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Correct.

Sometimes, I've found that just asking the question out loud, or typing it on a forum, helps me find the answer without any input.

Unbelievable, you have clients who aren't 100 % honest? I am sure they just weren't able to remember?

The prices of crypto change not every day but every nanosecond. So I pay my $1k tax bill in bitcoin, and by the time the transaction clears it's worth $850, or $1100. The exchanges charge higher fees than credit card companies too. If any of my clients ask to pay in crypto, I will politely tell them to go to the state tax website and figure it out themselves. These schemes must have been cooked up when the prices of crypto were soaring. Now that they've tanked big time, maybe these states will reconsider.

Gosh, Yardley; that's a tough one. Finally though, a question that doesn't require exhaustive research by the estate/trust wizards hereabouts. I believe IRS has already ruled for the prosecution ("yea"). However, many hair-doers as well as other independent contractors feel it's a subjective question open to debate . Lots tend to be "agin" while I'm obliged to argue "fer" and the damages are occasionally brutal (for both). "Such is life"; as the old man used to say.

Yes, and my honest clients include it in their books as income.

lol!! Thank you - I did file but charged him little.. All is good Happy 4th!! D

Hey, if one can fake ethics and honor, the sky's the limit! Most of the "ethics" taught is nonsense and easily gamed for those of a mind to so do. Best I ever sat through was a long conversation (yes, a conversation with two instructors and a room full of 100+ tax pros) on gray areas. How to recognize when "helping a client" slowly pushes you into grayer and grayer areas (client doing this on purpose or by accident). Recognizing hidden places for conflicts of interest. There was nothing cut-and-dried in those two hours, and plenty of disagreement in minutiae, but it was the best and most thought-provoking ethics ever. I still think back to it and those same thought patterns have helped me recognize several gnarly situations and back out before they got too gnarly.

I love starting the SOL. I advise filing any time there is any question. Filing now not only starts the SOL but means it's done when information is relatively fresh in minds. Hate getting IRS letters demanding tax due that isn't actually due, just because proof of same was not filed in a return.

"In February, a U.S. accounting watchdog fined PricewaterhouseCoopers’s Canadian partnership $750,000 for weak controls that saw more than 1,200 employees participate in “improper answer sharing” in internal tests from at least 2016 to early 2020. Rival Big Four auditor KPMG paid a $50 million penalty in 2019 after the SEC found it had used stolen information to prepare for regulatory inspections, while some of its auditors “manipulated an internal server” to lower the pass mark in training exams." Surprise, Surprise !

Considering that most taxing authorities, if not all, won't even accept credit cards unless you go through a service that allows them to have the fee taken from the payer rather than the payee, I don't understand why they are accepting the risk of the market fluctuation on virtual currency.

PIA isn't new - it's been around for years as I'm a subscriber. I did a $79 for 3 years deal last time. I use a VPN because my client who works at the FBI, my nephew who works at Apple in Cupertino and a firm I work with said to do it. Plus my wife is required to use a VPN 100% of the time for work at a major University. It slows my speed down from about 200mb to 170mb but upload drops to 20mb. Neither of those impact my life at all. The primary problem is that RingCentral won't let you log into your administration accounts via the VPN. I can still run all my phone calls through them while on the VPN. I've used Drake, TaxWise and ATX on the VPN and never had a problem. My client who works for the FBI said you should assume anything that is "encypted" has been hacked. While I use encryption for PDF files, he doesn't allow me to do that with his files. My nephew at Apple smiled when I told him this and said it was a rather safe assumption to make. His opinion was encryption is safer than unencrypted but it's still not safe. I've had multiple people tell me the document services that CPAs love to use aren't really much safer than just emailing the documents. Basically if someone is smart enough to get your emails, they are smart enough to figure out how to get around the encryption.

It would be hard to find RD in Brasil.

Thanks, Eric, Medlin and Abby. Excellent Advice.

May we all unite with joy for our freedom.......... But... be safe when grilling your food....

Thanks to all. Very informative. Tom Longview, TX

Every time I've tried a VPN, the internet slows more than is acceptable to me, even though they always say it shouldn't slow your internet. But I've only tried that type of VPN at home, never at work. Using a privacy VPN while traveling is probably a good idea, as is avoiding all public wifi and just using mobile data. I use an add-on in Firefox that forces websites to https, instead of just http, for added security.

For other reasons (allowing auto failover or sharing between two connections) I started using a Firewalla router. Great stats, don’t panic at how many incoming hits you will get. Plenty of security options including vpn support. No fees after purchase of the router (unless you need something you cannot setup on your own such as a vendor vpn). Personally, I don’t use a vpn. I also do not use public connections. I am not worried about the isp selling the ip addresses I visit. Frankly, privacy is unobtanium, but security is still easily obtainable starting with monitoring what the grey matter tells the rest of the body to do. Software and hardware can help when the grey matter slips up.

