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From a CPE talk I gave back in 2023; (staged) me under my desk after fully reviewing the disaster I had inadvertently accepted as a new client. You may find amusement in this, @mcb39.

This is me but with a bottle of Chardonnay and wearing my flannel pants and I'm never coming out.

Ditto but it was $4 and on depreciation. Total difference on a long list of assets; he hand-calculated and I used software. Of course it made no change to tax. I later suggested he find someone closer to home and to my very great relief he did. Any engineer is a potential royal PITA client and treated (and priced) as such until such time (rare) as they prove otherwise. Engineers don't know the difference between precise and accurate. They are related but not identical. While I know the IRS truncates, I cannot stop myself from rounding "properly" - as rounding is different from truncating.

I spent an hour of my life that I will never get back debating rounding with an engineer. He wanted to know why his calculation of interest income differed by $2 from what was on his return. After I told him it was due to rounding, he asked if I rounded first, then added, or added first and then rounded. He proceeded to lecture me on why I should add all the interest first and then round. I explained how the software required that each 1099 had to be entered separately and would not allow me to enter the cents, so I had to round first. And how $2 did not change the amount of tax owed. He insisted I add $2 to his interest amount. Luckily he did not come back the next year.

I notified two on 3/15 their returns were done. Radio silence. Since I no longer have a filter, today I sent a text to each "24 hours and counting." It's on them but I want the files out of my office. One replied "Oh. Sorry. I'm in France." The other called and said "what does that mean? I need to come pay you?" Then, I had another come to pick up and I wish I could show you all his check. Pay to the order of said one hundred fifty and zero. The next line was blank. It wasn't signed. I said "give me your checkbook! Here's how you write a check!" I wish my IRA didn't tank last week. I wish I was full retirement age. It's time to be done with all of this.

you put your right foot in, you take your right foot out, you put your right foot in, and you shake it all about! good grief.

to describe what yesterday was like. Today I want to hide under the desk. What is wrong with people?

A lawyer would probably be talking statute of limitations. I'm thinking no penalties on taxpayer's reporting of item missing from a filed return, just interest--but that may just be the way things should work.

100% agree! I've heard this termed "the midwit problem" with people who are reasonably smart & competent in their own areas of expertise mistakenly thinking that makes them smart & competent in every area. When they do it with tax returns, we get huge messes to clean up, for clients who will question and nit-pick over every bleeping line on the return. Charge accordingly, with pre-payment required.

I usually only work a half day today. Take tomorrow off. Back on Thursday but I probably won't get much done. Fridays off the rest of the year. Semi-retired the rest of the year.

I started to accuse her of "post counting"

https://obliviousinvestor.com/solo-401k-contribution-calculator/

The rounding issue reminds me of the spreadsheet days of ATX. Most ALL calculations did NOT round, but "display" was globally set to zero decimal places. I had a client get a "nastygram"(TM Catherine, IIRC) over EIC when AGI was shown as yadda 50, but was actually yadda 49.70. Took forever to track down. I never entered cents after that, and any calculations that could produce decimals, were edited to include =round(x,n)!

No one else does today so I thank you

Engineers know more about anything than anybody about any subject. Some of the worst returns I've had to clean up have been self-prepared by Engineers who knew everything.

Where the Shadows lie.

It can indeed be an excellent place to hide.

Today may be worse !!!! But hey.... its the last day !! You can take a few weeks off then hit the extensions !!!! Get the booze ready for the after season party !!!!

Into the land of Mordor.

Patti, I like you.

Almost all of my (rare) posts start with "I don't often chime in, but I appreciate your knowledge." At least once a day during tax season, I tell myself that I have no business doing taxes because I'm no longer qualified. Times have changed. Laws have changed and I took the wrong classes to try to stay up to date. I've done this for 38 years and I'm good at it. Until the weird thing hits my desk and I wonder if I'm smart enough to figure it out. It's April 14 and I'm on the edge. But you're not alone and you're not stupid. If you are? Then so am I. I can't wait for this time tomorrow.....

The instant I think a client is not being truthful, they become an ex-client. That's a hard red line for me.

For reference, this home based business does use water, including a steamer table that uses quite a bit.

Your post did it!

The IRS instructions tell us to round like we learned in school, up from .50 AND down. However, the IRS truncates numbers at the decimal point, essentially rounding DOWN ONLY. They make the rules, but they do NOT follow them!

I'm getting old and spicy, and now, when people tell me something preposterous (or give me some crazy tax rule they 'know'), I look them straight in the eye and say, 'Did your hairdresser tell you that'? Stops them cold. Literally. You should try it. They look at me dumbfounded for a minute, then they usually chuckle, and then they remember that it's a 'fantasy tax scenario', and we never speak of it again. You have to be over 50 to pull this off, but I've now made the cut, and I use it every time.

New clients. Sold rental property in Florida for a nice profit in early January - before having their taxes prepared for 2023. So the lady that prepared their taxes last year told them they would not have to pay tax if they put their money in a money market - you know - from one investment to another. Now I'm the bad guy.

