Medlin Software, Dennis

Likely the proper end result, but offer the employer a chance to fix it first, if the employee is still working for the same employer, and wishes to remain so.

My preference is to hand the mess to the employer for clean up, or have the employee report it (properly) as W2 wages, pay the taxes owed, and let the government handle collecting the employer amounts. Just because the employer made a mistake, the employee and their dependents should not be penalized. IRL, the employee likely wants to keep their job, so the employee will ask to will have to be handled as some sort of earned income... in a way which does not cause the employer to get dinged. As I get closer to SS age, and more importantly, as my wages count for my daughter's disability amount, there are similar mistakes in my youth which I wish I could undo. Thus, my hard line on this of dumping it on the employer, with the understanding not all will do so to avoid "rocking the boat".

When I skimmed one article on the NY enforcement, I seem to remember a profit in the 6 figures for each one they went after forcefully. (I could be off, but it was a very profitable endeavor.) My guess is if NY, MD, etc., starts an investigation beyond in house review, they already have what they need to make a profit... The MD document looks to be very layman friendly, and is a good guideline for anyone who is concerned with their tax domicile. Among the mobile RV crowd, there are three states to domicile in (once medicare age is reached). SD, TX, and FL. If "I" know this, then the states bleeding high tax earners know this, and can easily flag the movers for further inspection... especially if real property is kept in the state being left. So for the OP, if domicile is not your area of expertise, you might consider referring to some sort of domicile expert for advice, or having them sign off that you suggested a domicile consultation. Whatever you may gain by handling the client could be lost in defense and bad will if they are put through a domicile audit. I suppose claiming FL domicile but having only a MD tax preparer could be used against them.

I go with the assumption most states with income tax will have at least one person looking at this issue, with the first factor being the potential profit (revenue recovery) involved. I have seen good client type information provided by specialty groups, such as RV clubs for the retired and/or mobile types (Escapees is the best example I have seen). Retaining current home has to be done very carefully from what I have read. NY recently made common news about doing things such as reviewing social media, veterinary records, etc.

If the employer has a separate office (entity, at least for state taxation purposes) in IL, then the employee may be able to pay 7 months to NY and 5 to IL. Depends on how "separate" the employer setup the two locations... If the employer has nothing in IL, then the employee's residence/workspace became the employer's IL office. (The employee should make sure they are covered for WC in their remote workspace, and the employer has other issues which are not a huge concern for the employee [labor posters, inspection, keeping unauthorized people out of the workspace, restricting hours, etc.].) In the case of only a remote worker, NY will want 12 months of taxes (5 months may be as a non resident), and IL will likely want 5 months. Which, if either, credits for paid to the other for the 5 months, I am not sure.

Was the work physically performed in NY, was this a remote worker, or something else?

Indeed. "Less than one year from end of Microsoft free support for W7... " But for me, no sense throwing good money away. Unless I foresee my demise, or to not use a Windows 7 OS after early 2020, I have to upgrade. I actually stopped using my W7 setup a month ago. I have started to more aggressively warn my customers about using XP/Vista/2000. Just as when DOS, W3.1, W95, etc. all did or should have ended, I am getting push back, some quite vocal. Today's was from someone claiming to be too old to "stay up with the times". What would you tell this person? I thought about whether or not to reply, and what my reply would be. " We are warning that, at any time, something may change which will not allow the software to continue to work on XP. XP is now FIVE years out of date, so there has been plenty of time to get current. XP can no longer be considered safe, and should not be used for any data which you cannot afford to have compromised. In practical terms, you cannot afford not to get current/safe. Having our cluster mail box broken into last month (home), and seeing what the cost is to neighbors whose W2 forms were stolen, it is as simple as this - It is totally irresponsible to put your employee's data at risk by using a known unsafe operating system on the computer you use to store their data. While I cannot make anyone follow good practices, I cannot, in good conscious, not warn you. No one is too old to be safe. If you are not comfortable keeping current, you should probably consider hiring out your payroll processing and whatever else you do on the outdated and unsafe computer."

Less than one year from end of Microsoft free support for W7...

Forms a tax agency supplies in duplex can generally be reproduced in duplex, BUT... I also restrict the use of duplex on certain forms. The reason? We have no control over the quality of paper and printer. Forms which the scanner rejects are subject to penalties, and my approval status (as a form preparer) can be stopped because of too many rejects...

