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I agree. Advanced age and forgetfulness is a condition that should qualify. The sense I get from the IRS is they really don't want to assess this penalty if the taxpayer has already fixed the problem. Compliance is more important than punishment on this issue (besides the optics of taking senior's retirement savings - even if it is justified under the law). Tom Longview, TX

As we are doing, it is a good idea to review your personal estate plan, to make sure your wishes are known, and to try to make it as easy as possible for those who survive.

AICPA demands IRS pick up the phone faster for tax pros "The American Institute of CPAs wants the Internal Revenue Service to pick up the phone faster on its so-called Practitioner Priority Service for tax professionals and make other fixes, pointing to a "plummeting" level of service in recent years. Taxpayers and tax pros alike have long complained about the difficulty of reaching the IRS over the phone and those complaints have mounted during the COVID-19 pandemic. Despite recent efforts by the IRS to ease the burden that the backlog has caused for taxpayers and practitioners, the AICPA notes that service levels for the practitioner priority service phone line had been in continuous decline for several years. The National Taxpayer Advocate's annual report to Congress found that the percentage of calls answered on the PPS line declined from 78.3% in fiscal year 2019 to 28.0% in FY 2021, with the average speed of answering the phone nearly doubling from 8.8 minutes to 16.1 minutes over that same period. Still, that was better than the level of service for regular taxpayers, where the percentage of calls answered by IRS employees declined from 28.7% in FY 2019 to 11.4% in FY 2021 and the average speed of answer went from 16.2 minutes in FY 2019 to 22.8 minutes in FY 2021. Many taxpayers have complained they were unable to get through at all. "We are hearing from tax practitioners everyday regarding their significant PPS line challenges and the impact those challenges have on their interactions with IRS on behalf of taxpayers," said the AICPA letter."

Manual entry? Yikes! Tom Longview, TX

Well, it's not good news. I found the ATX instructions for these forms. Not what I was hoping to read. Posting here for anyone who might in the future be looking for a better solution. https://support.cch.com/kb/solution/000139480/000139480

I have a couple in my small practice that are selling properties in various ways. Spouse's dad has a partnership that sold a building, so my client's K-1 will reflect that. That kind of thing. And, they all need ES calculated. I'm still preparing 2021 returns and don't have enough hours in the day to recalculate 3Q and 4Q 2022 ES, especially when their % of ownership in that partnership that sold the building changed as dad gives more to his grown kids each year. Even more time-consuming if they became my clients without basis info for dad's 1065 and 1120S K-1s, and I'm waiting on all their prior returns/K-1s to compute basis, too! I am seriously going to fire some clients in October.

I would prepare the 5329 and request the waiver. You don't need a note from the Dr. Just indicate that it was an oversight and that both the 2021 and 2022 have been removed from the account. I've had several of these over the years and never once did they access the penalty.

That will be me next week but in a Speedo

In 87 when wife inherited the property, wife essentially gave husband a gift of half of the property's value at that time, so his basis is the value at the time of wife's inheritance. Then when wife dies in 2014, husband gets a step up of the other half of the property that was titled in the wife's name that passed to him. Summary: For husband's purpose of this sale, half of the property is at the 1987 inherited value, and the other half is at the 2014 value.