Leaderboard

I had ordered something from a vendor in Fl and he was calling me to confirm the order and called our home phone instead of the office phone. My daughter was about 12 then and answered the phone with "City morgue -you kill them, we chill them. " So he hung up assuming he had a wrong number. When he called back she said "City morgue - you stab em, we slab 'em." But this time he told her he was looking for me. She gave him the office number, and he was laughing when he told me the story. She felt bad. No harm done.

I do live payroll processing, so I do have access. The difficulty lies with 2 wage earner situations and situations with significant bonuses. Unless the client is willing to pay me a fee for a next year's tax projection,which very few will do, I just hand them the W 4s and point them to the instructions. I used to give clients some guesstimated advice, but ever since the TCJA went into effect that doesn't work very well and has backfired on me a few times.

When my girls worked for me, they quickly learned to identify themselves immediately - because the three of us are utterly interchangeable on the phone. They would answer, and people would instantly launch into their complicated questions only to be told, "You'll have to talk to mom; hang on she's coming." The flip side is when older daughter had her first job, they handed out the W2s in January. Her response was, "great; thanks!" and the other kids were asking "what is this and what do I do with it?" She started explaining and next thing she knew, she had the entire shop surrounding her as she explained the data fields and where the information went on the federal and state forms. She told me later, "As I was talking, I was thinking to myself 'I sound just like mom...'"

It only helps if they can do basic math.

But is has everything to do with how much of their liability is paid in during the year. The original comment was that the tables are no longer available. Simply pointed out that they moved to a new pub. You seem to be itching for a fight, so I'm done.

It's called adulting.

No more mor "ir" onic than the IRS feeding 941 forms into scanners - still. There is no way we will ever get to any flat federal handling, as it could lead to the mythical postcard return, and a loss of tens of thousands of j o b s.

Usually company's will have a secondary method of verification, but I guess not in this case. If client can't update the phone record because the account is now closed, perhaps the custodian will accommodate a request to mail hard copy of documents to the address of record and should work if that address hasn't changed. Client may have to do this in writing if this custodian refuses to listen to that type of request via phone call. I've had some luck with this method because a scammer doesn't have access if mailing to the original address on file. YMMV. This may end up on extension, and I think you need to put this back in the taxpayer's court for them to provide the documentation and for them to explain what transpired. The other choice is that the client could accept that the 1099R as presented is correct and file the returns. It can always be amended later.

So if you take the 15% depletion on royalties, it still says that you can take property taxes, mortgage interest because it's related and holding the land. Am I correct

That's true, but when I selected e-file through a vendor site, it replicated a 1096 for each type, and I'd assume that means that each was transmitted as separate batch with only like forms included. That appears to be the way ATX is handling it and had done so in past years, iirc. It's been since the GADof12, the Great ATX Debacle of 2012, since I used it though.

How does that help, there is no W 4 provision to have a% withheld?

It would seem to me that it's the taxpayer's responsibility to go online and verify that his contact and bank account information is correct.

year's ago when my daughter was in middle school, she knew when she answered the phone (land line- no one had a cell phone back then) she had to listen for the fax sound and wait until it picked up. what she didn't know was that the person on the other end could hear her. one time, she was waiting for the fax sound and being silly, she screamed some gibberish in the phone. She was so embarrassed when my client responded to her.

I left my son to answer the phone once day for FIVE MINUTEs. i happened to call back and found out he was answering the phone, "This is Ryan, I can't help you."

I certainly would never go for a pricier package. I'm trying to retire.

The IRS has a page to calculate the W4. I personally like the new W4. What I tell my clients is the percentage that they need to have withheld to breakeven. Then they can look at their pay stub and see if they are having about that percentage withheld.

Here is a new twist. The phone meeting with the custodian went absolutely nowhere. The custodian did state these folks sold the asset to themselves. Okay great, the 1099R is checked as an IRA SEP. So, how did that happen? How do you sell yourself an IRA??? We're back at square one because the previous rep for the custodian failed to follow thru and update the contact phone number and the rep today couldn't verify identity because the client couldn't receive a verification on a phone they no longer have.