The manual method is to use the Windows registry editor's search/find function. Some of the places to look (directly): \HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Printers \HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Devices \HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\PrinterPorts \HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Print\Printers If you delete a bit of printer information you need, you can reinstall the printer. The issue is printer software not having a complete proper uninstall. (For instance, while searching for the common registry locations, I found remnants of Microsoft XPS printer, which I never use and had already uninstalled.)

One "common" issue, with printing, is the Windows Registry containing/retaining invalid printer information. There may be some sort of printer clean up tool (I have no idea), as I manually clean up the printer section from time to time. For most, uninstalling ALL printers, then reinstalling just the printer(s) you are currently using, will get things going again.

True! The odds of a scammer going to a preparer who finds this group must be small, but still possible.

If same FEIN, watch for / handle over withholding of SS. Could be (off the top of my head): Different SEIN. Employee is subject to more than one state tax jurisdiction, or I suppose, structure change only requiring new SEIN. Multiple local taxes, too many to fit on one W2 (think Ohio). Should only have one Federal and State information. Same "company", different SEIN (multi state liability). Third Party Sick Pay Change in payroll processor (a paid processor is not going to want to prepare any report with pay information they did not control) Change in payroll software, failing to merge the data.

"what is wrong with people?" Apparently nothing, since it never is "their" responsibility I have neighbors who are livid the USPS is not paying for a damaged cluster box. Of those of us who are wise enough to know the facts, none of us are dumb enough to take on the responsibility of funding the replacement and install, then trying to get payment from all the neighbors. There are some misinformed folks in my neighborhood, who will be livid whomever eventually pays for the replacement will be asking them for their share of cost to get access to one of the boxes. (We had little mail to our address, long ago favoring a PO Box. Our route has no regular carrier, so it often comes after dark, with a temp or OT carrier, and the accuracy of what gets put into each slot is less than what one would reasonably expect.)

Withholding calculations versus liability are at their worst (that I can remember) based on the manipulation by the current administration (to say they boosted take home pay). Even though I do not directly deal with employees, I suggest my customers give employees notices about checking their withholding early in the year, and again at the end of Q3. From the perspective of my customer, the idea is to reduce the number of employees who blame their employer for under withholding. The IRS has provides documents employers can post/hand out, including the recent "whoops, we screwed up and will not charge interest on certain under withholding situations". --- Yes indeedy thank you, I have lost customers this year based on this very issue. The complaint is the calculations I built in to my payroll software did not withhold enough. Of course, I use the official IRS instructions, but they still think it must be my fault their employees owe money. Self responsibility, like what used to be common sense, is no longer the norm.

"Employer" and "1099" do not mix. Whatever amount is legit, go through the process of getting a corrected W2, which puts the "trouble" back where it belongs, incorrect classification by the employer. For your client, I "think" (it has been more than a decade since I did one like that, and I no longer do tax returns other than my own) you can file with the information as is, adjusting wages as needed (and telling the IRS why the 1099 is wrong, and what the correct wages should be) hopefully without waiting for contact from the former employer. The employer will eventually get a nasty gram to fix/dispute their incorrect reporting, and the resulting penalties, interest, and make up taxes on the amount not properly reported as wages. Apologies if I have the steps wrong, but I hope I expressed my thought well enough to trigger whatever the current procedure is. It is a personal pet peeve when employers cheat their de facto employees, and I have no issue with "sticking" them with the unpaid taxes, or even if they somehow win a dispute, the cost of defense.

The first improvement is a free version has not taken your money for nothing... My personal definition of "damage" during AV issues is when an AV software removes or blocks a program the end user trusts (and in fact, may actually be good) without the end user having any practical way to stop this. Most AV programs have settings to give a user a way to ignore the warnings, but the default settings - the ones most will use - do not make this clear. The result is messages like these: "Your software stopped working", "Your software disappeared", "Your software is dangerous", etc. The first call is always to the software vendor harmed by the AV mistake. Imagine if you are at deadline day any your AV program stopped ATX (or whatever you are using) from working! it could happen. We (computer users) have been conditioned to accept these mistakes (such as the earlier comment about knowing to disable the AV system when installing certain programs - which is a crock of you know what), but I say why accept bad guesses? Not that I always favor the big guys, but think about this. There is no company in the world who needs or has more financial incentive to protect your computer than Microsoft. (Plainly, so you do not contact MS for support for any reason at all.) Thus, it makes sense, and also is a reality, that the AV system provided by MS is an ideal one to use for live protection from stupid actions. (I still maintain, as do others, that self control and diligence makes AV protection not needed.) For cases where you have concerns, there are free online test tools you can use as a second opinion (virustotal is currently scanning with nearly 70 AV vendor's daily updates). Yesterday, only one vendor of about 70 thought I was a baddie, and today, using the same file, I am magically good again. I was also magically good yesterday by simply not compressing my files - this is the real lesson, how easy the AV guessers can be fooled!!!

