Pacun

I have been telling my people to come back on Feb 14 and I told them that no one with itemized deductions will be able to file their taxes before St. Valentine's day. I was happy that a guy who doesn't sign returns and he prepares schedule A for everyone with prefiled child care and/or non-cash donations was not going to be able to get my clients. My thought was, since he doesn't efile, he will be out of business for the first month and I WILL BE efiling my clients since a few of them itemize. I was wrong. The guy and his workers are running at full force and printing returns and telling people to mail them. What will the IRS do when they get this returns before the 14th? They go in a pile anyways and they will be processed in a couple of weeks. While I am telling my people to come back on Feb 14th, this guy is finishing all returns. My clients think I am a lier and people are picking up their papers and going there. What do you think the IRS will do if they get a return with schedule A today? Remember, that preparer doesn't efile or sign the returns. The max that will happen is that the return will be returned. I think the IRS should NOT have posted Schedule A on their website until Feb 14. They should NOT allow software developers to have sch A approved until that date. I believe my competetion got a hand from the IRS this year.

I am pretty sure you offered her to get a FEIN.

While I was checking the preferences on ATX, I think I saw a check mark "create all returns using MeF"? Do we have to check that?

Based on my statistics, 99.99% of my clients keep the old number. I only have 100 clients.

Check page 25 + http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/p1345.pdf

This is what I do and I believe I follow the rules. 1.- New clients, I assign a number based on their date of birth and I select that it was an ERO selected number and they sign form 8879. 2.- If Taxpayers comes back next year, I tell them if they want to select a new number or used the old one. Most of the time they accept the old number and I select that they entered their pin on form 8879. 3.- If they don't come back next year, I don't enter anything. I think everybody does as I do on option 3 above.

He will NOT get CTC since he will state that the child lived with him only 5 months. She will get HH AND EIC. No one gets CTC.

Thank you. My question was about his primary residency for energy credits.

This is my logic. Let's say that parents paid $2,000 for child's education. Later, the parents got scholarship for $5,000 and used that money for their child's dorm rent. The parents MUST report income for $5K. If they qualify to claim the child's exemption, they will qualify for education credit. Do you agree? It is the same situation. The child will pay taxes on the $1,500 and this has nothing to do with the fact that the child might not pay any taxes on this money.

I am going to start using this phrase more fequently... it seems to be a straight forward situation on both cases. 1.- He has not started his business yet, so no deduction for 2010. Next year you will have startup and (maybe) organizational costs. 2.- Same rule applies when someone dies or is born in the tax year. He can claim father and qualify as HH if he provided more than 50% of father support for those 5 months father was alive. If he doesn't qualify for HH,he can claim him if he provided more than 10% of his support and others that provided more than 10% of support sign that they will not claim the father.

It seems straight forward to me. Child reports $1500 as income. If parents qualify to claim him as a dependent, they will claim him and use $1,367 to calculate the education credit. If parents got those $1500, then it would be another story. Parents would have $133 extra salary AND no education credit.

In the past, the live person that saw all the entries on the return was a data clerk without any knowledge of taxes. So, efile would be more efficient than the old way of doing business by the IRS.

Energy credit

ATA = Accredited Tax Advisor ATP = Accredited Tax Preparer ABA = Accredited Business Accountant ARA = Accredited Retirement Advisor I see some people have EA and all of those acronyms after their names. How do they get them? Any ABA, ATA, ARA or ATP accredited on this site?

A maintenance engineer is provided with an apartment by the employer because he is on call 24-5. He is off on Saturday and Sunday and goes to his house in another state which is about 20 miles away. His car and his house are registered in that state but his children go to a public school where he works. Is his house his primary residence?

What's amazing is (with all the advances in technology) that the IRS doesn't pull these returns for audits when HRB clearly labeled it as something not deductible. On the EA exams the IRS makes sure that you understand that Golf membership dues are not deductible even if you have your own business and you entertain clients on the Golf fields daily and talk about business while playing.

Maybe you did send it and the computer messed up. In any event, paper file at this point since it is too late to efile.

It was a joke. The supervising CPA or EA needs a PTIN.

