Abby Normal

Each additional state would be $75-$100 depending on the state. Plus the home state would be more for the credit for taxes paid to other states. I'd quote her $700-$1000 and if it comes in less than that, she'll be pleased.

I do some returns (10%) with the client there, including a few businesses. It's great to be able to ask them questions and have them call and get info faxed while I'm working on the return. Sometimes, they're missing info and the return can't be finished. I'm actually not "face-to-face" because I turn my back on them to work on the computer. The only annoying ones are the ones with loud obnoxious cellphone noises, but that's just one or two. It was hard when I first started doing it, but I got over the feeling of being rushed (which I was just doing to myself) and now I rather enjoy it. My office manager can scan their records and assemble their return in 10 minutes, during which time I either chat with the client or ask them to wait in the lobby. I can't imagine how that would ever take 45 minutes. Although, I took over clients for a retiring CPA and one return she did took her 8 hours including 1 hour of "copying and assembling". Even the first year, the entire process took me and my less than an hour. She was billing at $80/hour and I bill at $260/hour and my bill was less than hers. I actually doubled my bill to this client and they were thrilled that is was less than last year. And I was thrilled to make $520/hr!

I don't think that's right. At least, I know I've filed amended returns close to 10/15 before and never had a problem. You may be right about the rule but the IRS computers aren't rejecting them.

You can also elect to treat some of the capital gain from the sale of the land as investment income to allow you to deduct the investment interest that's suspended on the 4952.

I don't think any of us follow the Interest Ordering Rules completely, either because we don't fully understand them or because it's too much work. http://www.irs.gov/publications/p535/ch04.html#en_US_2013_publink1000243081 Also, once you elect to treat part of your home equity interest as not secured by the home, you need IRS permission to revoke that election: http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Election+not+to+treat+debt+as+secured+by+a+qualified+residence.-a0110741604 You would have been better off taking it all as acquisition and home equity interest instead of allocating it to investment interest.

I prefer my clients know a lot about their taxes so they have at least a feel for whether something is wrong with or missing from their return. It is their return after all. But too many questions, or being accusatory that I did something wrong gets old quick.

I save before moving to another form because ATX died a few days ago and it had apparently been several minutes since the last autosave and I had to go back and figure out what was the last entry that was saved. This lame warning is as useless a warning as I have ever seen in my 36 years of computing!

If the dividends and sales proceeds add up to more than the filing limit, I would think they'd get a CP2000. Do they owe state tax? I like to file regardless so the year will be closed in 3 years.

Yeah, I probably do 150 returns on extension and save each one 20 times while working on it, which equals 3,000 clicks! (I actually use the keyboard so it's 3,000 presses of the Enter key. Makes my pinky hurt just thinking about it!) If they wanted to warn me once when opening an already efiled RETURN, that would be fine. But warning me because an extension has been efiled, over and over and over, is just beyond annoying. If I ever snap and go postal, it will be directed at programmers! And I used to be a programmer. This warning provides exactly zero safety because it already prevents you from creating a new efile if one has already been transmitted or accepted. And it doesn't stop you from screwing up your original data file. It just gives you the option of not screwing it up after you made a bunch of changes. Hmmm. I wonder if it will autosave with an already efiled return?

She would have to gift him (whoever that is) half of the underlying lease for him to become a 50% owner. But that will only help with future distributions. She's stuck with paying taxes on the whole check that she already received.

Without looking it up, I'm guessing it has a nautical origin. The stern is the rear of the boat.

Employer doesn't know what they're doing. It belongs on the W2, but would be WAAAYY smarter for both employer and employee to have an accountable plan. Employer may be playing "hot potato" with the 50% limit on meals deduction... or they may just be stupid.

I agree with Jack. I've noticed when pulling IRS transcripts that often the IRS never processes corrected forms, and, even if they do, they won't come after you for $25.

It's not a safety mechanism when the only thing already efiled is the extension. It's just a stupid annoyance. 1/10 of a second?! You must have fast hands!

>If you have too much tax withheld but fail to file a return, you usually only have two years (not three) to get it back. What? I've never had a problem filing close to the three year deadline.

Now that we have efiled extensions for corporations, every damn time we save a return we get an annoying pop up warning that "efiles could be affected by saving" we have to close. Any way to turn that off? It's totally unnecessary because ATX automatically marks created efiles as rejected when you save and accepted efiles won't be changed.

Is it a partnership or S corp? If so, it might be because of Sec 179 recapture. The gain doesn't go on the entity return but as supplemental info on the K1.

I always extend them too. Sometimes they show up in the fall.

One of the situations I hate with decoupling is when it's an S corp with no basis to deduct the loss and the software wants to have an add back on MD. If it was big enough, I'd override it and keep a cumulative schedule until there depreciation is actually deducted on the federal 1040. Problem would be if only part of the losses were allowed. Hopefully, most decoupling differences will go away in a few years and we won't be creating new ones.

It should create a MD NOL to carryback/forward.

Some ATX insider replied on the official ATX form: jmdaviscpa, You can change the state by doing the following: Go to Fixed Assets/Asset Global Settings/State Calcs then select the State Situs from the drop down menu. Please note that if you have assets in multiple states only one state may be selected. So this will work in my case where the client only has assets in one state. Still screwed on any multi-state clients.

No. A few fraudulent people have nowhere near the impact of thousands of MD business deducting, millions in depreciation in one year as opposed to spreading it over 5 years. MD was just trying to responsibly smooth out their revenues.

You can split the losses and deductions in any reasonable manner. You may need to make two duplicate data files and have at it!

I already the PA return added. I was just expecting the state depreciation schedule to say PA and not MD. Even TaxWorks had that right! I'll just edit the PDF to say PA. PA returns are a pain in the ass! I have a PA CPA contact I can email, thankfully. MD used to follow federal law exactly until the Bush tax cuts were going to blow up the state budget so they decoupled. With bonus gone (for good I hope) the only diff will be 179 over 25K and that doesn't happen much.

Thanks! This reminds of the Intuit approach where you make the basic product deliberately flawed but offer you an addon that does things right. Many states have decoupled from the federal over 179 and bonus depreciation. I haven't seen any states lately that accept federal depreciation.