Lee B

Crank & Roberts are right, something is wrong with your computer. I have a Dell Win 7 Pro I5 with 6 Gig of Ram which boots in 3 to 4 minutes and still runs fairly well. However I am planning to have a SSD installed soon since I have 41 months on this hard drive. One thing that is problematic on your system is that you are running ATX and Quickbooks, both of which are known to make changes to your Windows Registry, which can gum up the works.

Comparison chart Capital Lease versus Operating Lease comparison chart Capital Lease Operating Lease Lease criteria - Ownership Ownership of the asset might be transferred to the lessee at the end of the lease term. Ownership is retained by the lessor during and after the lease term. Lease criteria - Bargain Purchase Option The lease contains a bargain purchase option to buy the equipment at less than fair market value. The lease cannot contain a bargain purchase option. Lease criteria - Term The lease term equals or exceeds 75% of the asset's estimated useful life The lease term is less than 75 percent of the estimated economic life of the equipment Lease criteria - Present Value The present value of the lease payments equals or exceeds 90% of the total original cost of the equipment. The present value of lease payments is less than 90 percent of the equipment's fair market value Risks and Benefits Transferred to lessee. Lessee pays maintenance, insurance and taxes Right to use only. Risk and benefits remain with lessor. Lessee pays maintenance costs Accounting Lease is considered as asset (leased asset) and liability (lease payments). Payments are shown in Balance sheet No risk of ownership. Payments are considered as operating expenses and shown in Profit and Loss statement Tax Lessee is considered to be the owner of the equipment and therefore claims depreciation expense and interest expense Lessee is considered to be renting the equipment and therefore the lease payment is considered to be a rental expens

If he went to a national recycling/junk haulers convention and took 20 or 30 hours of paid seminars, no one would question the deduction. The challenge will be to show links between these seminars and his business, i.e. improved sales, new customers, improved employee productivity etc. It will take more than just saying those are the reasons he took the seminars, you will need specific examples, names and statistics.

Given the circumstances as you describe them, I don't see "doing nothing" as a realistic option. Clearly this was an operating lease. You are fortunate with the timing since all years can be amended. Option # 1 - Amend all years Option # 2 - File a 3115 - Change in Accounting Method In both scenarios you would reverse the previous entries and expense the operating lease payments, then allocate the 70 K residual payment to the assets and capitalize or expense accordingly. The choice between option # 1 or option # 2 would depend on the effect of each years taxes and on whether the 3115 calculations would result in additional tax due or not. If the 3115 resulted in additional taxes then you would get a 4 year spread on the payment. It will be very interesting to see how this turns out. Keep us up to date !

You don't say what kind of client or what the hypothetical business relationship is with these expenses, which matters a lot. I can envision several potential businesses where these expenses might be deductible, i.e. motivational speaking, personal coaching, sales & marketing consulting, etc. However I don't have and have never had a client where these expenses would be deductible.

Three or four years ago I received $ 4,954 from a class action lawsuit against Charles Schwab. It was related to the non disclosure of the risk associated with a certain kind of investment, in which my IRA was invested.

Federal Court Prohibits Nevada Tax Preparer from Preparing Returns Containing Foreign Earned Income Exclusion A federal court has barred a North Las Vegas, Nevada, woman and her business from preparing federal tax returns that contain or involve foreign earned income and from promoting the exclusion of foreign earned income to others, the Justice Department announced today. The civil injunction order, to which Sheila Bunting consented, was entered by U.S. District Judge James C. Mahan of the District of Nevada. The injunction also bars Bunting’s business, 5 Star Tax LLC, from continuing to prepare tax returns that contain or involve foreign earned income, and from promoting the exclusion of foreign earned income to others. According to the complaint, Bunting inappropriately attempted to exclude foreign earned income from the calculation of her customers’ federal tax liabilities, which understated her customers’ correct tax liabilities or inflated improper refunds. Typically, U.S. citizens may exempt some foreign earned income from the calculation of gross income if they are present in a foreign country for at least 330 full days out of 12 consecutive months. This period can be waived when the Secretary of the Treasury determines, after consultation with the Secretary of State, that individuals were required to leave a foreign country due to war, civil unrest or other conditions that preclude the normal conduct of business, among other things. In implementing this waiver provision, each year the Secretary of the Treasury publishes a list of countries that have been determined eligible for waiver requests. According to the suit, Bunting disregarded the published list of waiver-eligible countries in filing the exclusion of foreign earned income on behalf of her customers. The injunction requires Bunting to provide a list of customers that identifies by name, social security number, address, e-mail address, telephone number and tax periods, all persons for whom she has prepared federal tax returns or claims for refund since Jan. 1, 2012, that reference foreign earned income