MD can't be efiled either, but you only have to file MD if there is tax due or you're using the 504NBD deduction. MD does allow efiling the 504 but ATX had not programmed it.

Since no money was received in 23, there might not be any tax, unless depreciated assets were sold. See line 12 of form 6252. When a business is sold, both parties need to agree on the price allocation and file form 8594, so that both parties are accounting for the sale the same way.

I have a client (one shareholder S Corp and his personal return) who has been behind. In late 2024, we completed 2020 and 2021. Had to be paper filed. I haven't heard from him since but now the busy season is over, I'll remind him to get me the 2022 and 2023 quickly so we can get 2024 before the extension due date. We'll see.

This Tax Advisor Article should be helpful where they discuss the meaning of a"Limited Partner" in name only: I give the law firm high marks for creativity but after you read this article you should file an extension and you will need to have a serious discussion with your client . https://www.thetaxadviser.com/issues/2024/may/limited-partners-and-self-employment-tax-a-new-test/

So what else is new?

I think on the 1041 EF Info page, in the section under Estate/Trust, the question is asked if the IRS has the most current Responsilble party information on file, and you need to check either yes or no before you can e-file.

My client wanted to know if the $.02 interest earned on his single member account was reported on sch b or sch c.

One way of getting rid of such clients is to significantly raise their fees so they leave on their own. Beware, though, they may just pay it, but at least you'll be compensated for the aggravation. I had one jerk whose fees I raised by $500 each year for a couple of years. He started out at $800 and went to $1,800. He was on schedule for $2,300 when another accountant in the office took him over.

Only if you keep a contemporaneous log

Is it "ordinary and necessary" to "do your business" during working hours? Asking for another friend. Tom Longview, TX

Who could imagine this would get into such detail? Thanks, Catherine, for providing this 'fun' diversion in these last grueling days of the season. It's certainly led us into some interesting rabbit holes (just in time for Easter)!

Our clients can spend their money foolishly. But their record-keeping better be accurate and organized, so I can make sense of what's deductible.

A client walks through the livingroom to get to the OIH, but we can't use the sq' of the LR as part of OIH. Regular and exclusive. My clients can use my hall bath, but it's not part of my OIH, so I wouldn't allocate the bathroom part of my water to my OIH. I keep changing sides on this. Probably 'cause I'm too sleepy to read the code.

Without water, how does a client flush the toilet when they go to the restroom? Just asking for a friend. Tom Longview, TX

I thought it was so preposterous I didn't even go into the other methods. There has to be concern as to whether such an expense is ordinary/necessary, and also whether we are being told the truth.

You referred to the code once, then I asked about it. In your response to that question, you referred to a pub, not the code. Based on your answer, your conclusion, "Bottom line, water is not a cost of using a OIH so it is not allocable", doesn't logically flow from your premises. How much gas is used as an ordinary and necessary expense in a home office? Most of a house's gas is used to heat water for showers and laundry, to cook, and to heat the rest of the house 8760 hours a year compared to 2000 hours the home office is used. Yet the gas is allocated based on floor space. A 150 sq ft office in a 3000 sq ft home doesn't use 5% of the gas, yet 5% gets allocated to it. Same with electricity. How much electricity is used by the washer, dryer, oven, fridge, kids gaming computers, etc compared to a home office. Stop taking water & sewer on your clients' home offices if you want, but please don't choose this hill to die on. Unless something like a pool was involved, the irs has not disallowed water & sewer deduction for a home office, so why would you?

And if he parks it at the house (commuting) or uses it to haul his daughter's furniture to her new apartment or stops at the grocery store on the way home or...he still better have a log to document biz/farm vs personal/commuting use.

I may use that on a difficult meeting tomorrow!

This. If someone needs to make a few payments to get paid up for the year and don't want to do an official payment plan, I give them a few blank 1040-V forms and they mail them in with payment. The IRS will eventually bill them for interest owed. It's never been a problem.

Could be bad advice from the preparer; could be bad listening by the taxpayer. Just recently I had a client call me about a transaction which we had discussed 3-4 months ago. At that time she told me what a friend had told her about the taxation of the capital gains. I explained to her why that advice from her friend was dead wrong and I then gave her the correct information. On this subsequent conversation she repeated the bad advice to me, and when I corrected her she said "But I remember you telling me that on our last conversation." Fortunately I had made notes and more-or-less read them back to her. Either I'm a very bad communicator, she's a very bad listener, or (most likely) she only remembers what she wanted to hear rather than what was said.

Sometimes clients hear what they want to hear. If other withholding or estimates were already sufficient for 2024 to meet the safe harbor, are you sure that the previous preparer didn't really say that if they didn't pay tax on the gain during 2024 that they wouldn't have the underpayment penalty? That could be the case here, a year later, especially when a client doesn't fully understand and aren't talking with the original messenger that can revisit the conversation and information or advice she discussed.

Send them back to their previous preparer Life's too short for clients like this!