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Working on an S Corp. all day. First one of the year. The last thing I need to do is enter the shareholder distributions. I cannot for the life of me find the entry screen. I pulled a huge brain cramp for about 20 minutes. Then I found it and felt stupid. Happy Tax Season everyone! Tom Longview, TX

I feel your pain! I went back at a liquidated partnership multiple times before I had everything entered correctly within the program to be reported properly on the business and personal returns. Each time I looked at it I saw something that needed to be fixed.

This was one of my main impetuses (impeti?) for retiring.

I use Drake and had a couple of those moments too! It's all coming back to me. but the older I get the longer it takes.

As soon as I've backed up my system I'll try it. Perhaps I should mention that, when Marissa (whom I now feel is ATX's best tech ever) helped me overcome problems stemming from migrating ATX 2020 & 2021 from my old Windows 10 PC to a new Windows 11 one, she remarked that she feels 32 GB is the minimum RAM I should run the program with. As soon as we finished I ordered another 16G DRAM from Crucial, to double my RAM.

I get the same every year when I look back to remember how to reverse distributions. It is the once a year items which I have to be careful of. It has taken be decades to let go of Dr and Cr entry "speak", and just think of where it is going and where it came from (like my customers think).

Try this. Go to tools, repair index files. Be sure to click on all files. You can uncheck the test or sample returns. This tool runs very quickly and usually aligns everything back up.

Think of it as closing distributions to retained earnings. That's the entry I make. Zero out distributions, and put it to RE. I do the same with partnerships, but each partner has their own equity account, instead of an RE for the business.

I question that. For example let’s say charitable organization distributes meals to shut ins. Meals are delivered by employees of the org. and volunteers. Employee’s and volunteers all use their personal vehicles; and are all reimbursed under an accountable plan using the standard federal mileage rate. The standard rate is bases on the estimated cost per mile of operating your vehicle. For whatever reason, IRS does not allow you to deduct the full cost for medical or charitable travel. However, the cost is still the same whether you are driving for business, medical or charity. So if a volunteer/client came in and said they received $xxx.xx from charity as reimbursement for travel under accountable plan, I would offer the position that it is not taxable income over the standard rate for the charitable deduction. Instead, they have been reimbursed for the cost of operating their vehicle for the benefit of the organization. That also appears to be the position taken by Oregon DAS as mentioned above.

MA at least called these payments tax rebates, tying the payment to state taxes. If the client did not itemize, we're ignoring it. If they did, we'll check the property tax amount. For many in eastern MA, the $10K state tax maximum is more than covered by real estate taxes alone.

Any state refund is taxes you previously paid coming back into your pocket. The state is just treating this as an increase in your refund, and is sending out the usual statement for refunds including this amount. What is interesting is that the people who had a balance due in 2022, and paid it before this "refund" was issued are getting a card saying they got this amount as a refund for 2022. So I guess we put the entire balance they paid in as taxes paid in 2022, and then put this amount in as a refund on page 1 of the return rather than netting the amounts? To top it off, instead of the usual post card VA sends, they have printed the postcard form, perforations and all, on 8.5 x 11 paper, and are mailing it in an envelope so i am getting calls asking what this is like i needed something to do this time of year.

I believe that there are about 10 states that issued these payments. The problem is that many of the state laws implementing these payments, including California, did not legally refer to these payments as State Tax Refunds or State Tax Rebates, which is why the IRS needs to provide more guidance. Note: Washington, which does not have a State Income Tax is calling their payments a Rebate of State and Local Sales Taxes Paid . Film at 11

The state payments are a refund of taxes paid. So, unless they took a deduction for it off of their federal return, not taxable. Even if TP does not pay state income tax, they are paying sales tax. If TP income was so low they have no state income or sales tax, they aren't going to be having federal tax either. Same general concept as credit card rebates. If the rebate was for personal purchases, not taxable as it is deemed a reduction of payment. If the charges are for business purposes, then taxable because the full (pre rebate) amount was deducted.

The standard Accountable Plan Rules apply to non profit employees and directors. I don't think you are going to find a direct cite clearly written in plain english.

You have to open the return and use the E-file menu to Display Rejection Errors, even though it wasn't rejected. ATX needs to rethink this mess. Alternately, in E-file Manager, select the return and press Ctrl+R.

Let's split the difference: "Nonprofit organization employees and board members are eligible for business mileage reimbursement whereas volunteers will receive the charity rate. However, volunteers may receive reimbursement for commuting mileage which employees are not eligible for."