MontanaEA

This is an interesting opinion piece: http://news.yahoo.com/s/usatoday/20071206/...aN0SGROvS79wxIF

KC, maybe you can help me to understand your comments above. I'm looking at the charts you published, and here's what I don't understand. 1. We know that tax rates stayed the same for 1993 thru 2000. Then they decreased for 2001, again for 2002, and once again for 2003 thru 2007. These decreases applied to every tax bracket. So, if taxes increased for the top 10% after 2000, wouldn't it be due to the fact that they had more taxable income, rather than that their rate of tax increased? If my taxable income increases, then I guess I would expect the amount of tax that I owe to increase. 2. The percentages on the far right side of your charts are percentages of total federal personal income tax paid by each group, not the tax rate for each group. Therefore, I don't understand how you can state that the bottom half of all taxpayers got their taxes cut by 25%. Wouldn't it more likely mean that since the top taxpayers had more income and paid more tax, that the bottom taxpayers, whose income didn't increase as much, now have a lesser proportionate share of both total income and total income taxes paid? 3. The charts above only speak to federal personal income tax paid. Also, the fact is that the very few richest taxpayers skew the charts significantly. If we add amounts paid for all federal state and local taxes, and contrast the richest 400 taxpayers with everyone else, then the percentages are significantly different. In the year 2000, at the height of the last economic boom and before the most recent round of tax cuts were enacted, IRS data shows that the richest 400 taxpayers paid 27% of their income in federal, state, and local taxes. On average, these 400 taxpayers each had taxable income of $151 million. All other taxpayers had average taxable income of only $34,600, and yet their tax burden was 40%. Do those rates look fair to you? They don't to me. I completely agree with you that unless we can talk HONESTLY about taxes, we will never get real reforms passed. I think that a very small number of very wealthy people are foisting their tax responsibilities off on the other 99.9% of us. I don't think your charts show the whole picture. I think they ought to show a catagory for the top .1% of taxpayers, and I think they should include all taxes, or at least all federal taxes, including payroll taxes in order to paint an accurate picture of what's happening.

It means the IRS has sent them on to the states for processing. Since they cleared the IRS by 10/15, they are considered timely filed even if the states don't ack them until tomorrow or the next day.

Evan, I think 9/17 was the last day to efile corps.

OK, I'll consider myself outvoted. I'll be waiting for that chocolate cake, Zeke!

I know the birthday greetings posted to board members each day are offered in the spirit of goodwill, but I'm starting to feel that they clutter the board with messages. This will get to be a bigger deal as we get into tax season and have less time to read more messages each day. I notice that todays birthdays are listed farther down the page under board statistics. I think that probably should suffice as commemoration of members' birthdays on this board.

Boy, are they going to hear from me!!!! My early renewal price was $1065 less $106 early bird discount plus $69 S/H. This is the reward I get for customer loyalty and letting them use my money for months? I could have waited until now and saved 300 bucks? AND, this was a HUGE price increase from the prior year forced on me by ATX. The prior year, I paid $495 for 1040 Office plus $165 for PRS. I was forced up to MAX because they limited the efiles to 100.

Deb, I'm curious about the terms of the offer they made to you. Can you give us the specifics? I was very unhappy with the price increase in efile due to the 100 limit for my package and ended up having to upgrade to Max, which doubled my cost from last year. Even so, I renewed before the early deadline because I viewed ATX as my best software choice, and my experience with them was that they did not bargain with their customers, and the price was not going to get cheaper if I held out. If they are now doing so, I must say that I am disappointed. It was one of the things I admired about ATX that you knew you were getting the same deal as everyone else. It's the way I bill in my tax practice - no deals and special favors, just the same reasonable rates for everyone. If they are now offering lower prices, it's a heck of a way to reward those of us who let them have our money and support early.

