TaxCPANY

So the IRS wants the FULL amount of UI paid on Line 7 of Schedule 1, matching the 1099-G, and the exclusion amount showing with "UCE" on Line 8. As for the effects on AGI and how to adjust that -- e.g. Forms 8962, 8917, whether the taxpayer's AGI is 150K -- which, by the way, is a CLIFF and not a phase-in -- IRS is scrambling to provide guidance "in the next day or two, give or take two days." Today's conferees also heard the IRS request us not to amend as it was considering adjusting already-filed returns itself -- to which proposal voices were raised: how would DIYers, states, and even we preparers know what the revised AGI had become? These and other hot, current issues receive postings on one of IRS' sub-pages which I cannot find and copied the wrong address for, which it sounds like we should be paying very close attention to, something about "form changes/post-release" which informally was referred to among the conferees as the IRS' "product pages."

E-file treatment of UI is the subject of this (Tuesday) afternoon's "production call" conference of IRS MeF software developers, transmitters AND states; so I'd anticipate ATX and others' rollouts to ensue shortly afterwards. Note too that this topic was announced a week ago; its treatment has been in the works a good while since the legislation emerged.

https://www.ghacks.net/2021/03/10/march-2021-cumulative-updates-cause-printing-bluescreens-on-windows-10-devices/ is the story in ghacks.net that explains just what's up. A commentator to the story posted 3 hours ago that only "corporate printers such as Kyocera, Ricoh, ebra, Sato, etc." were affected, and "No issues with HP, Canon, Epson, or Lexmark."

In a different practitioners' chat t I ran across the following fix: "When the omission of health insurance from a shareholder's W-2 is discovered, a (second) W-2 is prepared, showing the health insurance as wages in Box 1 and Box 14 (indicated as S Corp Med Ins). All other boxes are -0-. This way Notice 2008-1 is complied with." Works for me.

But don't neglect those states that "decoupled" from TCJA such as New York, where a state-only 2106 can bolster itemized deductions even yet. And not just teachers; I've filed several clients who'd become remote-only employees last year and so, newly qualify for the office-in-home deduction. Asking whether such folks have upgraded their Internet and/or wifi and/or hardware, increased their bandwidth to accommodate more/faster video, simply bought a rug to improve acoustic, setc. has yielded more of a deduction, as well.

Augh, yet one more misuse of "comprise" which is synonymous with "include", not "compose"! From Words on Writing (by Erin Hart): "When using the word comprise, follow these five guidelines. Comprise is a stand-alone verb—it does not need a helping verb like “is” or “was” or a modal verb like “will” or “might” to create future tense. Prepositions like “of” do not grammatically follow comprise. Comprise is a transitive verb and must be followed by a noun or series of nouns. Going from large to small is essential when using comprise—the whole comprises the parts. Comprise can be interchanged grammatically with “contain” but not with “compose.”

If you've got any information returns among the client's documents, do any of those show truncated or abbreviated names or portions of the names? Take your lead from those and ask the client whether they agree with the treatment shown. I've got several clients from cultures that appoint multiple names and so far have found that they're accustomed to using fewer names to fit in -- literally -- with various bureaucracies.

The only problem I have with Form 114 is the apparent incompatibility of BSA's site with Nuance PDF Pro; I must revert to Adobe Reader to complete the return online and so I keep that application on a computer separate from my main ones -- but only because Adobe insinuates itself into other applications to become the default PDF reader. How is inputting Form 114 online substantially different from preparing and e-filing other tax forms? My clients pay me for the time it takes me to do that, are sent a copy of the form to review and must return a signed & dated copy of Form 114a. The BSA site allows me to save and print a copy of the form, and sends two acknowledgements of e-filing, one at once and the other later. Even better, no extra form is required to request an extension of time to file past April 15. I may have been lucky to have begun my career in the international tax department of a firm which trained me to monkey around with lots of different forms, but don't law changes throw that at us every year? Form 114 is simpler than 8938 and 2555 and 1116, for instance, and providing it helps keep clients who've posted overseas or have non-US accounts from before. I regret only that the demise of TDF 90-22.1 probably cost my ol' hometown some nice jobs -- all too scarce in the wake of globalization.

You two luckily must not be insomniacs. Not knowing a wholesale way to clean up Payer Manager I indeed have gone in there time and again, usually late at night, and deleted duplicates. At least you can delete a whole row/entry with a single click. Having begun computing with a Commodore Vic-20 with a whopping TWO KILOBYTES of RAM, I've always felt it vital to keep programs and data ultra lean in every way possible. Maybe that doesn't matter at all anymore with Gigabytes of RAM and Terabytes of storage, but doing it's very mind-pacifying.

Well, I actually got a call from Edna and after 43 minutes we got the Organizer Letter loading. She's independently researching how to get the Org Engagement Ltr back as well; so I'm much more hopeful of having this on my weekend plate now. I took AbbyNormal's advice years ago and got Nuance Power PDF with which to make organizers both digital and fillable. A couple of clients every year can't get it to work and either print it to input, send me the paper or scan the pages; but that's the only problem I've had ever since -- and I totally agree with you that reminding clients with the Questionnaire is perhaps the biggest plus. Fingers crossed this all works out by the end of the day. Still, I think I learned patience this year: my SSD hard drive stopped booting on its own in February so I ran the next 262 days off an Emergency Disk before I could take the time and find the right program with which to replace it without losing all my programs & settings. (Macrium Reflect, that was.)

