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I have NEVER regretted turning a client away. But I have, many times, regretted NOT doing so. Run!

Thank you! I was stunned to have this call wake me up this morning. The attorney doesn't want to touch it either. He is giving advice as a "favor". Mainly to throw me under the bus. The medical bills are old and very large. I can't imagine that they won't pursue them. I am going to tell them that they need an elder care attorney and that's not me. I feel better about my decision.

Those clients are now ex-clients. I am not interested in this new and exciting area of tax. Feel free to offer your services and I will be happy to make referrals.

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.

For some years now, when people ask if my fees are negotiable, my response has been, "Yes, but only UP!"

Just one more reason to retire and look for another line of work.

You need to insist that they go to an attorney specializing in elder law. I wouldn't touch this for $ 10,000. I know it's common practice for law firms in my area to ask CPA Firms for bids to prepare gift, estate and trust returns in situations like this. If the attorney wants to engage you then fine, but don't put yourself on the line when it's not your area of expertise, because inevitably down the road they are going say but the CPA said . . . . . . . . .

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 The reason that their systems and hardware is so out of date is because Congress hasn't appropriated the funds to update their systems and hardware.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.

Interesting you bring this up. My fees are not unreasonable. I went up some $25 on a client who I had just given his return which will get the couple a refund in excess of $10,000. I simply told him that I considered investing $225 dollars to get a $10,00 return was a good deal. He mumbled he had not got back a like amount from last year they being victims of ID theft with the 2019 return still in process. I kept silent as I had read the letter sent to them by the IRS which pretty clearly indicated his new wife had herself filed the return with her social as the primary social. And this from a marriage his mother said was "A marriage made in heaven." When you wait to become 40 years of age to marry a dingbat with two like minded teenage daughters I should have expected little else.

And, THAT's why I need to raise my fees, no matter how much clients complain!

How long before anyone having VC account becomes subject to FATCA rules? So if we have a client who owns VC and we fail to alert them that they must file the FINCEN report, wonder who they would throw under the bus when the penalty notice arrives?

may 17 still not enough time

You can't avoid mortgages by gifting property. plus the medicaid lookback period in most states is 60 months. "All asset transfers within the timeframe of the look-back period are reviewed, and if an applicant is found to have violated this rule, a penalty period (a period of Medicaid ineligibility) will be established. This is because had the assets not been gifted, sold under their fair market value, or transferred, they could have been used to pay for the elderly individual’s long-term care. If one gifts or transfers assets prior to this look-back period, there is no penalization. The date of one’s Medicaid application is the date from which one’s look-back period begins. In 49 states and D.C, the look back period is 60 months. In California, the look back period is 30 months. New York will also be implementing a 30-month look-back period for their Community Medicaid program, which provides long-term home and community based services. (At the time of this writing, NY has a 60-month look-back for nursing home Medicaid, but no look-back for Community Medicaid). As an example of the look back period, if a Florida resident applies for Medicaid on Jan. 1, 2021, their look-back period extends back 60 months to Dec. 31, 2015. All financial transactions during that timeframe will be subject to review."

all gifts in the past 2 years are reconsidered and put back as income to the decedent or something like that.

Like all of you, we are trying as sweet as we can, but there are always people we dont like. Especially, relatives, soo hard, late and demands time and fees, how can I ask a fair fee from relative. I always wish they forget and I can put them on extension, but they wont, they pop up at last moment and say, it is easy..... so sad....

Join the club! I am SO done with this tax season.

I’m just a little bit tired right now. Just a wee bit.

Definitely inform them that if their virtual currency is held overseas, they may have reporting requirements on their returns and separately. At my age, I have no desire for new clients so would not take on someone new with VC. I have one existing client who bought some VC last year. Didn't do anything with it during 2020. But the reports she brought me were to-date and showed she "earned" partial coins in 2021 by letting them "lock up" her VC &/or watching videos about VC. I told her that that will be income on her 2021 tax returns. And, I told her to know where her VC is "stored," because if it's overseas, she will have additional reporting requirements as her holdings grow. I also sent her information about the reporting app that her Coinbase recommends, free for a certain number of transactions and then a monthly fee. I told her she could choose any reporting service she wants or do it herself, but that I do NOT do bookkeeping.

Play a joke on the agent when the waive the penalty that you are just pennies away from becoming a millionaire, this really to happened to a tax preparer that increased their fees like by $5. His client complaint that they didn’t pay this fee the prior year and why the increase bla bla.... the preparer said fine you can pay the same as last year, his client in turn said, I am saving as much as I can, I am just pennies away from becoming a millionaire

If the house is mortgaged, the bank has the title so your client can't gift something she doesn't own.

I don't know about 'normal' but understand your feeling. I just completed the return for a client who sold off all her stock and withdrew all her IRA funds, etc. to become eligible for Medicaid. The cash went to the daughter and son, of course. But the client died in March unexpectedly and now the estate owes several thousand dollars. Daughter and attorney of course state that there is no money in the estate to pay the tax. I know its legal but.....

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

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

I never use the NEC or MISC input forms unless there's tax withholdings. I override sales on Sch C and rents on Sch E, all the time. I sometimes use the Sales tab on Sch C to list multiple 1099s if it would make the organizer more useful next year.

Double your fee and hope he goes away!

Are you using ATX? Check to see if that form had an update and make sure yours is the current version. You could try deleting the form, closing the return, maybe also closing the program, and then reopening the return and adding that form back in. See if it is calculating correctly after that.

I am not familiar with a SSN as a Payer's PTIN. A PTIN is a preparer's number issued by IRS beginning with a P followed by 8 digits. Maybe I don't understand your question.

Both SSN and EIN have 9 digits

Are you actually filing innocent spouse as opposed to injured spouse? For injured spouse the tax is calculated MFJ. 8379 is then completed so the that the injured spouse (the one without past debts that refund would be held to pay) still gets the refund they personally would have been entitled to.

I hate the letters where the total payments are correct, but I just had them on a different line than the IRS does. I entered it as a 5th estimated payment but the IRS has it as an other payment. CHECK THE TOTALS!!!

The first penalty was probably excused without the need for the waiver because it was deemed insignificant by the person who handled your request. You might want to consider whether that's the case this time, based on the amount of the potential penalty. If a hurried IRS employee processes it as a First Time Waiver, you've slammed the door shut for 3 years. You could find yourself in need of a significant penalty waiver with lots of money at stake at some point in the future but unable to get it because you wasted it on a few dollars of penalty reduction prematurely.

Tell him SURE - but the fee (including your time) goes on HIS bill, 'cuz it will just be for him. Report back on how many colors his face turns before you tell him you were joking.

This is all quite true. However, they *could* put a stop to the outdated-before-sent automatic letters (pull the plugs!) and use those printers (or at least the paper and toner!) for other purposes.

I knew that there was a clawback period for Medicaid, I don't know about regular debts. I thought that the attorney should know the legal stuff.

https://www.irs.gov/identity-theft-fraud-scams/retrieve-your-ip-pin

It's amazing how many customers think the IRS is doing preparers a big favor by giving them an extra month to prepare returns. No way. I wanted this season to be over April 15th, and I suspect most of you felt the same way. To answer the original question, my fees tend to go up during the season after I am drug through the garden on ongoing changes and PITA stuff I hadn't foreseen going into the year. So late filers are subject to the maximum fee - not by design but by what happens.

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

Flipped property in a Schedule C is inventory.

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.

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.

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

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!

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 .

Not a tax professional. Runs a business providing hardware repair, virus removal, surveillance systems, and IT consulting.

Does the Canadian University participate in our student aid program?

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.