is conducting the correspondence audit and plead ignorance. Could he get a letter from a clergy person that knows of the relationships and the circumstances to write saying that the children were his grandchildren by marriage to their grandmother and that they lived with him over half of the year? Or school records showing his address as the address for the children? And put that with a letter in his own, non-technical words, explaining the situation and then hope for the best. And while he is waiting for a response to that, start saving up to repay some or all of the credits. Who knows, he might get lucky depending on whose desk this lands on.

A big part of this is showing Laura all these great posts and likes. She said I have a lot of wonderful friends who appreciate a good pair of shoes. I'm still working on understanding that. PS. She says she dresses from the shoes up.

Gorgeous necklace, totally kick-ass killer shoes, and a great story too! Thank you for sharing! I'm so glad it all went so well after your panicked search.

I love the comparison. It's great for clients, and also great for ME in reviewing. If I see substantial differences year to year, I go back and make sure there is nothing crucial that I have missed (or the client has forgotten to provide me).