Abby Normal

The IRS will say that this is compensation and needs to be reported, even if you try to call it a gift.

I've never heard of a surrogate account. Whose SSN is on the 1099?

Tell them you need everything entered in QuickBooks with bank statements reconciled from the beginning... or they can go somewhere else. And that you'd be happy to enter it all for them a $5,000 retainer. How can a company with mid 6 figure sales not have any books! The IRS would slaughter them on an audit.

Well, he's never intended to use it as a residence, and if he sells it at a loss, the loss would be nondeductible.

Switch to bonus depreciation instead of 179. 179 is limited at the entity level first. In S corps you add the ordinary income and officers' wages to get the income limit. I've never done a partnership with 179 and guaranteed payments, but it might be similar.

I'm going to enjoy this for a minute because it may never happen again!

If you put the mortgage interest on 4952 it might be there for a very long time. You can elect to capitalize any of the three classes - interest, taxes or "other carrying charges" on a year by year basis. It is important that you keep track of what you have elected to capitalize, because the whole point of the exercise is to have the capitalized expenses in your basis, when you sell the property. https://www.forbes.com/sites/peterjreilly/2013/05/13/electing-to-capitalize-expenses-can-pay-off-on-sale/#55de7e670f01

Download all forms for all states too.

Are you using Drake or ATX? Or ??? And is this a 1040?

So, you really have to know your fixed asset class lives to get it right in Drake.

Searching Drake knowledge base sucks! But I did find this: https://kb.drakesoftware.com/Site/Browse/15034/4562-Data-Entry-Screen-Changes-Drake17?Keywords=4562+detail

I get my one on one networking here.

Bitlocker does allow folder level encryption... but why bother? Just do the whole drive for best security.

I like to password protect files that contain passwords. Then I just need to remember the password.

You're obviously not a nerd.

It's possible to just encrypt your data drive, but not recommended. Many programs (ATX, QuickBooks, Thunderbird email, etc.) store data on the C drive by default. And I can't really think of any downside to encrypting all your partitions. I have 5 partitions and encrypted them all.

I was never crazy about having an internal modem because the only way to reset it is to reboot your computer. The two newest modems I have just plug into a USB port and they're tiny. They're powered by the USB port too. Isn't that just adorable?

I just have them on my hard drive with cryptic names but I can view them from my backup location if I ever need them.

Efax services often charge for too many outgoing. I'd rather pay the long distance fee. Plus I'd rather just fax from my computer.

We use a fax modem to send faxes using windows' built in fax program. We only use efax for receiving faxes.

With the services I've used, you can set it to just send you a notification email. Then you login in to the website to download the fax. We used to get them as email attachments but I decided that was not secure enough.

Super easy. It takes a short while to perform the initial encryption, depending on drive size and speed, but you basically just turn it on and give it a nice long password and you're all set. Make sure you save your recovery key someplace safe.

That's why my eservices account is so important to me. When I get a new client I want to make sure everything is as it should be.

I never even considered EFT payments as an option because it just seemed like so much could go wrong. Besides, clients can now schedule estimated payments directly with the IRS.

Definitely trust the IRS more than clients.