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Happy Independence Day, everyone! The forum was inundated with bots this morning and they were able to many accounts and many, MANY pages of spam topics in about 2 hours. I've deleted 110 accounts and 2,568 topics from the site, so it should be all cleaned up now. If you see anything that I've missed, please use the Report feature on the post. I've made some minor changes that will hopefully keep this from occurring again, but I'm not completely confident that more significant changes aren't necessary so I'm keeping a close eye on the forum. It should become apparent very quickly whether the bots are still able to get in once the forum is open again. Thank you all for your patience!

Your email addresses are not readily accessible on this website. Only Judy and I can see email addresses for individual users.

You bet! I may end up taking the forum down again soon, it looks like they're still making it through although more slowly than before. I need some time to look at where these accounts are coming from--the registrations seem like they're being created manually, not by bots, and then once registered the posting is automated. I may end up blocking all traffic from Russia and China, but need to investigate the traffic more closely to see how effective that would be. I could also add a manual verification step to registration, but I need to look more closely at what that process would look like on our (your) end as well.

I did see those reports along with Judy's email this morning. The registrations are happening manually. They're answering the questions correctly and not trigging Google's ReCaptcha service. They're also using unique email addresses for every registration. Once they made it past the registration process, they have a script that will automatically post content, but the forum doesn't allow people to post more than once very quickly, so that throttles how fast the spam can be added. With 110 accounts, though, it can pile up quickly.

I have my software set to check that automatically. I've been able to use it a couple times, saving getting a 2848 signed and filed. But, it is only good for a year.

110 accounts with email addresses! I was watching the posting in real time, certainly not from tax preparers, so it was surreal watching posts show up with lots of detail supposedly about customer service numbers for various well-known companies that might fool people on a more general site. Luckily, not things tax preparers would click on, on a tax site. But certainly clogging up our site overnight. Thank you for cleaning all that up, Eric.

Thanks Eric, that is good news. In today's world I find it to be safer to be somewhat paranoid, so I changed my password.

Thank you for taking good care of us, Eric! I was up late last night and saw the posts coming in. It was not all at once, automatically. There were a couple of screen names posting with about the speed of someone cut/pasting manually. It was kinda odd. I'd leave after a bunch/page-full and then return to another few, or I'd report some to see more came in while I was reporting, rinse & repeat. That kind of speed. I apologize for inundating you with so many reports. In my sleep-deprived state it seemed like a good idea to report a bunch so you'd see the extent of the problem before you had to enter the message board or without looking farther.

Eric, thank you for your quick response and on a holiday too! You are awesome!

In all the years I have used it and the client had an issue, the IRS still demanded the 2848 before they would talk to me. Our software automatically checks it, but in practice it's useless.

I would just add the fuel and insurance expenses to the $ amount on the 1099 NEC for the total revenue, then deduct the fuel and insurance as expenses. Actually this would be a better presentation since the IRS is looking for revenue to equal or exceed the 1099 NEC amount. I wouldn't worry about correcting the 1099 NEC for 2022. However I would advise your client to have these expenses added to his 2023 1099 NEC.

Our email addresses are readily accessible. We will need to watch and see if our individual email addresses start getting spammed. Perhaps our email addresses should be treated like passwords?

I was able to use it successfully on one occasion when the contact with IRS was made within 12 mos of filing. Other than that one time, it seems rather pointless.

"WASHINGTON ― The Internal Revenue Service warned taxpayers today to be on the lookout for a new scam mailing that tries to mislead people into believing they are owed a refund. The new scheme involves a mailing coming in a cardboard envelope from a delivery service. The enclosed letter includes the IRS masthead and wording that the notice is“in relation to your unclaimed refund.” Like many scams, the letter includes contact information and a phone number that do not belong to the IRS. But it also seeks a variety of sensitive personal information from taxpayers – including detailed pictures of driver’s licenses – that can be used to by identity thieves to try obtaining a tax refund and other sensitive financial information." Scammers are endlessly creative

Interesting and good read. I always thought the code was pretty straight forward on this issue. About midway through the reading, I began to question the emotional distress as a possible injury. Also, I can side with the CPA for thinking the same thing. But... after reading further I think the judge was correct. I guess you can say she filed the suit honestly, relied on the CPA's advice hence the statement, "the advisor made a mistake". On another note, in January, I sat in a mediation to settle a lawsuit for our middle daughter for a dog bite. The dog did enough damage that she has lost a significant amount of use of her left arm and hand which is her dominant hand. We discussed the taxability of her settlement with the attorney. I did state this was a clear case of injury that was permanent and not to be included in her taxable income. This article made me rethink this whole scenario.

I gotta go with Abb's response. It is true, you are just making them whole so no income. However, in the HRB replies, the fact that Block paid the tax is a benefit to the client so it should be income as it doesn't have the character of a reimbursement.

The IRS has created a one page poster to be passed on to clients: https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/p5797.pdf

quoted to move the remainder of C.Frog's post to its own topic.