Gail in Virginia

The uninsured taxpayer might be able to apply for an exemption for the first six months from the marketplace. More than likely, if her income was only a little over $2,000 per month, the lowest cost bronze plan would be more than 8% of her income. Since that is not true for the entire year, I think she would have to apply for a hardship exemption to the Secretary of HHS. Also, if you are in a state that did not expand Medicaid, and her income would have been low enough to qualify for the expanded medicaid prior to her marriage, she might qualify to apply for a hardship exemption on those grounds.

Do they own any property - common areas, club house, etc.? Or do they just provide maintenance on grounds? I would think that if they own property they should have a capitalization policy and depreciation even though they are exempt. And if they don't own any property, what would they have to capitalize? Sorry I don't have a good answer for you. I don't personally handle any condo associations.

Ms. Hawkins seems to have re-considered her statements at the Forum. It is my understanding that the most recent webinar she did about ACA she recommended that preparers keep a copy of the insurance cards for out clients to show we had done our due diligence about their insurance status. Now personally, I don't think a copy of the card proves a thing. It usually only has an effective date, and is issued early enough that the person may have never actually paid the premium and therefore may have not really had coverage at all. But at our most recent EA meeting, someone who had watched the webinar told us that Ms. Hawkins made that recommendation and that she said she had reconsidered her earlier position.

I just tried it, Judy and it seemed to work for me. I put in my zip code, a taxpayer age 55 with a spouse age 50 and got a bronze plan rate of 686.90 per month.

Couple of points: if client is accrual rather than cash, then if the money is ever coming out of the bank he should definitely go ahead and take the deduction in the year it was incurred. Assuming that he is a cash basis taxpayer, items charged to a credit card are deductible when charged, not when the payment for the credit card clears the bank. I would not see this as much different if the bank has paid the check without deducting it from his account but intends to deduct it at some point. So that leaves they have paid the check out of someone else's account and are really not interested in tracking and correcting the error, and therefore your client is never going to pay this money. In that case, it would be best to not recognize the expense since it will never really be incurred. That's just my opinion, your mileage may vary.

Is there anything else included in the bill? Often what keeps a perfectly sensible piece of legislation from passing is that something totally unrelated gets tacked onto the bill because it otherwise doesn't have a chance of slipping through and then you either pass something stupid to get something reasonable or you vote against something you might want to pass. I would say there ought to be a law, but we already have too many to keep up with.

Actually my husband's battery for his pacemaker is very close to the surface. I don't know if they have always been just barely under the skin, but his was put in last summer and I can feel it easily. So that is not so far fetched, Eric.

I love how they call these wordy, contradictory statements "guidance." I did notice this statement in the Forbes article: "The guidance makes clear that the penalty does not apply to a plan that has only one participating employee." Now I am not sure which guidance it refers to, but if the church's plan has only one participating employee (the pastor) and only one eligible employee (since everyone else works less than 30 hours per week), does that mean you are okay? I don't know.

I think the purpose was to prevent employers from having their employees buy insurance on the workplace that was subsidized by taxpayers, and then reimburse them for that cheap insurance with tax free dollars. Or maybe they intended to make my head hurt. I get paranoid this time of year.

Until we see how long this is going to take and where most of our customers fall, we are going with our hourly fee.

Rita, I am not as sure as Jack. If the pastor is the only one that qualifies as a FTE, then paying his insurance could be considered a group plan. However, if the policy he has is not MEC and/or was purchased on the exchange, I don't think it would qualify as a group plan no matter what. This article, http://smallbusiness.chron.com/can-employer-reimburse-employee-health-insurance-20554.html seems to say it is okay but this is not substantial authority and I just don't know. I am not nearly as worried about doing tax returns this year as I am about preparing W-2s. Fortunately, the one church that I do W-2s for does have group health through the conference. Can you even purchase a group plan if you only have one employee that qualifies? I know that you used to be required to have at least two employees that took insurance through the plan to be able to get group coverage. I would be inclined to give you at least a definite maybe.

I don't know what I can add to what everyone else has said. I cannot imagine the pain of making that decision for a spouse; but as John said, your wife actually made the decision and you are simply honoring her wishes. Sometimes all that we can do is cope the best we can one day at a time, and depend on our friends, our family and our God to get us through the process of grieving. This is not something that you will get over, but I trust that you will learn to live with the pain and to remember the good times. What an honor that you choose us to share your pain.

In Virginia, SOL can be either the steaming pile or the Standards of Learning. Wait - is that the same thing?

What a stressful time of year to be dealing with an illness in your family. I will also pray for you and your wife.

Ain't we got fun? I can't imagine why everyone doesn't want to be in this profession!

Judy, the only thing that I see on the right when I click more reply options is -Enable emoticons? -Enable signature? -Follow this topic? with the appropriate check boxes. Is this where you see the option to start a poll?

Usually check the box authority works with IRS as long as you are calling before the due date of the next return. Unfortunately, as slowly as they send out notices that rarely happens. Even with 2848's I have heard horror stories from other EA's about agents that look for any reason not to talk to us about the return. For example, the box for licensing authority should be blank for EA's, but occasionally an agent will refuse to accept the POA because it is blank. Another EA told me of having a POA rejected because they signed before the client did according to the date (you can't accept appointment before being appointed.) Anything to avoid talking to us.

I have typed so many more posts than I have ever posted. Sometimes, once I have it typed I decide it contributes nothing worthwhile to the discussion and does not need to be added. The easiest way to delete is to never post. Once posted, I don't think I have ever had any reason to go back and delete the post particularly.

$14 per hour to handle an audit? Really? I don't think so, at least not in my office.

I assume that if we notice a glaring grammatical error 6 minutes after we post, we can still beg one of the moderators to fix it for us. Usually I notice them as I hit post, but you never know.

The only thing that I remember about fees from Circ. 230 is that we cannot charge a contingent fee for return preparation, and we can't charge an unconscionable fee. We have charged a fee for e-filing when we used a software that charged us a fee, but otherwise I think it is cheaper for us to e-file than paper file so I would prefer to charge a fee for paper filing.

With Judy's post, I think she put this issue to rest. Pubs, and opinions by instructors, are not substantial authority. Code is the highest substantial authority.

From the website Health Reform: Beyond the Basics, a project of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities: Do Social Security benefits received by a dependent child count as part of Modified Adjusted Gross Income (MAGI)? Whether the Social Security benefits received by a dependent child counts towards MAGI depends on whether the child is required to file a tax return. A household’s MAGI is the sum of the MAGI of the taxpayer, the spouse filing jointly, and dependents who are required to file a return. Dependents who have income above a certain amount ($6,200 in earned income and $1,000 in unearned income in 2015) must file their own tax return even though someone else claims them as a dependent. (Social Security benefits do not count toward these thresholds.) If the dependent with Social Security benefits is not required to file a return, any Social Security benefits he or she receives are not counted. I would still like to see an actual cite that I feel comfortable with. What I see on the IRS website also seems to say that dependent income is irrelevant if they have no filing requirement. But none of these sources is actually considered substantial authority. Jack, do you have a cite for your position?

I thought that I understood that children's income did not have to be added to household income if they did not have a filing requirement. Is SS received by the child an exception that has to be added back even if they don't have sufficient income to have a filing requirement?

Thanks, Judy. This should be very helpful!