The only time I use a VPN is when I'm traveling and using free hotel WiFi which for me isn't that often. I used Mullvad VPN during a recent trip to Boston, spent less than $6 for the month, and cancelled the service when I got back home. I have never had issues connecting to any websites but it is an extra server to route all of your traffic through, so it can potentially be slower. To directly answer your question, nope, I haven't heard of PIA. In my opinion, the main benefits of using a VPN are privacy related. You can keep your browsing from your ISP because all they see is encrypted traffic between sites and the VPN server. If you don't trust your ISP to not sell your metadata to the highest bidder, then a VPN is a good way to avoid that. Just make sure to pick a trustworthy VPN provider because they're the ones who will have that data instead of your ISP. In terms of general security, most of the web now uses HTTPS anyway, so all of that traffic is already encrypted and secure. Transmitting things like credit cards and passwords isn't improved by using a VPN. Some VPN providers have additional security measures that protect you from visiting harmful sites or downloading harmful files, but a little common sense about those things is a lot more effective. There are some things that I think should be higher priority for online security: Don't reuse your passwords. Create secure passwords and use a password manager to remember them for you. Even though it's a pain sometimes, use 2 Factor Authentication wherever it's supported. The type that uses an Authenticator app (Authy, Microsoft Authenticator, Google Authenticator, etc) is better than relying on text messages, but the text messages are a lot better than a username/password alone. If privacy is your main concern, install an ad blocker extension for your browser. uBlock Origin is a good example. An unbelievable amount of tracking happens as you browse the web, and there's a lot of money in knowing who you are as an ad target. A VPN generally doesn't do anything about this, because it's all happening in your browser which is communicating with the site you're visiting. Encrypting the traffic through a VPN only means it's being securely sent directly to Facebook, for example. An ad blocker will shut down most of that tracking and keep it from being shared with the sites you're visiting. EDIT: I didn't realize this before, but Mullvad VPN, and probably other VPN providers include ad blocking and anti-tracking features which would be similar to what uBlock Origin does. uBlock Origin is free, though.

Well, I don't who raised these people, but one way to guarantee I don't respond is to direct me to kindly familiarize myself with anything. Familiarize yourself with this: Not today, Satan.

I like the way you said that. Filing is goodwill. None of us are getting rich off this tax return. Nobody is taking advantage. Clients assume they should file. They are required to in this case, but even when not required, my clients want to file. Ok, ok, there's always that one who doesn't. You know the one - she was mad at you because she missed EIP2: "You told me I didn't have to file..."

Here's the spin: "Because it's their job to hold others accountable, Ernst & Young — one of the "big four" accounting firms — says it holds itself to a high standard of ethics. In fact, the firm's entire global code of conduct is based on an "ethical" framework. "At EY, nothing is more important than our integrity and our ethics. These core values are at the forefront of everything we do," Brendan Mullin, a spokesperson for Ernst & Young, said in an email to NPR. "Our response to this unacceptable past behavior has been thorough, extensive, and effective." Many of the employees interviewed during the federal investigation said they knew cheating was a violation of the company's code of conduct but did it anyway because of work commitments or the fact that they couldn't pass training exams after multiple tries."

What a message to send to their clients. Wonder how they will "spin" this one. Totally agree about having all eggs on one basket leads to cracked eggs...

This makes me really angry, because aside from the potential harm to the public, the programs and monitoring that came about because of previous ethical violations actually costs me a lot of money in peer review fees and annual enrollment fee into the program that administers those reviews.

Of all the exams to cheat on....

One of my favorite clients brought in a German Pink tomato for me one year, cradling it like a baby. I thought I might have to wrench it out of his hands.

Yes, you need to file. I had a client with a 1099 B with an even trade; no gain and no loss. They called him on it because they only had a record of the sale; no record of the basis. And, we had filed a return because of other issues but they billed him for tax on the total sales price of the stock exchange that my assistant failed to report.

Maybe they can pay Rita in tomatoes...

I would absolutely prepare and charge for this tax return.

You didn't say what entirely makes up the $21K of AGI but will assume since you used "AGI" and have input the data, that the $21K includes only the taxable portion of their social security. As far as the Sch D/8949 activity, the determination of gross income for the filing requirement includes capital gains but not capital losses, so your client may still have a filing requirement if they have losses offsetting the gains in your calculation AGI. You must use only the gains in the filing requirement calculation. There is a whole list of items in Chart C of the 1040 instructions that lists other situations that would require filing. Probably the most common for older retired folks are if they had any distributions from an HSA, or Archer or Medicare MSA, even if those were used for qualified medical bills that has zero taxable effect. Obviously this doesn't consider the state requirements either, so you'll have to check that also.

Filing does preserve the 3-year SOL and makes identity theft harder (or catches identity theft since the last time they filed, so they can act on it now). And, the state may be a lower requirement (isn't IL only $33 of income?! CT is a higher threshold than federal, but ANY amount of CT w/h requires a filing or a $50 penalty).

I believe the requirement states Gross Income over $27,800 for them for a federal return. I would consider that they are required to file. However, if they did not, there would most likely be no consequences assuming basis was reported for all of the income from their stock sales.

And now they will be handling millions of responses to letters they sent for non-payment of taxes owed. I’m having every client print the proof of payment from the IRS website and respond by mail. Bwaaaaa

Correspondence Processing Delays When a taxpayer receives a notice and is requested to respond or chooses to respond, the taxpayer must generally do so by mail. Through May 21, the IRS processed 5million taxpayer responses to proposed adjustments. It took an average of 251 days to do so – more than eight months. That is more than triple the processing time of 74 days in fiscal year 2019, the most recent pre-pandemic year. “When a math error or similar notice is generated in connection with a paper-filed tax return,” the report says, “the combination of the return processing delay and the correspondence processing delay may mean that the taxpayer must wait well over a year to get the issue resolved and receive the refund due. Well the CP 2000 that I replied to back in December is still outstanding.

Not quite. Rather, it's because the answers actively HIDE until you give up and ask. Then they pop out at you, snickering, as if they had been there the whole time.

"Revenue departments in Colorado and Utah are implementing programs to enable businesses and individuals to pay their tax bills with virtual currencies such as Bitcoin, Ethereum and Dogecoin, targeting implementation within a few months. The two Western states look to be outliers, however, and still face some logistical hurdles before their programs launch." This would make scheduling estimated tax payments an interesting challenge, since the value of cryptocurrency changes every day