Leaderboard

For those clients who are routinely late, my invoice calculation seems to come up charging more than I normally would. Hmm.

In my engagement letter, I stipulate a deadline by which time all, and I mean ALL, data must be received in order to timely file. If this isn't met, I caution that I may extend their returns at my discretion. It depends on my workload and how I feel. If I do extend, well, that costs extra, but I don't charge extra for preparing the return. I bill time. As it happens, many of the late comers tend to email and drip documents in bit by bit. Sooooo, every email I read and respond to and every document I address, well, I'm billing time. At my age and situation, I will not go to extraordinary lengths to complete a return when my conditions are not met. I'm fortunate with the majority of my clients and not afraid to lose one that doesn't play well with me. YMMV

The reason they are copying and printing is because many of their software systems aren't capable of sharing information. The reason that their systems and hardware is so out of date is because Congress hasn't appropriated the funds to update their systems and hardware. Then on top of that Congress and the While House keeps making so many last minute changes. I would have thought that this group of people would understand why we are in the mess we are in. Unfortunately, I guess it's human nature to scapegoat the low hanging fruit. I really feel sorry for the people working at the IRS because it really isn't their fault.

They're printing a whole slew of outdated-before-printing LETTERS demanding tax either not due or already paid, that makes our clients call US in a panic!

Flipped property in a Schedule C is inventory.

I would think that "flipped" property was not like kind to rental property

I can’t believe the IRS is not paperless. Who oversees the IRS? Who allows them to remain so archaic? We tax pros are held to higher standards than THEY are. It’s infuriating, really. BTW, this is Possi. While traveling and off my desktop, the app won’t take my other identity.

The fact is that we all probably have equipment that is more UTD than that of the IRS. Remember when they tried to tell us how small our shredder chips had to be? IRS is a disaster.

Most clients get some sort of Courtesy Discount. Until the last week. Discounts are done.

cbslee is correct. Keep in mind that even if there was a valid 1031 exchange that was properly set up and executed, there wasn't though, the fact that he took money from it would make at least that much taxable and indicates that not enough was spent on the new replacement property for the transaction to be totally free of tax.

Based on the information you have provided, there was no 1031 exchange. 1031 exchanges involving the sale of the old property and the purchase of the replacement property have to be handled thru a Qualified Intermediary usually involving investment real property. There is no after the fact magic you can perform to address this situation.

IRS needs to move to paperless. What are they copying and printing? And who thought asking Grover Norquist about this was a good idea. He is full of .

You are correct. So every fancy overpriced coffee bought from a fancy overpriced coffee chain, paid by BitCoin, goes on Schedule D and Form 8949. Most of those who actually use the stuff (as opposed to getting given a fractional BitCoin as a Christmas gift - had one of those this year) sign up with one of the online tracking services that give a tracking document or spreadsheet at the end of the year. Just like a summary of trades from one of the standard brokerage firms. In the past, we had our own spreadsheets we made up and tracked people's crypto purchases and sales with. And we charged them a lot for that, too, cuz boy oh boy oh boy was it ever a pain in the hindquarters!

Without the extension, most of our returns would have needed to be extended. Some forms were just barely ready by 4/15. 6/15 would have been ideal this year.

Automatic extension. Fee's are determined at a later date.

She's probably referring to an EIDL Loan, which are not forgiveable. She should have already received an SBA 1601 statement letting her know when the monthly loan payments start and how much. These loans can potentially be a real can of worms because they have very restrictive loan covenants which can really hamstring a business! So you are either going to have to dig in and learn about these loans or refer her to someone else so you don't get blamed if problems occur.

Im always curious as to people who can file early in tax season, always wait until the last minute. Going forward, I think I am going to add a surcharge for those who come in the final week and expect their returns to be done before the deadline.

Well my clients are still in the spreadsheet zone. And I refuse to track it. The one with many, many pages of fractional transactions suggested I pay for the software that will track it. Nah, I don't think so.

I think they only get what they paid. In a "normal" year, the amount that they have to pay back from the PTC would be added to the amount paid in the tax year the PTC was related to. So my first thought is that they cannot take an amount that was not paid out of pocket or repaid on the reconciliation form. UNRESEACHED - so take it for what it is worth. In this crazy year, crazier things have happened. Tom Modesto, CA

Judy has a great point. The foreign school must be on the list of eligible foreign institutions. The school will know; I don't know how else to find it. But I had a client who took a specialty course in eastern Europe a year or two ago; that school wasn't on the list so we had to forego any credits.

