rfassett

Last time I did an IFTA report, the information needed was miles driven in each state and gallons purchased in each state. Hopefully your guy has provided you with the proper information.

I just showed this to my wife and she chuckled and said that was cute! Cute? I am not sure that is the word that I would have picked! I think I better hide the chairs tonight!

Aaawwww! I needed to hear from a friend too. I just finished sitting through a two hour webinar on Section 263A.

I don't think it works that way. So you want a step up in basis without the parents reporting the gain? If the child paid the $20,000 plus the tax on $80,000 the child's basis in the land would be $20,000 plus the tax paid on the $80,000. Since that tax rightfully belongs to the seller parent, the sale price would now be $20,000 plus the tax paid on the $80,000. I do not think you can get to where you want to be on this road.

But if I have to drive 70 miles round trip to get the free slurpee - do I still count that as free? That is as close as the nearest 7-11 is to me.

The law is the law. And until the law is officially changed, we must abide by the law.

I can vouch for Pioneer's ineptness. They were put in charge of PA's amnesty program that ended June 19th. I understand that a lot of the issues with the program stemmed from the State's own utterly ridiculous ineptness. But Pioneer did not help the cause. PA and Pioneer together sent out 100,000 notices to delinquent taxpayers. Some of those delinquencies went back into the 1990s. Some of those notices were to my clients for whom my office has been filing and confirming reporting and payments for a great long time. The State, somewhere in the interim, changed over to a new system and did not bring over the history with them. So many, many of those notices were in error. But for that far back, can I expect my client to keep those records and cancelled checks to prove to the State that there is no delinquency? Why do I implicate Pioneer in this mess? Pioneer was the muscle behind trying to collect this stuff - and often times in a less than friendly manner - and Pioneer had no interest in being logical nor interested in coming to a reason solution to the problem. I have a notice still on my desk for 18 periods of non-filed quarterly sales tax reports dating back to October 2006. I can not do anything with it because every time I pick it up, I can not see it through the anger I am feeling. This client passed away in early 2006; we filed all of the paperwork to close the business and we cancelled the sales tax license and confirmed that cancelling within just a couple months of his passing. We, and the client's widow, have not heard one word about unfiled reports until the widow received this notice from Pioneer dated 04/28/17. Pioneer collecting for the IRS? This ought to be fun.....................................!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I guess my office is a bit of an old school type office. We use the tools we have at hand as just that - tools. We print out the letters as combined federal, state, and local including whatever estimated payment information is needed. We also print out the cover letters for all of those. We print all of that with one time printing of all of the forms and schedules required. We then organize the hard copy the way we want to present it to the client and then scan that document into our digital file cabinet. (This also allows us to take a final look at the return for review purposes). If we were expecting ATX to do all of that work for us, I would expect to pay a lot more for ATX. By the way, if we need a pdf copy of the return, we can get that from our digital file cabinet in whole or any part of it we need. For the record, my client base falls into the 5% of Jack's comment that actually do read the letters - well most of them anyway will read it - or we read it to them.

Just some food for thought. Maybe we are bidding some of these prospects too low. I like to set my prices high enough that the prospects have an inkling that I value my services. If it is too high for that prospect, so be it. I can tell you that I have heard a word on the street that my fees are high. OK - but I can tell you straight up - and I have a boat load of clients to confirm it - that there must be value in what I provide at those "high" fees. I use to strive to not be the lowest price in town. Now I strive to be one of the most respectable and respected firms in town.

I guessed the one with three trades pays you more because the single account's three hundred trades were all clean A's and D's with no adjustments so you just needed to put four numbers on Schedule D. Was I right?

At first blush, your fee sounds reasonable. It is hard to tell though. I have clients with that laundry list of forms that I charge nearly $1,000 because of the complexity. And to the other extreme, with that same laundry list of forms, I can see $300 to $325. So I think you are probably good.

I agree with Lion and Sara. You need to read the trust document. And Sara's explanation was right on point. I would just add that I have seen trusts wherein they allow a beneficiary (non-starter child or a disabled child or other disabled relative) to remain in the house without paying for any housing expense. But these trusts are usually funded in some manner to cover those costs. And accordingly, since the funding is usually in interest bearing or dividend producing investments, a continuing reporting on 1041 is required. The most curious thing I find about the present case is if there was that much back tax owed, how come there had not been a tax foreclosure sale?

Proof positive - it does not sound good in ANY language! Did I mention that you are a sick woman?!

Methinks you should be called out just because of!

I would have taken the client. I give all of my clients with depreciation a depreciation report with the return. If they feel so motivated to try it alone - I will be more than happy to help them straighten it out when they screw it up - at highly inflated rates. Now - if your prospective was interested in being schooled in the intricacies of depreciation - that I would not do. I do not operate a school.

No - I have not had that problem. We use it probably about 300 times during the months of October, November and December and have found the estimates to be spot on. Of course you have to watch things like credits that may or may not role over from the actual return to the next year planner and things of that sort. The only time I have known the planner to miss is: it calculated a capital gain estimated tax when, because of the other income on the return being where it was, the capital gain rate should have been zero. But then, I am still struck with awe when that happens myself. Had a return this year that had 95,000 capital gains but paid zero tax. There is something logically wrong with that. But I digress......

I also use the ATX planner - and pretty extensively in the fourth quarter of the year. I have also used the CFS Tax Tools but found it did not give me anything that I did not have in ATX. Now that could just be a function of my familiarity with ATX - and not a negative comment on CFS. CFS puts out some great products - the planner just did not do anything for me

This does not sound like it was set up correctly originaly. A trust has a trustee, corpus, and beneficiaries. It is very possible that they set up a trust with themselves as trustees. But who are the beneficiaries? If they set themselves up as beneficiaries then who is the trustee? It is assumed that they both transferred money to the entity to buy the property. I have never heard of a trust interest being sold. if my comments are all wet for the present case and this is a legitimate thing, then I guess we all have something to learn.

Awwwww!!!!!

I can not remember a year that I have not increased fees. When the cost of living does not go up and my employees don't accept their raises and when the health insurance premiums don't go up, etc., well maybe that year I may not raise my fees. OK, not really. I would not want to startle my clients that way. They have come to expect my increases for all of the reasons stated. i too appreciate everyone on this forum!

Don't know about the ethics, but if he wants to be my client, he comes clean all the way or goes somewhere else. Well not being a collection arm for the IRS, I do believe that everyone should pay their responsible fair share. If he doesn't, someone else has to pick up the bill. That is just my naive way of thinking.

Nope! That would not be my concern. I have enough of my own problems without taking on those of other practitioners - present group being the exception to that statement of course.

I think the worst that will happen is some refund delaying correspondence from the IRS, but I doubt even that will take place. Rest easy!

Preparation is - done! Extensions are - done! I am - DONE!!!!!!!!!! Will work on some quarterly payroll reports tomorrow and Thursday while putting out minor fires that pop up - and then we we are out of here for four relaxing days!

Hey Ron - here is a court order that says you have to provide my divorce attorney with unbridled access to my and my spouse's files that are in your office on or before April 15th. I just received that today via email. How do you spell CONTEMPT OF COURT I could almost give a flip about that right now! But just curious - is email an accepted form of delivery for legal directives? This might be just the thing that drives me out of this business and into retirement! But then again, I have never walked away from a good fight!