kcjenkins

I do have one Pastor that I deduct his Preacher Suits. But he's a black minister, and his Preacher Suits are very different than normal street wear. Here are the pictures he sent me to explain them.

:D Don't hit too many of those warm Coronas tonight!

That is OK, Rita. You can type as slow as you want, we won't mind. And yes, good planning says that the church should always set the HA a little high, so that even if there is an unusually high expense one year, the pastor gets the tax break. After all, there is no harm if it is too high, the excess just becomes taxable. Which if it were not designated as HA it would have been anyway. It's not like they are paying more or less, just that they are designating part of what they pay as HA. And that is why Mike is right. You should not just plug Line g. It does effect what is taxable for income tax vs what is only taxable for SE tax.

:bday:

I think you've got Aprilites a little early. It does seem, doesn't it, that as we get more tired and stressed, the clients also get crankier and dumber, at the same time. But the ones that get to me the most are the ones who call just to ask "Well, I guess you are getting pretty busy now, huh?" And then take 5 minutes of yakking to get around to saying, "I've just about got it all together now, when do you want me to bring it in?" I've so far restrained myself from the answer I really want to give them, although I have used my second choice a couple of times already. You know, the old "March the first would be good."

I assume you are referring to line 3 of the worksheet for line 2 (Sch SE). I have had that come up too, but I got around it by overriding line 3 to zero, then typing in the same wordage onto line 5 and putting it there. I have not had to do it this year, but I did it a couple of times last year, and had no problems from it.

Did it break down the amount into penalty $xxx and interest $xxx? Did you do a quick and dirty calculation to check on the amounts? Do you have any reason to support asking for an abatement of the penalties? And no, it does not seem likely that an underpayment of $132 would have generated P&I of $119 in just a year.

Is he still farming? If so, it goes on the F. If not, but is renting for a rop share, it goes on the 4835. If not, it goes on Line 21.

Don't gripe too hard folks, you are making me envious. AR still does not allow business efiles, period. Have to mail the darn things. At least you have the option. [Once you add the correct files, of course.]

Only the real estate tax on the Personal Residence is eligible for the addition to the std deduction.

Client... "That doesn't hardly seem fair..." Gee, what part of 'per house' does she not understand? I guess greed makes people have tunnel vision.

A veryb happy, happy, :bday:

Don't I wish! Will be working all weekend, trying to catch up. Yeah, right, like that is going to happen. But maybe at least I can keep from getting any further behind, I hope. I should not even be here, so I'm going back to work.........

:bday:

No, it does not. Sad but that is the law. I don't know why, but Congress, in it's infinite wisdom, wrote it that way.

No, Joel, you are looking at this all wrong. They got their $600, and they did not make enough to qualify for the $1200, either year. So they are not losing something they are entitled to. They are just paying their taxes. You said "but if their tax liability this year was over 1200 dollars then they would get 600 dollars stimulus (to total the 1200 allowed a couple) and owe the remainder." How would it be better that they still had to pay more than they have to pay now? And you said "had they not received the advance stimulus of 600 dollars last year, they would now receive a refund of 52 dollars and the tax liability of 548 dollars would be paid", and that is true. And it is just what in effect did happen. They got the money, and now they can use it to pay this year's taxes, and keep the difference. So it's not like they did not get a benefit, they in effect got this year free, plus $52.

And you can still buy the CPE from Kleinrock. It's just that since CCH bought ATX, but not Kleinrock, they kept the research part as part of their package, but not the CPE. I sure would not change software and retrain everybody to a different program, just over that cost, since you must not have been using it as much as you thought, if it took 18 months to notice it's lack.

Copied from another list, FYI: At a Town Hall meeting, the IRS CP2000 folks made a presentation about this very subject. They ask that you "please" not send a 1040X, because this holds up the correction. That 1040X has to be processed in another section in the service center...just send the Schedule D and they will do the rest. Of course this means a correction to the state...But then again, they will send the correction to the State as well via their Fed/State agreement, but that choice is yours to get the process speeded up on the State side...

Terry, I bet Deb is right, and that is what happened. If you open a return and change anything, but do not re-create the efile, the status changes to 'rejected' automatically. Meaning that ATX rejected it, not the IRS. Even just printing something causes the program to do this, which is a bit irritating, but it does eliminate the possibility of sending an efile where we changed something in the return but forgot to 'create' a new efile file before sending it.

Tom, I always did it that way myself, until recently. But I've responded to a couple now by sending the info to the address given, rather than filing a 1040X, and both were corrected promptly and smoothly. Both were 1099B issues, which were corrected by providing the basis info, and it got cleared up faster than filing a 1040X would have done.

The Hope credit is always the best, IME, if they qualify for it.

They say all the best humor has a large element of truth, and that one sure does!

You are correct, the option to elect to forgo the carryback had to be made on a timely filed return, so it will have to be carried back first.

But Joel, that would mean that they were getting not a $600 stimulus, but a $1200 dollar one. They were only entitled to one, and they got it already.

The code would be 813000 No, he can only deduct his offerings if his denomination REQUIRES that he tithe, which most do not. Of course, you should ask him what, if anything is REQUIRED in order to maintain his employment. I have won that issue in an audit, years back, where the denomination had it in their written rules for ordained ministers in their faith. In such a case, it's a 'reasonable and necessary expense of his business', not a 'donation'. And I put it under Returns and Allowances. But I would not take it unless I had that in writing in my file.