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When if doubt file it.

Docu-Sign!

Not necessarily. If you get bored I'm sure you could find a firm that would be thrilled to hire an experienced preparer. You could work the hours you want and have someone else be in charge with the headaches it brings.

Scholarships and grants are only excluded from income if used for qualified expenses (e.g., tuition, fees, books, etc.). If used for living expenses, they are taxable. Many scholarships are restricted and can only be used for qualified expenses - there is no option to shift them to living expenses (which would allow some of the qualified expenses to be used for AOC or LLC). Pell grants are unrestricted. You can treat them as being used for living expenses (even if they were actually sent directly to the school and used for qualified expenses - money is fungible). That part then becomes taxable to the student, but any qualified expenses that are now treated as being paid by other funds can be used for AOC or LLC, which often more than offsets the tax. For other scholarships and grants, there should be documentation saying they are unrestricted or can be used for living expenses. A good hint is seeing box 5 greater than box 1.

The fatal problem with AI is that it doesn't know how to say, "I don't know" or "I'm not sure," or our favorite in the tax business, "It depends." That inability is what gets it into trouble when it hallucinates, makes things up, gives irrelevant or wrong answers. When I retire next year I'll just do the office's trusts and estates plus family returns. That's enough. Time to organize those old photos, revamp the gardens, read more books, explore more of the history and attractions of our new state, help out at the library that does so much in the community, just maybe volunteer for AARP or VITA, spend more time with friends and others I've met whom I'd like to know better. It will be a relief to be free from so many commitments and deadlines.

That is correct. A corporation is required to file a return as long as it is in existence, whether it has any income, expenses or not.

I really like the automatic withdrawal option for estimates. That way they can't forget or renege.

Try being left-handing and learning cursive in a parochial school in the 40's and 50's. I did it and am proud of it. All of my life, I was told there were things that I could not do; and I did them. I learned to knit by watching my mother-in-laws hands in a mirror. I can spell, I can type, but I can also make homemade bread and can tomato juice. I am computer savvy and can use a smart phone. I have never believed in cutting corners when it comes to education. I am pretty good at tax law, but still learn something new every day. I'm not bragging but just stressing the importance of learning. At my age, I still thirst for knowledge; be it scholastics or hands on.

Yep - I had to call back. The first round of agent was absolutely not helpful. The second agent was helpful and even quite nice.

It is arguably called uncommon sense these days. Our toddler grand likes me to use air tools. She is good with hand, ear and face protection, so I let her help me. She compares it to photos of her uncle in his medical garb, she wears her car doctor getup. Different times, I learned to use the old long screwdriver as a stethoscope, and nor I have a mechanics stethoscope, and a borescope. We have 5 oil changes and safety checks coming up this weekend.

Yep - the 1040x still just says 1040. My state is NY and it says IT-201-X. Not sure why but that's how it seems to work.

Once my mind turns off - I'm not coming back.

As a programmer, I can tell you accurately and proven, when I used to try to recompile when some AV program was giving a false positive on my public software, changing something from upper to lower case, or moving one function in the order (so it would compile slightly different), would cause the AV program to consider the software safe. Even worse, depending on the compression level I select (in my setup program), some AV's would trigger. (They are often looking for a pattern, not actually opening the file and examining it, so compression, which most use, can easily fool/trigger AV.) That tells you how reliable the heuristic wild rear end guesses are, and how useless they are for the public to use. If I can cause the AV to safe my software by such simple means, a scammer pro can do so likely with automation. One can also ask an AV vendor to safe all of their software, by reputation, which is also alarming (if one wants to trust AV software). Now, I don't bother. I know there is no garbage in my files, so I do not give in. When a person says I have an issue, I refer to then to virus total, which proves a current AV shows no issues, or the issue is a random AV (and not the 50+ others virus total uses to compare). Inevitably, it is a case of heuristics, or lack of checking daily or AV updates. While I am fine with the opinion of many top experts, that modern AV is pointless with just modest safe hexing, I am good with using the AV from the OS maker (in case someone here uses my computer). The real issue these days is preventing access to restricted folders (like ransom issues) and watching your incoming/outgoing internet hits (firewall). The modern OS can help protect from ransom issues, if one enables it. For email, I let my provider wash the mail through whatever AV they use and I don't open attachments I did not ask for. For firewall, I use a really "cool" product, Firewalla. I am also of the experience and opinion one should, at all times, be ready to recover, prepared to find your computer/office missing or unavailable every single day.

2022 is just last years tax return. Seems very reasonable to still be processing returns since W2s are often paper filed.

Recently had a similar situation. https://www.irs.gov/individuals/request-deceased-persons-information#transcript

POA s expire when someone is deceased.

I just did one for a heat pump-30% credit!

I'm doing the opposite; getting rid of my biz clients and just doing personal. I've only enough clients to work very part time and one of my more complicated returns decided to go with someone in town. Actually the partner that just inherited a bunch of money and rental properties decided to go elsewhere. I was dealing with the partner that used to make all the money & had the complicated return. We had a long conversation & I told him not to worry; I was trying to retire and doing so by attrition. This season I'm only working a few hours a day.

"Turning off your anti-virus software is like walking outside naked....no one wants to do it and no one wants to see you do it." Somewhat. Turning off save and accurate AV is not wise for most. Not turning off the heuristic garbage foisted on unsuspecting users is worse than going outside nekkid. Heuristics are simply wild guesses as to what someone might create in the future. They are the cause of most false positives, and issues like Tom likely had. The ability to correct an issue by turning off something proves the something was worse than useless. How much time has Tom spent on this issue, caused by lousy AV? Worse yet, AV which does nothing all year is good, since most don't do stupid things, but AV which is often popping up "warnings" (usually false positives), just to get renewals, is robbery. I will say it forever, use the AV which is part of your OS provider's offerings, which is updated almost daily by the OS, and don't waste a cent on third party AV. OR, at least, update your third party AV daily, and hope they are not defrauding you (and everyone else too) with their false positives.

That reminds me when I went to elementary school we had phonics. As a result I am a good speller. When my wife went thru elementary school they dumped phonics for "sight reading". As a result my wife struggles to spell, even though she was a good student.

Remember when you would fax a number, and they would fax you back a form you needed?

When AI gets that smart, AI can do the whole tax return and we can find something more fun to do.

There are special notes notes section on the 1040 EF form called Preparer Notes. It's my understanding that those go with the efile. Not that the IRS or anyone will ever read them. Maybe someday the IRS will have AI to read those notes and look at all of our attachments. Won't that be be fun?

If it was anything but real property, I don't THINK the 1099S would have been issued. I was afraid of special rules for LKE, thinking an attorney had to make it happen, too. So, I'll get their original cost and they will have to realize the gain on the sale. Thanks for straightening me out.