Here are a couple of useful sources. The first is a good explanation of the documentation needed (health care professional's statement and plan of care): http://www.alz.org/documents/national/taxes.pdf The second is a sample heath care professional's statement: http://www.alznorcal.org/ Edited: The link for the statement doesn't take you directly to the statement, although you can get there by clicking on "caregivers questions" , the "informative articles", then "Taxes and Alzheimers - State". Since it's a little complicated to navigate, I'll cut and paste the statement here: Sample Certification of Chronically Ill Individual under IRS Code 7702B TAXES AND ALZHEIMER'S DISEASE SAMPLE CERTIFICATION OF CHRONICALLY ILL INDIVIDUAL UNDER INTERNAL REVENUE CODE §7702B The undersigned certifies that he or she is a licensed health care practitioner as defined in IRC §7702B©(4) (that is a physician (as defined in §1861® of the Social Security Act), a registered professional nurse, or a licensed social worker). The undersigned certifies that ___________________________________ is a chronically ill individual because he or she meets one of the following two tests: Activities of Daily Living Test. He or she is unable to perform at least two of activities of daily living (ADLs), eating, toileting, transferring, bathing, dressing, and continence, without substantial assistance from another individual and has or will be unable to perform such ADLs without such assistance for a period of at least 90 days due to a loss of functional capacity. I understand that (1) "Substantial assistance" means hands-on assistance and standby assistance; (2) "Hands-on assistance" means the physical assistance of another person without which the individual would be unable to perform the ADL; (3) "Standby assistance" means the presence of another person within arm's reach of the individual that is necessary to prevent, by physical intervention, injury to the individual while the individual is performing the ADL (such as being ready to catch the individual if the individual falls while getting into or out of the bathtub or shower as part of bathing, or being ready to remove food from the individual's throat if the individual chokes while eating). Cognitive Impairment Test. He or she requires substantial supervision to protect himself or herself from threats to health and safety due to severe cognitive impairment. I understand that (1) "Severe cognitive impairment" means a loss or deterioration in intellectual capacity that is (a) comparable to (and includes) Alzheimer's disease and similar forms of irreversible dementia, and ( measured by clinical evidence and standardized tests that reliably measure impairment in the individual's (i) short-term or long-term memory, (ii) orientation as to people, places, or time, and (iii) deductive or abstract reasoning, and that (2) "Substantial supervision" means continual supervision (which may include cuing by verbal prompting, gestures, or other demonstrations) by another person that is necessary to protect the severely cognitively impaired individual from threats to his or her health or safety (such as may result from wandering). ________________________________ Signature ________________ Date ________________________________ Title This sample certification is based on IRC §7702B, Notice 97-31, 1997-1 C.B. 417, the Conference Committee Report on the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, P.L. 104-191, and the General Explanation (Bluebook) of Tax Legislation Enacted in the 104th Congress (1996).

No

KC, who the heck do you think "they" is? - some of us on this board, that's who! Like LLBWest, if you can't stop disparaging us and move back to the topic of tax & software, I'll be moving on. Funny, I don't seem to enjoy being insulted on a regular basis.

If instead of talking about 'fair', we talk about 'mutually agreeable', we now have a standard to measure against. But then BOTH sides, conservative as well as liberal, must be considered. And that is not acceptable to most liberals. They do not WANT 'mutually acceptable' solutions, they want THEIR solutions, which they have simply declared to be 'fair' ones.

Thank you, Jainen.

I guess today is my day to be terminally stupid. (Alright, it's not the first time!) I am just getting more and more confused trying to enter a sale of a rental condo that was the spouse's personal residence for 2 out of the last 5 years. She started renting it when she got married in 2005, sold it in 2006. I've got it on the rental depreciation schedule. Assets are: Points being amortized Long-term 1250 property ( the condo) Short-term 1250 propoerty ( improvements to the condo) Short-term 1245 property (appliances and carpet) I overrode the current year amortization to write off the rest of the points, as the loan was paid off when the sale happened. Then I set up three bulk sales so that the short-term gains and unrecaptured 1250 gain would show up on the 4797. Then I input the Sch D Sale of Residence schedule. In other sales of residence I've done this year, I didn't have it on a Sch E depr. sch. On those sales, the gain was reported on Sch D, then subtracted as a Section 121 adjustment to zero out the Sch D gain. On this one, it's just plain not showing up on the Sch D, but the whole gain is being reported on Form 4797. No 121 exclusion is being used. How do I make all this show up correctly on the tax return?