Leaderboard

Just wrapped this one up after placing it on extension back in Apr. Had a couple of telephone conversations with the MA DOR. Nice folks - very helpful and patient as was predicted on this forum. It was pretty easy in the end using their PY/NR schedule. Had to allocate working days in MA divided by net working days everywhere. A little quirk in the MA rules required us to divide MA working days by 365 minus weekends, holidays, and even PTO days. This produced a smaller divisor (less than 260) and therefore a slightly higher MA tax liability. But the tax liability wasn’t too bad and the taxpayer got a full credit on their home state return for the MA tax paid. So it was a wash to the taxpayer, except for my extra prep time. Also had to do a little extra analysis on the work days vs travel days in MA. You don’t have to count travel days if you fly in late in the day and/or out early in the AM. Those are just travel days. But a morning arrival in MA and/or and afternoon/evening departure from MA counts as a MA work day. Thanks for all the good advice and suggestions on this thread It helped me focus on the important things

If you were going to report it on a 1099MISC, which box would you use? I think what it is closest to is an account reimbursable for an employee, although it is not exactly that since they are not an employee. But if you are reimbursing the exact amount of the expense or less, I would not think it would qualify as income and would therefore not be reportable on a 1099MISC. I would retain a copy of the bill or other calculation of interest and penalty with the payment information to explain why you did not report it as income. I could be wrong too - that has been known to happen.

And, thanx for the helpful info re MA NR/PR.

The problem is not the income but the withholding. It was reported in the decedent's SS number. He died the prior year and can't file for 2022. Spouse or estate can't claim the withholding because it was reported in his SS, not hers or the estate's EIN. I'll go the route of trying to get the 1099Rs corrected. Thanks everyone for the suggestion.

I'd say no, because you're just making them whole for the penalties and interest they paid/will pay, so it's not income to them.

Well that's true, but what is the intent? For the homeowner who forgets their codes? We all know where that will go.

I fail to understand how this can be. At best it is criminal activity to break into someone's garage, car or whatever. This is exactly what every thief needs to have. The authorities need to find these folks who make this stuff shut down their operations and lock them up. But of course, if they are selling the amounts they claim, then there's the revenue lost from shutting them down. You say "We definitely live in a different world now! shoot I remember the days when my dad never took the keys out of the car nor did we close and lock the doors on the house at night. No AC and the air flow through the house was great. No electronic toys, no hackers, no computers just a bunch of kids playing outside in the neighborhood who couldn't stand to be in the house. All we wanted was a baseball, football, bat and glove, and basketball and not the latest and greatest iPhone. Hell we were happy with a telephone party line. Those were definitely the days. A time frame when a man's word was just as good as a signature on a loan document. Never gave it a thought that the first computer, tax prep software would grow to become a tool for thieves. Oh yeah, you could count on the good old US Mail system too.

Indeed. The subject wage is high enough, raises in the limit are just grabbing at the non regular employee.

If we applied SS tax to ALL income, we could lower the rate. A lower SS tax rate would benefit low earners and small business immensely.

More hacking details: "This includes approximately 3.5 million Oregon driver license holders; roughly six million Louisiana residents; some 770,00 members of the California Public Employees’ Retirement System; between 2.5 and 2.7 million Genworth Finance clients; approximately 1.5 million customers of insurance provider Wilton Reassurance; more than 170,000 beneficiaries of the Tennessee Consolidated Retirement System; and more than half a million Talcott Resolution customers. Callow tells TechCrunch that the mass-hacks include U.S. educational non-profit National Student Clearinghouse, which could be a “potentially significant” breach in terms of numbers. The organization, which began notifying schools of the data breach, works with 3,600 colleges and universities and 22,000 high schools."

So for $169 you can order online a device with which you can hack many wireless devices i.e. garage door openers, car key fobs, remote gate openers, electronic door locks, basically many wireless locking systems. We definitely live in a different world now! "You may have stumbled across the Flipper Zero hacking device that’s been doing the rounds. The company claims it is on track to sell $80 million worth of ’em this year after selling almost $5 million worth as Kickstarter preorders — and it claims it sold $25 million worth of the devices last year. So what are they selling? Flipper Zero is a “portable gamified multi-tool” aimed at everyone with an interest in cybersecurity, whether as a penetration tester, curious nerd or student — or with more nefarious purposes. The tool includes a bunch of ways to manipulate the world around you, including wireless devices (think garage openers), RFID card systems, remote keyless systems, key fobs, entry to barriers, etc. Basically, you can program it to emulate a bunch of different lock systems. The system really works, too — I’m not much of a hacker, but I’ve been able to open garages, activate elevators and open other locking systems that should be way beyond my hacking skill level. On the one hand, it’s an interesting toy to experiment with, which highlights how insecure much of the world around us actually is. On the other hand, I’m curious if it’s a great idea to have 300,000+ hacking devices out in the wild that make it easy to capture car key signals and gate openers and then use them to open said apertures (including Tesla charge ports, for some bizarre reason)."

I believe this company based in London England. It's not against current laws to make or sell this device. Until someone uses it to steal something no law has been broken.