Has anyone else not gotten Organizer and Engagement Letters when adding Organizers to the 2019 clients? I've had the problem for over a week now, and the guy to whom my case was escalated, Sean, has been a phone-tag player and now a no-show -- and ATX isn't simply shifting my case to someone available yet, all the tech managers being in a meeting of indeterminate duration I've been told. "Wait til Monday" isn't what I'd hoped to hear. I've learned to look into the Client Communication Manager from the Tools menu, but can neither load the letters from there nor Import my own letters -- exported from 2018 -- because there already are templates with the reserved names somewhere in the program. Any further insights would be greatly appreciated!

For $ 10/month (less if paid on an annual basis), MyFax provides such a confirmation email as well as such reliable service that I jettisoned my standalone fax and dedicated line 11 -- yes, eleven -- years ago. MyFax assigned me a toll-free number, which helps persuade chintzy clients and their employers to fax me when necessary. I'm authorized to send faxes from more than one email address -- I scan everything into PDFs in my office and simply attach those to a standard email address that begins with the recipient's fax number. Not only that, but whenever I've had a problem such as an unreceived fax I've been able to reach live, human tech help no matter the time -- and a couple of times they conducted technical tests on my line and the recipient's. I've never exhausted the limits on outbound and inbound faxes, which I just now looked up and found to be 200 pages in and 100 pages out per month. There is an online resource such as LionEA described for eFax, which I've used to find faxes from YEARS ago -- apparently no limit on storage.

Last week I finally succeeded in cloning my main machine's five-year-old SSD to a new one -- after enduring 262 days of booting from a Rescue Disk. A few bad sectors in the MBR *AND* the recovery partition stymied me and a Macrium technician for days. ANYWAY, I'll need to add QB 2021 to my stable. Can anyone recommend a discount source or should I hope that someone offers a Black Friday deal on it?

I'd first explore the premise that he remained a MI resident, that his stay in NJ was temporary and non-residential despite going over 183 days. In no other way does he seem to have taken up residence outside of MI; but you'll have to research MI 'adhesiveness.' New York State & City wouldn't give up on your guy had he started out here, for example; those jurisdictions (and at least several others) look hard at both a taxpayer's comings & goings in more ways than one. Also, practically speaking, how could NJ enforce any claim to residency?

New York Form IT-2104 enables one to customize NY State and City (and Yonkers, etc.) withholdings so as, for instance, to declare oneself subject to the NYC tax on resident employees. ATX supports it.

I've taken it for granted that I've got something worth selling, especially after the spouse of a colleague of my wife's asked me, in hope of luring his son into partnership with him. That fell through but inspired me to contact a local broker of practices and exchange visits with a CPA to whom I felt I could entrust my favorite clients. Ill health in his family and my attorney's over-scheduling delayed things into this January . . . . I haven't given up but only accept that it'll be months before we could resume the courtship. E.g., how could a prospective buyer meet any of my clients yet? Just really quitting would leave most of my clients in the lurch when only a few deserve that. If I spent the time necessary to find a trustworthy successor it seems only fitting that I'm paid for that effort. We're "trusted advisors" in other ways already.

Ditto.

I agree with Lion EA in every respect except the life of the property: Foreign residential property generally must(*) be depreciated under the Alternative Depreciation System. Property placed in service before December 31, 2017 had a 40-year ADS life. TCJA changed the life of property placed in service after December 31, 2017 to a 30-year life. [Section 13204 of the Act, amending IRC Sec. 168. Top of page 139 of the online pdf of TCJA.] (* Some commentators argue that "shall" means "may" and so the IRC lets tax preparers elect different depreciable lives. I disagree with that arcane conclusion and would not file a return employing it without including a Form 8082.)

I devote a tab in my tracking spreadsheet to federal and NYS powers-of-attorney and info authorizations -- shown in an oldish 'Snip'. I keep it next to the tab for current-year returns-in-process and the tab for current-year e-filing. Simply having the tab adjacent my hottest two reminds me to keep its contents uptodate, I believe -- the reverse of "out of sight out of mind". Like Abby, I have only virtual files now, and keep an image of the signed copy of the PoA alongside other client documents of like period.

I've over-ridden the first two due dates in the 1040-ES Record and the resulting PDF looks fine. Also, I don't use instruction "letter" but, rather, the whitespace-rich, larger font "Client Instr" -- and over-ride its "Post return by" date to "quarterly".)

The songwriter of "I Love Rock n' Roll," Alan Merrill, just died; only 69; performed only two weeks ago.

Are you referring to using lines 4 or 7a of the Scholarship Worksheet tab to divert some portion of the scholarship/grant away from being default non-taxable?

I wasn't looking for guidance on utilities in particular when I found the following site, but its several discussions helped clarify my thinking and spurred further research. Does the HOA have significant non-exempt income to which the allocation of utility expense seems skewed? I also would argue that cable, telephone & internet serving the management and security staff are exempt; but I suppose there'd be a problem if the condo building contained a sports bar or other high-earning amenity open to non-members or something like that. Hoping the following helps. (Scroll to the bottom of the page to find links to half a dozen articles.) https://hoatax.com/form-1120h-90-expenditure-test/

Nuance (aka Visioneer) PaperPort often overcomes the shortcomings of every kind of graphic format I get from clients except those out-of-focus cellphone JPGs, come to think of it. From simply rotating pages to auto-de-speckling to intensive, manual cleanup with its 'ImageViewer", I've used PaperPort for so long I take it for granted. (And MS Paint still is tops for shrinking/re-sizing graphics files.)

I'm still recommending the free version of Genius Scan because its PDFs are always clearer (and smaller) than 'raw' JPGs from phones. Today again I had to ask someone to retake photos of a couple of their docs because the differences between 5, 6, 8 were indiscernible.