mcbreck

It depends upon the fund company and whether they used an adviser. If it was held at the fund company, they have the cost basis 99% of the time. The client needs to ask. If it's with an adviser, usually they will generate a letter with what their records say (if the adviser can't figure it out, the adviser stinks). Explain to the clients what you need, why you need it and they will almost always come up with a basis. As an adviser we occasionally have a mutual fund which doesn't have a cost basis like this, we'll get a list of all distributions (they are on the internet) and come up with a basis as best as can be determined. With mutual funds it's rare to not have at least 80% of the sale price as actual cost. Stocks (as mentioned) are a very different story. Occasionally you'll get someone with ATT stock or whatever and you have to come up with a cost basis that is a true nightmare situation. Spinoffs are horrific and you can have real difficulty figuring that out.

Just logged in after a vacation - sorry to hear this. Be sure and give yourself time to grieve as losing a pet is a true loss for many of us. My sister in law just told us yesterday one of her outdoor farm cats passed during the night. Glad I was able to pet and play with him a little last weekend - great guy and he also will be missed. They have cows and unfortunately named a few of them. BIG mistake.

I just did this and you need the 2848.

They paid all their taxes via W2 withholding versus reporting it on their tax return. While it wasn't correct, they made a good faith effort to comply and I'm guessing came VERY close to the same end result.

This is what I'd do. Reversing this will take forever, generate a huge bill for your services and end up at almost the exact same situation most likely. Tell the client that what they did was wrong and if the IRS requests information, THEN we'll fix it. It's not like they are shorting the IRS.

Seems rather rudimentary in the building of a tax collection system that someone's payments get applied to their account.

I had a client who's state pension had state tax withheld and the state demanded we provide proof via a copy of the 1099r. My 3rd party checkbox also magically disappeared for a LOT of clients on the state level. I've had two clients who's W2 state tax withheld wasn't on their transcript and again we had to provide proof. They are a couple which makes it even more weird. My state has this weird credit for food pantry donations where it is a terrific credit up to a certain yearly amount and then the credit transitions from a tax credit to an income deduction. No clue when the state has reached their yearly limit so my late filing clients usually don't get it, get an adjustment and blame me. I've have multiple clients who've received adjustment letters and then adjustments reversing the previous adjustment. I absolutely hate adjustment letters that don't give a reason for the adjustment. I roll over refunds for clients who pay estimated taxes. HATE it that clients don't tell me when they've had an adjustment and then for years they keep getting adjustment letters because every year my assumption that the amount rolled over was correct was actually wrong.

I've also noticed a significant upgrade in wait times and I've never had a real problem with IRS employees when speaking to them. Most are exceptionally nice and efficient. State Department of Revenue is a completely different mess.

One of the major problems with doing it yourself is cognitive decline as you age and risk assessment (you are correct). I got into investments in the early 90's (got my Series 6 in 1991 while in college) and it was common to see people who had 100% of their portfolio in bonds and CDs. Now it is common to find seniors with 100% of their portfolio in equities and they've never owned a bond or CD. The son in law of a client has 100% of his portfolio in gold. My brother in law has a friend who's entire retirement portfolio is in guns. He has hundreds of guns in his home and he'll sell a few every month in retirement. He told my BIL that guns NEVER go down in value so I asked what if the house burns down.....

My monitors don't typically die but they seem to become less clear. Maybe they aren't, maybe it's just my vision. We had a Dell that got really fuzzy, the LG monitors are only about 1.5 years old so we'll see.

Thanks for the heads up. I was just considering a mobile monitor so that my laptop has a 2nd monitor when I'm not in the office. Might go your route when one of these dies. Tends to be about a 3 year cycle before they really degrade.

I have a job. In fact I have about 4 jobs.... Taxes, financial planning, investments and I'm a securities principal for my firm part time.

Missouri is sending out checks without any explanation and when I call, they don't always know why the checks went out. Friend received a check in April and another in early July. A client received 2 checks and a bill asking for about 75% of them back. When I called, they really weren't sure why the checks were mailed out.

Reading for pleasure is something I've always struggled with getting into doing. In 2021 I decided I'd start by reading 20 pages per day. That comes out to about 20 books per year. I usually switch back and forth non-fiction and fiction. I'm keeping a list of the books I've read which is fun to look back at.

Growing up, we used to do that a lot on my grandfather's farm. My brother-in-law enjoys it and they have a place near their home where it's an option. I greatly enjoy going to their house as they have 2 horses (Red and Dollar), a mini-donkey (Ted), about 5-6 cows, 2 cats (Ginger and Chevy), dog (Comanche) and chickens. Love visiting. I'm not as big into hobbies as my brother in law.

I plan on doing that from about the age of 60-65 to pay for health insurance and vacation.

For those of you retired or partially retired - what do you do all day? Over this past long weekend my wife and I didn't do a lot because it was hot and we'd seen our families pretty recently (did have lunch with my dad). By Tuesday afternoon we were both pretty bored and wondering what people do all day during retirement. After work each day I hit golf balls, read and go for a long walk with my wife and I could do each of those before lunch in retirement. Wondering what else I could do. I'm thinking I'll likely join a golf club which allows me to play about 10 different courses as much as I want for a reasonable amount. But I can't play every day....

Sales commissions are not a COGS, they are an operating expense and included on line 10. Now if they paid a percentage of revenue to a clearing firm, I consider that a COGS. For example if I'm an investment advisor clearing through Charles Schwab and Schwab takes 10% of my revenue and pays me the 90%, that's a COGS. Reality is that most probably don't include the 10% in their income or expenses because they never see it. They book the money coming in and ignore the expense in their accounting.

Rocket Mortgage is back to offering mortgages with just 1% downpayment and they'll double that amount so that you have 3% equity. Several banks are back to offering 0% down to special groups. I love that they wanted to you write a letter admitting you broke the law by submitting a tax return you knew was fraudulent.

What claim would there be? I'm not responsible for their penalty and I certainly wouldn't make a claim for $350.

Mind boggling. (my credit accounts have been frozen since the equifax hack)

I find listening to a hardcore accent to be VERY enjoyable whether it's Brooklyn or Alabama. My in-laws are Southern Missouri and about half have a VERY strong southern accent and the other half have nothing. My niece just recently became a nurse practitioner and has had to start catching her language because people were shocked when she popped out a Y'All in meetings and patients were laughing at some of her southern idioms. In St Louis the differences in slang are so pronounced within racial groups because of self imposed segregation which is just wild. You can get a white guy from South St Louis with a massive southern drawl and a black guy from North St Louis with a completely different southern drawl and they don't sound alike at all.

Financial planning projections are silly but they are even more silly if you don't understand the assumptions and how they impact the final numbers. In 1999 our planning software used expected market returns for the next 10 years to be 15% per year and was told regulators prohibited me from lowering that number. nasra.org is all public pension funds and they give what their expected portfolio rate of return is going forward - the average now is the lowest I've seen it and it's just 6.92%. They slowly (very slowly) dropped their returns during 0% interest rates so I'm guessing we are near a low.

I called the PPL 4x last week and the longest wait was 19 minutes and they called me back in a very timely manner. The other three times I had immediate access. All 4 calls were exceptionally pleasant.

My financial planning software will almost always say to convert and will tell you that you've saved $x in taxes. I'm very reluctant because I don't know what the tax code will say in 15 years. How do I know they won't tax ROTH distributions over a certain level of income? At one time it was unthinkable that people would pay taxes on Social Security benefits and most people do today. My teacher friends and clients have been told their entire careers that they'll never pay state taxes on their public pensions and most of them do.