Abby Normal

23 minutes ago, BrewOne said:

May not be worth the trouble to calculate, but there is a de minimis amount on reporting OID (page 13 of Pub 550 gives an example).

Yeah, I've always know there's a calculation but the OID amounts I see are too small to even think twice about.

It's more important that you pick up and accrued interest paid as a subtraction adjustment.

OID is income, not a subtraction. I always enter as a separate interest income, in the appropriate box. Every CPA firm I ever worked with did it exactly the same.

20 hours ago, cbslee said:

You should be able to enter it from a 1099 worksheet using the bank's EIN.

You only need the bank name. Just uncheck the Add to payer box. I never add payers from 1099 INT or DIV because I often put part of the account number in the name, and I don't want those polluting my payer list.

16 hours ago, mcb39 said:

No interest on money in the bank anyway

You can earn 4-5% at many banks and credit unions. I'm enjoying the higher interest income and hope rates stay up, like they used, last century.

Yikes! A Personal Holding Company? Haven't had to think about that in years.

https://www.thetaxadviser.com/issues/2020/jul/beware-personal-holding-company-tax.html

Speaking of marriage and husbands...

19 hours ago, jklcpa said:

 

Expenses for repairs and renovations prior to being placed in service must be capitalized and depreciated. IRS Reg. § 1.263(a)-2(d)(1)).   Repair expenses after being placed in service must follow the repair regs, and Abby Normal's second link takes you to the IRS page as a starting point.

I agree with Margaret that you should segregate as much as possible because there may be some items may have shorter lives (such as kitchen appliances) vs improvements or items considered part of the building that are depreciated over longer lives. 

And sidewalks, driveways, fences, etc. are land improvements depreciated over 15 years. Of course, valuing those would be difficult without a cost segregaton study and that may not be worth it for these properties.

I signed up for an id.me account yesterday and it was quick and easy, and kinda cool. Of course, I have a smartphone. I've had one for 20 years and would be lost without it.

Id.me is a universal login for federal sites. I'll use it for eservices and ssa.gov mostly.

The repair regs did open up a lot of things to being expensed, but there isn't quite enough info to decide.

Here's a related article: https://www.thetaxadviser.com/newsletters/2021/apr/expensing-hvac-costs.html

Here's the pertinent IRS page: https://www.irs.gov/businesses/small-businesses-self-employed/tangible-property-final-regulations

3 hours ago, Yardley CPA said:

I guess they must have because I am completing returns much more quickly than with ATX.  Don't get me wrong, that's not bashing ATX in any way.  I enjoyed my time with ATX but their price point made me look elsewhere.  I've found the transition from ATX to ProSeries to be relatively smooth.  The biggest advantage for me is the way it handle multistate returns compared to ATX.  

ATX's price is what attracts most people, but if you do multistate, you'll want to buy the Advantage version. ATX handles multistate corporations and partnerships very well.

Like most here, I've used 7 different programs over the years (including Drake and Intuit), but I'm the fastest with ATX. I can really fly around a return. Until the only return is I need to do is my own, I'm sticking with ATX.

The only accident I ever had was on the day after tax season ended, so I tried not to drive anywhere on that day.

The one account that always makes me facepalm is 'Reimbursements.' "We were just reimbursing our employees for things."

Yeah, I've seen some over the years. The ones I hate are the ones that keep adding new accounts. I had one that set up new accounts with the year in the name. Serioulsy? We already have dates in the general ledger.

I hate doing tax returns without reconciled bank statements and balanced books. There's close to zero chance that the return is correct.

16 hours ago, Pacun said:

I have a client who has 4 van used in his business 100%. I have the four vehicles listed as fixed asset with their prices and depreciation flows properly.  I have a grand total of gas and repairs of $12K. How do you enter those 12K that belong to the 4 vans. Do you override line 9 on Sch C or you enter the whole amount in one fixed asset information sheet?

If you're using depreciation and not ever choosing mileage, just enter the expenses directly on Sch C in other expenses.

1 hour ago, jklcpa said:

For those of you that file extensions with a taxes owed but no payment with the 4868,

• do you show the the actual projected figures and tax due not being paid, or
• do you show the tax and the total of withholding and estimates as the same amounts so that the math comes to the zero payment?

The tax is the only number that matters. What you've paid and what you owe are not a consideration.

One of my customizations of the 4868 in ATX is to link the prior year tax from the Comparison form to the 4868. I figure last year's tax is better than a zero, especially if I have no documents from the client. Programmers should add an option to the 4868 to use last year's tax rounded up to the next thousand, to make our lives easier.

The error says the tax period is wrong. Did you mark short year initial return? What dates did you enter?

I'm guessing you did not check one of the boxes for initial return?

I used ChatGPT's free version to ask some tax questions and the results were very good. All our tax research will be AI driven fairly soon, and personally, I've been waiting for this my entire career.

On 4/15/2023 at 4:14 AM, Slippery Pencil said:

Deleting an email doesn't necessarily remove it from the server. 

With web mail it does (I think). Sure if you're using Outlook or Tbird, deleting an email from your computer won't remove it from the server where your email actually lives.

2 hours ago, kathyc2 said:

Correct.  A lot of us (myself included) use the term recapture loosely. See the instructions for 4797 Part III line 26.  Line 12 on 6252 pulls from line  31 of 4797.  If straight line was taken, line 31 will be zero.  The gain can be taken over the like of the installment note. 

The gain is less than the depreciation so it all has to be taken this year. Doing an installment sale will not help.

Because programmers don't prepare taxes for a living, so they don't truly understand our processes. I've complained about these kinds of things on extensions for years, with both ATX and the last tax software I used.

Efile attachments are no big deal. Just keep them under 1 MB. Larger attachments can prevent efiling, especially if you have slower internet.

15 minutes ago, BulldogTom said:

@JJStephens  I never, ever want to live in Ohio!  

Tom
Longview, TX

Or PA, NJ or NY. But yeah, Ohio is the worst. My first Ohio was a part-year moved to MD. I ended up doing 4 separate OH returns.

3 hours ago, GLGACCT said:

I email the jpeg file to myself and open Kofax Standard PDF.  You can just drag the jpeg file from the email to Kofax and it will automatically convert the image to a PDF.  Usually works, just a few extra steps.

You delete both the sent email and the received email so the jpeg isn't sitting on some server out there forever.

If you get a Google voice number, the text will go right to your computer with no need to email it to yourself.