Lee B

I agree, the most enjoyable part of my work is the monthly small business accounting tasks, second is payroll. For me tax preparation is a necessary evil, which probably explains why I don't do any estate and trust related work.

"Drake Software ("Drake" or the "Company"), a provider of comprehensive professional tax preparation software, today announced that Dermot Halpin has joined as Executive Chair. The appointment follows the completion of the acquisition of TaxAct, a leading provider of digital, do-it-yourself ("DIY") tax filing assistance software and services, and the combination of TaxAct with Drake under a single holding company. Mr. Halpin brings significant leadership experience building and scaling high-growth consumer marketplace platforms. Throughout his career he has led businesses operating worldwide, and previously held senior leadership positions including President of Attractions and Vacation Rentals at TripAdvisor and President of Europe, Middle East and Africa at Expedia. He currently serves as a non-executive Director at Datalex. Datalex is a public software developer headquartered in Dublin, Ireland. It works mostly with airlines to develop travel software, such as booking websites." So the Executive Chair of Taxwell previously held executive leadership positions at Trip Advisor, Expedia and an airline travel software developer

"Headquartered in Franklin, North Carolina, Taxwell (formerly Drake Software) is a leading provider of tax preparation software to both professional tax preparers and individual Digital Do-It-Yourself (DIY) filers. The Company provides the tools and resources that users need to build their businesses and properly file federal, state and local taxes across the country. Taxwell employs c. 1,000 people across its Franklin, NC headquarters as well as in Dallas, TX, and Cedar Rapids, IA. More than 90,000 tax professionals and 3 million DIY tax filers throughout the US use Taxwell annually, and each year the company processes millions of federal and state-accepted returns." Taxwell is the parent holding company for Drake and TaxAct set up by the European private equity firm Cinven. Supposedly, Drake and TaxAct will operate as separate subsidiaries.

Oregon requires every one to licensed plus 30 hours of CPE every year. With the number of baby boomers retiring, we actually have a shortage of accountants and preparers. The national tax prep firms actually charge more than I do.

"The most common reason students didn't major in accounting is that they just didn't find it interesting — but very close to that is the ability to make more money faster in other fields, and the burden of the 150-credit-hour requirement." To be honest, when I was a staff auditor for Coopers & Lybrand, it was very boring!

Wow, my absolute lowest fee is $295.

I'm confused? Are these two different properties?

"The IRS is now providing this capability to an additional 51 notices and letters received from the IRS. These updated IRS notices and letters, which taxpayers will receive in the coming weeks, will include instructions that guide them to the appropriate upload tool."

In my experience, ending your payroll services at the end of the 3rd quarter would be easier. without the complications of year end reports. Margaret is right placing a higher priority on your own health allows you to deal with everything else.

You will have to check with ATX. The IRS and the SSA both have new higher level log in requirements. What I find very annoying is that your old user name/passwords (no matter how many years that you have been using them) have been discarded and no longer work. Do they really want more W 2s and 1099s paper filed?

"The Colorado Department of Health Care Policy & Financing (HCPF) is alerting more than four million individuals of a data breach that impacted their personal and health information. Colorado HCPF is a state government agency that manages the Health First Colorado (Medicaid) and Child Health Plan Plus programs, and provides support for low-income families, the elderly, and citizens with disabilities. The data breach was possible after Clop ransomware exploited the MOVEit Transfer zero-day (CVE-2023-34362) in a hacking campaign that impacted hundreds of organizations worldwide. HCPF clarifies that while their systems weren't directly compromised, the data exposure occurred through IBM, their contractor, which utilized the MOVEit software. The investigation revealed that the threat actors managed to access and likely exfiltrated files that contained certain Health First Colorado and CHP+ members' information, including: Full names Social Security Numbers (SSNs) Medicaid ID number Medicare ID number Date of Birth Home address Contact information Income information Demographic data Clinical data (diagnosis, lab results, treatment, medication) Health insurance information." Now it's 6 weeks later and they're just getting around to acknowledging the breach and notifying 4 million people.

"The only way to keep your health is to eat what you don't want, drink what you don't like and do what you'd rather not."

It's the way the law was written, to avoid "Double Dipping"

"Effective January 1, 2024, the Corporate Transparency Act (CTA) will require certain types of companies, both domestic and foreign, that do business in the United States to report beneficial ownership information (BOI) to the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN). BOI reports will require reporting companies to identify the entity, company applicants, and its beneficial owners that control at least 25% of the ownership interest including name, birthdate, address, and an image of an acceptable identification document." An image of an acceptable identification document. I think I will inform my clients of the requirements and make my services available for an additional fee.

I would just adjust the basis worksheet. In Drake there lines for other increase and other decreases.

What is your point? That's not available with the IRS except via snail mail!

You need a signed response letter from your client. This is the online equivalent of faxing in a signed response letter plus attachments. At first, I asked myself, "Is this an improvement?" After thinking about it,"Yes it is because the uploaded file is cross referenced with a business name, an EIN and a letter number." Previously an IRS employee would have entered that information manually. Moving forward one step at a time

I talked to 3 different IRS Employees today My combined wait time for all 3 calls was less than 30 minutes All 3 Employees were polite, responsive and helpful, which for me to say is high praise. Thank You

No, I didn't have to do either. I had to provide Business Name, EIN, IRS Letter number plus a few other details plus a copy of the IRS letter. The letter code had to be on the dropdown list!

After I uploaded my response I received the following acknowledgement: "Your documents have been successfully uploaded. You may be contacted at a future date regarding your response. The current time is: Wed Aug 09 2023 13:21:48 GMT-0700 (Pacific Daylight Time)"

I don't know about other states, but here in Western Oregon there are multiple sources of fairly good quality fake ID for a reasonable price. i am actually surprised your clients didn't take care of this problem in advance. The knowledge of how to deal with this is widespread in all the immigrant communities.

This is one of the more interesting aspects of our society. There are millions of employees in this country working with fake ID and invalid social security numbers. Both our federal and state governments happily accept the taxes withheld from these paychecks and employers suffer little or no penalty. Who do you think, picks our fruit and vegetables, works in our meatpacking plants, cleans our hotel rooms, and maintains our yards? Very few Americans will do this work.

I am looking at an IRS letter. The letter says the preferred way of responding is via upload to irs.gov/. . . . . . . When this start and has anyone used this and was it effective?

In the back of my mind I am wondering, "whether no depreciation was ever deducted or whether at some point the depreciation detail just didn't get rolled over and depreciation ceased?"

I thought that NOLs could be used to offset ordinary income but not capital gains since the IRS considers the two to be different classes of income?