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I had a client finally decide to go elsewhere a couple of years ago with their partnership return because the family member managing the books got tired of my asking for so much detail and clarifications about iffy numbers. I am much happier now. It was the last of my business returns (outside of Sch. C's) and life is better. It's just too short, in my opinion, to try to deal with missing/incomplete/questionable data and still feel confident about signing a return.

I am not going to get into the messy details, but for years I did a 1065 return with no basis details. It was hard enough just to get the Income & Expenses! Finally earlier this year, I told them that I couldn't do their return any more.

Line 1 contains only income, expenses, adjustments for the partial year only. That is, items which were received or paid during that period. Similarly, line 4 contains only deductions paid during that period. The column periods are not quarters, they are year-to-date. These are then annualized so everything after line 6 is based on the full year (as if their AGI for the year was the amount in line 3). Nothing gets divided by 4. The annualized self-employment tax is calculated separately in Part II.

APIC and yes it increases basis. Enter it on the basis tab of the K1 in ATX. You never reduce APIC. Distributions close to Retained Earnings.

You can only have one entity type. You have an estate and a trust, each of which files Form 1041. Just because the businesses didn't have income doesn't mean they didn't have expenses. Also, both the trust and the estate may have other income that necessitates filing. When the businesses are distributed by the trust and estate, the new individual owners can choose S corp status at that time, but not now.

In the last few years, I have finally realized my limitations and my areas of expertise. If these were my clients, I would tell them I am not able to do their returns any longer.

Lion is right, you need to get all of the information available with respect to the plan, before you even speculate as to what can be done.

A year or so ago, I had to recreate basis for a couple partnerships that weren't always my clients. Luckily, they had all the partnership returns. Money in + income - losses -distributions etc. https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/i1065sk1.pdf https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-utl/partners-outside-basis.pdf If you use CCH's AnswerConnect: https://answerconnect.cch.com/intradoctoc-document/tpz0209013e2c84a68b88