Ask him to supervise himself since he is a CPA. If a person prepares a return superviced by a CPA or Enrolled Agent... he doesn't need a PTIN.

I agree it is personal.

NO. I just made up the ages. In reality the husband was 65 by the end of 2010 and the wife was 64.

You have to call ATX customer service and they will guide. I think they will assign a number to you and you will include that number when you export the return. It has been a while since I exported and sent one, so I don't remember. Share with us if you send it to customer service.

Only IRAs don't pay 10% penalty.

Only one president has ever entered the IRS building: John F. Kennedy . The event was so significant that IRS placed a plaque in the National Office commemorating the event. The plaque is on the third floor in the corridor near 12th Street, outside the Commissioners Conference Room. It is inscribed with the following words by Mortimer Caplin who was IRS commissioner at the time: On this site, on May 1, 1961, President John F. Kennedy spoke to Internal Revenue officials and became the first chief executive to visit this building. On that occasion, he said "I hope you will impress upon the agents of the Internal Revenue Service how much we are dependent upon them, on their courtesy, on their efficiency, on their integrity, on their fairness." In his memory, and with the resolve to fulfill his expectations, this plaque is respectfully dedicated. Mortimer M. Caplin May 1, 1964 ******** * ************ What tax situation have Jimmy Carter, Laura Bush, Barack Obama, Hillary and Bill Clinton in common? They all paid self-employment (SE) tax on their first book, perhaps unnecessarily. IRS' longstanding position is that "if an individual writes only one book as a sideline and never revises it, he would not be considered to be 'regularly engaged' in an occupation or profession and his royalties therefrom would not be considered net earnings from self-employment." Even when the book is revised, the Tax Court has held that only the royalties from the revised edition are subject to SE tax. The IRS position does not appear to be well known. Jimmy Carter paid self-employment tax on his first book, Why Not the Best? published in 1976. Hillary Clinton dedicated all earnings - over $1 million in total - from her 1994 first book, It Takes a Village, to charity. She paid tens of thousands of dollars of avoidable self-employment tax on the book royalties. Bill Clinton paid SE tax on his 2004 first book, My Life. as did First Lady Laura Bush on her 2008 first book, Read All About It! Barack Obama's 1995 first book, Dreams of My Fathers was republished in 2007, and he paid SE tax on it. Obama also paid SE tax on his second book, The Audacity of Hope, published in 2006. (All data are from publicly released tax returns, available at Tax History Project: Presidential Tax Returns.) Although Obama has written two books, an argument can be made that his second book, written eleven years after the first, should also be exempt from SE tax because an 11-year gap shows that he is not "regularly engaged" in book writing. That may not be a position that a president is prepared to take, but might be considered by lower-profile writers. These returns were all prepared by different CPAs. There may be good reason that SE tax was paid. However, given the existence of favorable revenue rulings and a favorable Tax Court opinion, one would think avoidance of SE tax on the first book which these celebrities wrote would meet a very high standard for a tax return position. The statute of limitations is still open on some of these returns. Perhaps the return preparers will consider filing amended returns claiming SE tax refunds. And if you as a preparer had a client remit SE tax on royalties from a first book, consider applying for a refund. ******************** WGST Radio talk-show host Neil Boortz started an argument by stating that golfers are not athletes. His definition of an athlete is one engaged in an activity which increases the heartbeat by at least 25%. One caller retorted, "According to your definition, anyone receiving a notice from IRS is an athlete." Sign at Executive Park Amoco: "A dime is really a dollar with all the taxes taken out." "Why waste time and money debating about the moment life begins in a fetus? Just ask the IRS when we can start deducting them." -- Letter to the Editor, Atlanta Constitution. Jerold Cohen, Chief Counsel for IRS, at the Southern States Conference of Certified Public Accountants held at the Atlanta Hilton: "IRS has a force of 1,000 lawyers. Someone once told me that any organization with that many lawyers must be up to no good."

Yes. I efiled this form and it was rejected. At first I got a very generic error message. The second time I got the same generic message. The third time I got an error message that it reads something like: "When you claim EIC without the EIC form, both taxpayers must be under 65." As you know, we have to fill out the EIC form in order for the credit to pop up. I don't understand what's going on.