You mean payer info. Payee is your client. Yes, the IRS only validates that it's a valid EIN for efiling. And as long as the total 1099R income equals what the IRS has, their computer won't kick it out.

That happened to me 2 or 3 times in the past with the submission of an incorrect payer ID # but those clients never received a notice.

I have a handful of clients with crypto and they all are younger than age 35. I've informed them to complete my blank gain/loss worksheet to record the activity.

I informed all clients in my pre-Tax-Season letter that it is advisable to obtain an IP PIN. I included a Yes and No check box for them to indicate whether they did so or not. Approximately 20% obtained an IP PIN, 10% tried but were unsuccessful (some of whom couldn't pass IRS's confirmation-of-identity test), and the remaining 70% didn't pursue it at all. I'm surprised to read that a PIN for 2021 has already been received because it's usually not issued until the end of the year.

I don't buy fireworks, but there are several fireworks vendors on the NC/SC border, not far south of Charlotte. They are all located within a mile of one another at the Interstate 77 exit for the Carowinds theme park. I'm told their selection is vast. Around holidays, there are hordes of cars at these places with people buying hundreds and even thousands of dollars worth of fireworks. Amazing.

Copied from MarketWatch: Long-languishing 2019 tax returns and tardy tax refunds are being held up partly because of a shortage of working printers and copiers at Internal Revenue Service processing centers, according to a new Treasury Department report. Copy that, you heard right. “Lack of functioning printers and copiers contribute to the inability to reduce backlogs,” said a Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) report on the current filing season. Some background on the printer problems and their wider significance. When the pandemic first hit last spring, the IRS temporarily shut down its facilities and wound up with more than 20 million pieces of unopened mail and hard-copy 2019 tax returns. Then began the slow process of digging out from the 2019 backlog — all while sending out three rounds of stimulus checks and then revving up the current income tax filing season, which ends May 17. Meanwhile, taxpayers counting on 2019 refunds from their hard-copy returns waited and waited and waited. By the end of 2020, 8.3 million individual tax returns and transactions still had yet to be processed, TIGTA said. The tax collection agency has 1.7 million returns still in process that were filed before 2021, IRS Commissioner Charles Rettig told Senators last month. Most of those are 2019 returns, he said. The plan is to work through the backlog by the summer, Rettig said, noting that the agency is resorting to overtime and weekend shifts. When TIGTA staff inspected Ogden, Utah, and Kansas City, Mo. tax processing centers, they wrote, “a major concern that surfaced during these walkthroughs was the lack of working printers and copiers.“The IRS workers at those centers said “the only reason they could not use many of these devices is because they are out of ink or because the waste cartridge container is full.” That mundane office headache matters, the report said, because the copiers and printers are used to copy and churn out important tax documents. “The employees we spoke with were concerned that they would have a work stoppage if these remaining devices became unfunctional. This issue has been an ongoing challenge since March 2020,” the report said. 42% of the printers and copiers used at the centers are either unusable or broken, and others are still functioning, according to IRS estimates cited in the TIGTA report. The snafu has to do with a new contract for printers, the report said. The old contract ended in September and the new contract started in October 2020. But the employees speaking to TIGTA “indicated that the new contractor may not have been coming into the sites to replace the old printers due to COVID-19 concerns.” IRS told the watchdog agency it’s working on the matter and replacing the devices. The IRS had no additional immediate comment beyond report. The TIGTA report comes at a time when the Biden administration is seeking an increase in the IRS budget. If approved, the money would go toward measures such as adding staff to increase tax audits of rich people and corporations. But opponents say a report like this shows that’s a bad idea. “This report again demonstrates the ineptitude of the IRS,” said the right-leaning Americans for Tax Reform, founded by Grover Norquist. “The agency’s inability to do its job is due to incompetence, not lack of funding.” The IRS has so far received 121.1 million tax returns for this tax season, according to agency statistics through the end of April. The authors of the TIGTA report say they are concerned about whether the IRS has brought on enough seasonal staff to handle the current tax season and the backlog." Truly unbelievable It's like watching a slow moving train wreck They still have over a million unprocessed 2019 paper filed returns.