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IRS won’t even notice, they only care for the revenue and expenses, correct useful life and personal use.

Copied from IR 2014 - 196 "The IRS continues to expand the functionality of its online platforms, including several new features in Individual Online Account that give taxpayers the ability to: Retrieve all their tax related information from one source, including Wage & Income, Account, Record of Account, and Return transcripts; Request an update to their Identity Protection (IP) PIN using their smartphones or tablets; View information about the status of their audit at their convenience, instead of having to call the IRS to obtain audit information; Use a Lien Payoff Calculator to access lien information, calculate their lien payoff amount and generate a letter for download/print; Complete the Pending Installment Agreement process within Online Account without having to be re-routed to a separate application and View a comprehensive overview of their account information, including the status of their tax refund as it’s being processed. " It will be great if all these features work

I really have mixed feelings about whether or not I should encourage my clients to set up their own online accounts. We may end up with phone calls from clients while they are logged into their online account who do not understand what they are doing.

I see it often, a difference between the detailed required for tax reporting, and the detail wanted for internal reporting. In Payroll, it is the cases when an employer wants to attempt to quantify the total cost for each employee (can only be guessed). Or how I may or may not want to break down my internal costs for say internet connections, advertising, accounting, etc., versus a total of valid expenses which the tax agency does not need to see piece by piece. It took me a couple of seasons to better align my internal books (COA) to best line up with our outside preparer. Makes it easy to cross check things when the tax return documents and papers closely align with the internal accounting figures.

Each year, my own COA gets smaller and smaller. I like to track certain things separately, but I use sub totals so the report I send to the preparer has just what they need without having to add or subtract from multiple COA figures. Internally, Paid by CC, Paid by check, two other sources, and one for returns. But the preparer sees only a gross number as their process does not need to show returns separately. Deductions: Officer Comp, Other salaried/wages. Taxes and licenses, Interest, Depr, Advertising, and other deductions. I did not ask them to use and show these, they just "do", likely based on how few separate figured I give them. Internally, I have many items I still track separately, even getting as close as I can to separating each employee's costs (because we get reimbursed some via a work study program, and at first, and at first, WOTC).

Just took a quick look at the instructions for Form 3520 and it looks to me like the 3520form must be filed by the taxpayer (can't tell from the OP if you did that for them or not). Look at the instructions for Who Must File, and if your client received a distribution from a foreign trust, it looks like that should have been included in the year of the distribution. As for the trust requiring a EIN, I would probably reply to the 576A form by denying that my client is the trustee and giving the IRS the name and all information about the trustee to the IRS. Let the trustee handle that, your client should not have to deal with anything other than reporting of the distributions from the foreign trust. Tom Longview, TX

Please note I said flat-out I had no idea if it was true or not (and frankly the comment about a Commodore 64 tends strongly to the "false" category) but simply that I thought it was amusing. Figured we could all use a smile; that's all.

Well the Windows 95/Windows 3.1 stories are debunked: Thom Holwerda 2024-07-23 "Let’s start with the actual source of the claim that Southwest Airlines was unaffected by CrowdStrike because they’re still using Windows 3.11 for large parts of their primary systems. This claim is easily traced back to its origin – a tweet by someone called Artem Russakovskii, stating that “the reason Southwest is not affected is because they still run on Windows 3.1”. This tweet formed the basis for virtually all of the stories, but it contains no sources, no links, no background information, nothing. It was literally just this one line. It turned out be a troll tweet. A reply to the tweet by Russakovskii a day later made that very lear: “To be clear, I was trolling last night, but it turned out to be true. Some Southwest systems apparently do run Windows 3.1. lol.” However, that linked article doesn’t cite any sources either, so we’re right back where we started. Southwest uses internally built and maintained systems called SkySolver and Crew Web Access for pilots and flight attendants. They can sign on to those systems to pick flights and then make changes when flights are canceled or delayed or when there is an illness. “Southwest has generated systems internally themselves instead of using more standard programs that others have used,” Montgomery said. “Some systems even look historic like they were designed on Windows 95.” SkySolver and Crew Web Access are both available as mobile apps, but those systems often break down during even mild weather events, and employees end up making phone calls to Southwest’s crew scheduling help desk to find better routes. During periods of heavy operational trouble, the system gets bogged down with too much demand." ↫ Kyle Arnold at The Dallas Morning News "That’s it. That’s where all these stories can trace their origin to. These few paragraphs do not say that Southwest is still using ancient Windows versions; it just states that the systems they developed internally, SkySolver and Crew Web Access, look “historic like they were designed on Windows 95”. The fact that they are also available as mobile applications should further make it clear that no, these applications are not running on Windows 3.1 or Windows 95. Southwest pilots and cabin crews are definitely not carrying around pocket laptops from the ’90s." A classic example of online media repeating misinformation. It's getting really hard to tell the difference between fact and fiction

Just read a story that I could not believe. Southwest Airlines is not affected because they still use Windows 3.1 !!!! I don't know if I really ever want to fly that airline again, but right now it is the only one flying. Tom Longview, TX

It would pretty damn useless for me to have a forum just on my computer that no one else could access.

And this is just one of the reasons why I've always avoided "cloud" software.