I turned 70 last fall and plan to keep working as long as my health stays good, since I enjoy what I do. Most of my income comes from 9 monthly writeup/payroll/tax clients. The largest ones I also function as their contract controller/CFO. These are all clients, that I have had for many years, so it would be very difficult for me to sell my practice. Last year I did less than 70 tax returns, so I don't have any walkins. Occasionally I will get a new client due to an unsolicited referral. Financially, I am now in a comfortable place, now that I am on Medicare, plus I started receiving SS last year. It's a wonderful life, now that I am working about 20 hours a week.

I still have several concerns: 1. If a sale is imminent for $ xxx, why would you spend money on an appraisal and if the appraisal value is significantly different than the sale price, how do you justify the difference. 2. I still think you may have a problem because this charity more than likely will have turn around and sell the PTS interest due to the UBTI rules. 3. I know that there are recapture rules for the donation of tangible personal property, when the charity has to sell the personal property in a later year because there is no exempt use. Is there any recapture or reduced deductible basis in this scenario ?

I will look this up when I go back to work on Tuesday, but I remember that when you give an ownership interest like this to a charity, it creates a situation where the charity has to dispose of it unless it is related to to the charity's purpose, because of the UBTI rules, which my memory tells me affects the deductible basis for your client.?

If it takes you 4 to 5 hours, then you are under charging.

I have also used Firefox for years with no problems.

Based on David's scenario, I am assuming that his taxpayer had other unrelated wages on his 1040.

I thought wages were always included, even when unrelated to the section 179 property ?

No problems getting in, but ATX may have been handling this depreciation change incorrectly ? Copied from the ATX Blog: Regulatory Changes for Fixed Assets With this release, if you do not take the special depreciation allowance for new qualified property placed in service after 2015, the property is not subject to an AMT adjustment for depreciation per Section 143(b) of the PATH Act. We encourage you to review the AMT column for 2016 assets entered prior to this release.

Think about it, if this was an efiled return, what information could she give them that they don't already have ? This is a variation of a scam that is currently being used against social security and medicare recipients.

I must say that I am still using a Win 7 Pro 64 bit computer, and I have have never had this problem.

Before you do anything Monday morning, make sure your Windows updates are totally current. The ransomware attacks that occurred the last several days went after known holes in all Windows OS prior to Win 10. Microsoft issued updates back in March that closed some of the holes and more updates that will now close the rest of the holes.

It needs to be more than admin, like meeting customers on a regular basis, which is unlikely in his business. There are lots of court cases etc out there on this subject.

When you say credit, do you mean the seller discounted the sales price from 300 K down to 220K, or is it more complicated than that ?

Knee Jerk Response - Home to first job or first business related stop commuting, same for last job or last business related stop to home. Exception to this would be qualified home office for more than admin related tasks, for example, he buys his own cleaning supplies and equipment and uses his garage to store them then carries them in his vehicle from job to job.

Nailed it !

Here is a link to P C Mag's reviews plus links to 4 articles about routers. http://www.pcmag.com/reviews/routers

You may want to consider a cable modem router combination which will save you the monthly rental fee from your ISP. If you search on Amazon or Best Buy, you will find top rated ones form Motorola, Net Gear, T P Link etc, which can replace your rental modem from one of the big cable companies. If your ISP is a phone company, you're probably stuck with their modem.

Under the current tax system, the total combined taxes paid to the federal and state government is actually less for the SP, since they do not have pay FUTA and SUTA, not to mention Workers Comp Insurance. It's just sometimes perception and reality are not always the same, especially when comparing Quarterly Estimate Payments with paycheck WH plus the unseen employer payments made on the employee's behalf for FICA, FUTA, SUTA and Workers Comp.