Lee B

For us the big benefit of the gridlocked divided government for the next two years will be, minimal tax law changes which will hopefully allow the IRS to finally get caught up

"The four big-dollar tax issues at the center of the debate are: The expansion of the child tax credit after Democratic advocates were unable to include it in the Inflation Reduction Act. Reviving a version of the deduction for R&D costs that allows companies to reduce tax liability in the same year they incur the spending. This would benefit manufacturers, drugmakers and tech companies. Reinstating a more generous deduction for interest expense writeoffs that expired at the end of 2021. This would benefit highly leveraged companies, including private equity and venture capital firms. Renewing a tax break known as "bonus depreciation" that allows businesses to write off their equipment purchases in a single year, benefiting companies with large capital expenditures."

You don't say what kind of entity was involved, but if your client sold his uncle's business after the uncle passed away the assets of the business would get a step up in basis.

Just noticed sometime recently, Drake raised their regular price from $1,825 to $1,895.

"The IRS reported in the latest update this week on the status of its mission-critical operations during COVID-19 that of those 4.4 million unprocessed returns, 1.9 million require error correction or other special handling, while 2.5 million are paper returns still waiting to be reviewed and processed. The work typically doesn't require the IRS to correspond with taxpayers, but does require special handling by an IRS employee so, in those cases, it's taking the IRS more than 21 days to issue any related tax refund." "In total, it has over 6.3 million returns in suspense, with about 2 million in unpostable status, 1.1 million processing rejects, a half-million in error resolution, and nearly 3 million still waiting to be worked for potential identity theft. Most math errors involved reconciliation of the Recovery Rebate Credit or the Child Tax Credit, and through Oct. 10, the IRS had sent nearly 14 million notices mostly concerning those issues."

"Tax Exempt Organization Search tool As people are deciding where to make their donations, the IRS has a tool that may help. Tax Exempt Organization Search on IRS.gov is a tool that allows users to search for charities. TEOS provides information about an organization's federal tax status and filings." Definitely useful, last year I had a client make a $1,000 donation to a non profit which was not a charitable organization for purposes of taking a tax deduction.

Thanks for the alert, I will definitely wait until next month.

The draft instruction for these Forms have been released. The due date for providing these Forms to employees is March 3, 2023. The due date for paper filing the employer copies fof these forms has changed from January 31, 2022 to February 28, 2023. Yeah, I get one more month! Having to finish these by the end of January while also trying to finish W-2s and 1099s was a big pain!

Almost all organized religions have staff at the national level that will assist with the process every step of the way.

I agree, I still wonder whether your client is confused?

Drake's survey of 3200 preparers said they expected to increase their fees by 10 %

"Similar to the 2022 instructions for partnerships, the IRS has expanded relief and clarity by adding a new "domestic filing exception" for S corporations' draft instructions for the 2022 tax year schedules K-2 and K-3. The domestic filing exception for S corporations is very similar to the one for partnerships. However, unlike the four criteria partnerships must meet, S corporations are required to meet three tests. The one requirement omitted relates to U.S. citizens and resident alien individuals, domestic trusts and estates; S corporations aren't permitted to have the latter entities as shareholders." https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-dft/i1065s23--dft.pdf

Then there things in the tax code like "Carried Interest" taxed at 15 % protected by the large campaign contributions made by Wall Street. Some members of our population are more equal than others.

"The Internal Revenue Service's Criminal Investigation unit opened more than 2,550 criminal investigations, identified over $31 billion from tax and financial crimes, and saw a 90.6% conviction rate on cases accepted for prosecution during fiscal year 2022, even as its agents came under political attack, according to a report released Thursday." "The conviction rate in fiscal 2022 was similar to other fiscal years. Of the over 2,500 criminal cases initiated, 71.7% of investigations were tax or tax-related crimes. The remaining crimes included financial crimes tied to narcotics, human smuggling, child pornography, bank secrecy and money laundering. Lee noted that in April, IRS-CI led the takedown of Hydra, one of the largest darknet marketplaces of narcotics and other illicit goods in the history of the U.S. government, and in February it seized $3.6 billion in cryptocurrency from the Bitfinex hack of 2016. "That was the largest single financial seizure in the history of government," said Lee." "IRS-CI also handled 840 cases of COVID fraud in recent years and is just shy of 400 indictments, part of a 98.9% conviction rate in that area, with an average sentence of three years for the 180 cases sentenced to date."

On the other hand the Social Security Benefits paid to people at this level of AGI wouldn't have been taxable.

Most of my clients are business clients, however for my non business clients I insist of payment at the same time as their efile authorization, no exceptions. I learned that lesson my second year in business when I let a business client get several months behind. I lost $1,000 (back when that was a significant amount of money) when my client filed bankruptcy. He ending up keeping a really nice house on the Mckenzie River and left everyone else in the lurch to the tune of over $500,000. Apparently he had a good Attorney because he was back in the same business under a different name as soon as his Chapter 7 finalized.

Pub 15 B - Are you referring to Education Assistance? Of course the employer can send and pay for an employee to go to any kind of job related training.

There are pros and cons for both ATX and Drake. It really depends on what kind of practice you have and what's important to you.

See the post titled, "What will happen to Drake?"

So if you hate Quickbooks, what do you use instead?

Excerpted from Drake's email announcement: "I hope this finds you well as we all head into fall and get ready for the upcoming tax season. I want to share with you that Cinven, who originally invested in Drake Software in early 2021, announced an agreement today to acquire the tax preparation software company TaxAct. Today’s announcement also mentions that Drake and TaxAct will be brought together under a single holding company through our common ownership by Cinven. Drake and TaxAct will continue to operate under their own brands and, collectively, we will scale our offerings and enhance our ability to provide comprehensive, industry-leading services. Over time, we anticipate that exchanging insights with another reputable, experienced tax software brand will strengthen our business and suite of professional solutions that our valued customers rely on to run successful tax practice."

"Only "Send Submissions" for 1040 (both State and Federal) will be affected by this shutdown, all other services such as "Get Acks" and all state services will be available after the shutdown."

Copied from IRS Tax Topic 601: "Have a qualifying child who meets the age, relationship, residency, and joint return tests, and isn't treated as the qualifying child of another person. Or, if you don't have a qualifying child, you must: be age 25 but under 65 at the end of the year. However, for 2021, there is no maximum age limit for eligible workers. In addition, for 2021, the minimum age limit is 24 years of age for a full-time student, 18 years of age for a qualified former foster youth or a qualified homeless youth, or 19 years of age for all others; not qualify as a dependent of another person; and live in the United States for more than half of the year."

Earned income tax credit for 2021 Dependents 0 Maximum AGI (single or head of household) $21,430 Maximum AGI (married filing jointly) $27,380 Maximum EITC $1,502 Big Reduction for filers with no dependents Earned income tax credit for 2022 Dependents 0 Maximum AGI (single or head of household) $16,480 Maximum AGI (Married filing jointly) $22,610 Maximum EITC $560

I always wait until after Thanksgiving and never have any problems. By then the early rush is out of the way and the technical problems should be mostly resolved.