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Anytime there's a new tax law after the year begins, tax preparers get to deduct all the chocolate they want as a business expense. Or wine. Or liquor.

You mean you're not deducting it already! Those are standard office supplies.

No calculator. LOTS of erasers. Penalized for addition/subtraction/other math mistakes. It would keep them too busy to cause other trouble, which makes it even better!

I don't have to push my clients earlier; I have to push them later, spread them out over the year. They'd all want to file 23 January if they could, if they had all their documents. But I can't complete all those returns in two months. I'm preparing partnerships and S-corporations now, so will have only one month for personal returns. My choice is to make much less money or work more months. My hubby works all year, so it fits our schedule for me to work much of the year. We schedule our own vacations, days off, mental health days.

No

Seems to be a totally reasonable expenditure on squeaky balls to me, considering this professional's other characteristics!

Way too complicated. Just use a blank line on the line 25 federal withholding worksheet (it will show on line 25c). And do something similar for the state. If itemizing, also add state withholding to Sch A worksheet.

Nah, with mine there will be enough people that will want/need their refunds, will want to get it over with, or will be afraid of being penalized if they owe.

I love extensions; I hate breaking stride to work on extensions, calculate payments, e-file, etc. Wish the extension was truly automatic. Wouldn't mind too much the payment date of 15 April as long as no actual extension had to be e-filed. Although, I'd like it even better if the payment date were later, May, June, or July would be great. But if I were king of the world, there would be no new tax laws during the year in question; laws messing around with 2020 taxes would've had to have been law by 31 December 2019. Let us help with year-end planning. Give us time to learn the new laws. Lockdown Congress and make each one prepare his/her own tax returns with pencil and paper and maybe a calculator with the instructions and wait for forms that aren't final and instructions that haven't been revised. Don't unlock the building until everyone is finished. Staff, interns, everyone.

It's on the 1099-SA input, there's a field there to enter the amount.

Might be the quickest and easiest way to get it done. HR should have made the correction and paid the amount withheld back to him.

Oh good grief. Can they do one thing right?

Extensions are my very good friend. Keeps me from going totally ballistic between now and 4/15.

Definitely unethical and illegal for a child/student to claim his own dependency, get EIP/RRC, etc., IF HE CAN BE CLAIMED BY ANOTHER. As you point out, a high earning child could be providing more than 50% of his own support, so it is possible, ethical, and legal IF YOU KNOW HE CANNOT BE CLAIMED BY ANOTHER. Have parents and child fill out a support worksheet with you, and keep it in your files to document the outcome. I have one coed angry with me, because "all her friends are doing it." But her parents are happy to keep the education and other credits, and they DO qualify to claim their daughter. Don't forget that the student can get the AOC WITHOUT CLAIMING HIS OWN DEPENDENCY if his parents do not claim him, even when qualified to claim him. He won't get the refundable part of the AOC, though. I have high-income parents who can't claim education benefits but have a college kid with a tax liability who can use the nonrefundable AOC. That is perfectly ethical and legal. We don't write the laws, but we do have to work within them.

I agree with Lion we need more information here. The mother can claim the son up to age 24 if he attends college full time. The original OP stated the son attended part time which I agree will knock her out of claiming him as a dependent which negates the HOH as well. By your figures of the son's income, it appears he should file on his own. I always do this both ways and compare it to the parents return both ways and determine the best scenario for everyone.

I tell them the same thing I’ve always told them - “we’re filing an extension”. Doesn’t matter to me whether IRS extends the date or not. I’ll be filing some extensions this week.

What do we tell our clients????? I tell them, even if the IRS will extend, I will close my office after April 15 and go to Bahamas. That's what I am telling them now and that's what I will tell them in March and that's what I will tell them up to April 7. But if the same person calls me on April 10th, I will tell him/her that the government extended the time to file and that my office will be happy to have their business and my office will stay open The IRS is doing the same thing because if they announce the extension now, people will relax too much.

Right there, first post!

I already did.

I got our own form 1444-B dated 2/1/21 in today's mail. It has both of our names and showed only one of the payments issued by direct deposit. The letter is wrong: it is either for one of us with the correct amount, or it is for both of us and the amount is wrong by one-half.

I read that if you look up your amounts on your IRS MyAccount, that each spouse has to look in their own MyAccount to get the two amounts to add together. But I didn't think 1444-B did that. One more thing to worry about.

How is this a legitimate W -2 ? No combination of these numbers make sense!

Amen!

I am for clients who agree. I hate amendments, especially during tax season.

I've gotten spoofed calls from myself, too (landline, not cell, though). Finally got this resolved (thanks, Judy!) to some degree. All is well, but computers spit out the emails and the reps have NO way to stop them. But their records are correct (as are mine) so I can ignore them without concern.

Isolate for 14 days, please.

I was thinking as I was donating that maybe I should increase my token amount. I had thought with 2,800+ members and 1,700+ online, that if we each paid a token that Eric would be good. But you're suggesting that only how many actually contribute financially to this board? Please let us know, because I have no problem with donating more, more often, more money.

I donate every year around this time, but it's probably not enough.

This board provides such a valuable service. Over the years I have learned so much and so many folks are so very generous with their time to answer questions and give counsel. Eric, thank you especially for helping make this forum so worthwhile. I wholeheartedly agree with the encouragement to support with a donation.

It is in fact sad news. I don't see the snow ball rolling.

Still waiting for a reply from ATX. Hopefully the delay is because it's a holiday (theirs, not mine).

That's what what is so insidious about them. They have learned how to spoof any email address, just like scammers spoofing any phone number. Last year my wife received phone call from a scammer and the spoofed phone number was her own cell phone number!

250 is such a small amount to begin with that most teachers burn't that much in first 2-3 months. I have no problem with it. Your mileage may be different.

This from NATP:https://www.natptax.com/p/Pages/IRS-due-diligence-audit.aspx?utm_source=mkt&utm_medium=email&utm_content=021721dd&utm_campaign=ship