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I went with my gut feeling and did not take this prospective client on. The more questions I asked, the more skeptical I became.

Church payroll is a highly specialized endeavor. Even some of the denomination provided advice can be suspect. Coupled with the number oif church payrolls run by volunteers, and kind at heart folks, mistakes are common.

I'd contact Verifyle support on this one, for sure.

I always find offering last years returns is the first give away, actual potential clients never mention that in a first email. Also, the scammers frequently pretend to be some big corporate CEOs, cause yeah, that's who'd be contacting us. Today in addition to the 2-3 like that, I got one telling me "Thomas" shared tax files with me via Dropbox. But it didn't come from Dropbox, which I'm guessing a legit notification would. Don't know, I don't use Dropbox. Guess "Thomas" is just out of luck.

I have run into that problem when I have user names saved. So I had to delete some names to avoid this problem.

I would have agreed 40 years ago. Expectations are different today, given the shift to "there must be somebody I can get to do what I want, at no risk to me". And as have aged, the natural consequence is to accept less BS.

There is one that I get regularly that comes from an email that is .corn instead of .com. Pretty sneaky. I think that extension allows them to use legitimate company names. The email address will be [email protected] or something similar. You gotta be vigilant on email. Tom Longview TX

My wife works for the med school / hospital of a major University and the tech group sends out phishing emails to all employees as a way to test if they are opening them and clicking the link. You can get a reward if you forward the email to tech to notify receiving it. All managers get notified if an employee gets caught. Compared to the phishing emails I get, they are sometimes VERY elaborate. Like NE, the email address is usually the easy sign, supposedly they've fixed that problem.

One downside to AI is it's helped the scammers to look more polished. The IRS has been sending out notices that the amount of phishing directed toward practitioners is at an all time high!

Received two emails this morning that looked legitimate (not the usual grammar and spelling errors) asking if I was taking on new clients and offering to email me last years returns. Give away was the "Reply" email address did not match the "From" address and was really weird,( .jp instead of the usual .com or .org). I know most of you are very careful with these type of emails and just wanted to let everyone know that the bad guys are getting much better at making the emails look legit.

Another resource is the Church and Clergy Tax Guide available through Church Law and Tax published by Christianity Today International. I have subscribed for many years and found it very useful both as a church treasurer and having several clergy as clients. To address your situation would require so many questions. Clearly there is a lack of communication between this church and the minister. My guess would be to begin with asking how the minister files her/his return and whether this person filed Form 4361. You can also check Pub. 517.

Schedules C. Anyone with depreciation, new in 2023 depreciable property. Right?

You are correct. If there is no refundable portion of the credit, it will not be affected by the changes. What is proposed is that the refundable portion will go up by $200 per child to $1,800. So your lower income folks who get the refund on the credit will get more if they wait. Or they can file now and get the difference later when IRS goes back through and fixes the refunds. Tom Longview, TX

You are correct. If they have enough tax liability to absorb the CTC, this bill will not effect them. The inflation adjustment as written does not come into play for 2023.

https://www.guidestone.org/Updates/Ministers-Tax-Guide This is my go-to for ministers issues. We used to have a clergy tax expert on the board but I have not seen him in years. I think he is the one who gave me this resource many years ago. Tom Longview, TX

My usual first place to look is in the image. I used to have an online "friend" who was likely the most expert independent person on church payroll, but they passed a few years back. "Doing pastoral duties for the church" sounds like employee for that work. As opposed to performing a wedding for a church member as IC.

The first time I tried to use login.gov to log into the SSA BSO on Saturday, it failed. The second I tried using a different link to the SSA BSO, it worked. Who knows?

I'm in a similar situation as OP. Land line in my office, doubles for fax. I don't get many faxes anymore, just come ons for vacations and such. A few of my clients have my mobile number but I usually don't like to give that out to clients to avoid calls at any hour. I'm trying to hang on a few more years, cutting back, hoping I don't have to get two mobile lines and all that.

I ended up with a personal account to log into for SSA using that login.gov and then I realized there is no longer a link on that page for SSA BSO. I had to Google to find the BSO page and found that my old username show up in a drop down box on the BSO page that allows me to access it and file W-2s. If that hadn't worked, my backup plan was to use an online site to prepare and file them.

Most of the phishing emails that I get go to my old, old email account that I never use for work or the one on my website that forwards them to another email not known to the public. They have become more sophisticated lately, but every one has a really strange email address. It really helps that I have only taken referrals for years. It's a scary world anymore.

I asked my two new assistants to throw out the paper box cover and this is what happened! IMG_1048.mp4

The kittens mother is feral and had a litter of 5 kittens under our deck. We were able to catch the kittens and then lure the mother into the garage to feed them until we were able to wean them. Mother went off to a non profit that spayed her and then released her (she was too feral to adopt out). We kept these two and were able to adopt out the other three.

HVKen was referring to the actual FB group for the ATX software support, not the group I set up.

I wish that I still had some colleagues. All of my friends are retired, dead or got out of public practice quite awhile ago. I'm the last of everybody that I started out working with in the late 70s. My brother's CPA says that he can take some on, but I am still looking for others. Fortunately, I've had a few businesses go early and not taking on new clients for several years.

Devil's advocate: If you had a single member LLC for a rental, you would put it on Sch E. Are you saying that LLC doesn't provide legal protection? If all rents are paid to the LLC and all expenses paid from the LLC, isn't that adequate for legal protection? None of us are lawyers, as far as I know. I would explain all of this to the clients and just keep putting them directly on the Sch E. The IRS won't care because going the 1065 route just increases their cost of processing returns and K1s, and there is no additional tax or penalties the IRS can assess, as long as the 1040s are timely filed.

Ugh. I just got a written earful, and threats of bad reviews and BBB reporting from a now former client. All because I pointed out a possible error, which now appears to be a knowing decision to defraud (the old "protest too much" theory). I don't worry about threats or bad reviews, and in this case, I suspect nothing will happen out of fear they will get caught. I reserve the right to be wrong, in case there is a statutory or other exception. Person asked why the W2 "I" prepared is different than the 1099 they received. "I own my own business (S-corp). I work under X and they do my billing, credentialing, etc. I am an independent contractor. I pay for their services and they give me a biweekly check minus their pay. Does that make sense? I bought your software to pay myself and give myself a W2 at the end of the year. " I shared information pointing to an employer/employee relationship. The result "Can I receive my money back for your services? I will be dealing with another company. Again, I did not ask for your opinion. Apparently I am dealing with a narcissist and as a counselor I would like to set a boundary. I will be reporting our conversations to BBB and anyone else who will listen including the referral source I was given for your software."