Always tough for a software vendor. Some will take the no vaporware approach, and never announce something until published. This was actually the best in the last century, since most computer users were also computer experts, and understood. As time passed, most computer users are not experts, and want some idea in advance, which even when given as an estimate, is usually something the consumer holds the vendor to. For IRS forms, they used to have a projected release date, but no longer. You can see the actual release dates here: https://apps.irs.gov/app/picklist/list/formsPublications.html;jsessionid=KlwQmyNPDevcx81Q+EYROA__?sortColumn=postedDate&indexOfFirstRow=0&value=&criteria=&resultsPerPage=25&isDescending=true and the draft versions here: https://apps.irs.gov/app/picklist/list/draftTaxForms.html

For me, black/white mistakes are no worry, since there is a black/white fix. Maybe they go down hard, but they are not worrisome. I have made enough of those to tire of beating myself up (unless it was a repeat).

I should not have to do ANYTHING different. The FACT that I can EASILY work around what the AV vendor says is nefarious, points out how useless this AV software really is. I am not spending all my time working around detection, which extrapolates to the pros (the baddies) having no issue beating AV software... BTW, I tried 5 different compression methods, with many different compression sub sets of each. This is something I have had to deal with since the birth of AV software selling WAG's (snake oil).

And that is acceptable? What point is there using AV if you have to turn it off? In your example, I doubt many would believe Intuit was spreading anything nefarious. Unfortunately, not everyone is Intuit, and as every minute goes by, computer users become less expert or interested in understanding what happens "behind the hood". If the AV company was doing what it is selling or saying, they would test against the big software (at least). Which reminds me, there are AV companies who simply white list certain software, which really is no protection at all since at any time a wayward employee could insert something nefarious into a white listed program... The only semi good thing to come down the pike in the last decade is the "virus total" system. Anyone can very quickly test and desired program or wen site against 60+- current virus signatures from different vendors. In THEORY, the AV vendors have access to the results, and can use the results to keep their offerings from having false positives. In my case today, out of the 68 (IIRC) testing in virus total today, only the one is saying my offering is suspect. 1 hit out of all tested is 99.9999999% odds of a false positive (which in this case, it is a false positive). The BIGGER deal is I did not have to change anything in my setup file, other than to not zip (compress) the files in the setup. This shows how foolish it is to rely on the AV programs (and at least in my opinion, PAY for any such program) as such a simple thing can make something they "thought" was bad magically be good.

Accept there is nothing perfect, and prepare, plan for, and practice recovery/survival. That time/money is well spent IMHO. This from someone who, like others, has had to call 911 and be told (rightfully so) no one is coming (natural disaster triage priorities, not a complaint!)...

Obtain knowledge. Once you understand the limitations of AV "protection", and the motivation of the paid AV providers, you will understand why so many installation processes include a suggestion to disable your AV software during the installation. The only real protection is good backups, and making sure your fingers remain under control (safe hex). No software can control your fingers, so no software can protect you 100%. Paid AV offers no extra safety than free AV, and by paying for AV, we are perpetuating the "medicine show" business. At least the old medicine show hawkers products (which did not kill you) would give you a buzz... Personally, I say those who rely on AV products are at more risk, since they incorrectly believe their AV software allows them to not worry about what they click or open.

Not today, but all have had issues, and will continue to. Any AV software which guesses (most call it heuristics, as few would pay for "guesses") will have false positives. If I can figure out how easy it is to fool AV software, it is reasonable to believe those who spend their full time on the issue (the baddies) can easily fool AV software long enough to make their money. While it falls mostly on deaf ears, relying on AV software is a fools gambit. At least some experts in the field say using AV software is less safe, as it encourages users to be less vigilant about practicing safe hex.

The iRS posted the form Jan 16, but the instructions were not posted until Feb 7. I guess I could see needing two weeks to implement and test something (from the instruction posting), but I would not be happy about it either. Could also be a priority issue, where they have to put some things in front of others based on whatever criteria they choose.