kcjenkins

Totally agree. At least make it only every 180 days, so you get through the main season without the aggravation. Change it in Nov, when you get the new software, and you have to reset in the busiest time of the year.

Yes, Eric, that's lovely. And one of my favorite poems is The Chambered Nautilus BY OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES SR. This is the ship of pearl, which, poets feign, Sails the unshadowed main,— The venturous bark that flings On the sweet summer wind its purpled wings In gulfs enchanted, where the Siren sings, And coral reefs lie bare, Where the cold sea-maids rise to sun their streaming hair. Its webs of living gauze no more unfurl; Wrecked is the ship of pearl! And every chambered cell, Where its dim dreaming life was wont to dwell, As the frail tenant shaped his growing shell, Before thee lies revealed,— Its irised ceiling rent, its sunless crypt unsealed! Year after year beheld the silent toil That spread his lustrous coil; Still, as the spiral grew, He left the past year’s dwelling for the new, Stole with soft step its shining archway through, Built up its idle door, Stretched in his last-found home, and knew the old no more. Thanks for the heavenly message brought by thee, Child of the wandering sea, Cast from her lap, forlorn! From thy dead lips a clearer note is born Than ever Triton blew from wreathèd horn! While on mine ear it rings, Through the deep caves of thought I hear a voice that sings:— Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul, As the swift seasons roll! Leave thy low-vaulted past! Let each new temple, nobler than the last, Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast, Till thou at length art free, Leaving thine outgrown shell by life’s unresting sea! One of the reasons I fell in love with Don, when I was only 17 and he was 18, was his reciting this poem by memory, on our first date, when I mentioned loving it.

Your Monday 2-for-1 joke post! The Taxi Driver A passenger in a taxi leaned over to ask the driver a question and tapped him on the shoulder. The driver screamed, lost control of the cab, nearly hit a bus, drove up over the curb, and stopped just inches from a large plate glass window. For a few moments everything was silent in the cab, and then the still shaking driver said, “I’m sorry but you scared the daylights out of me.” The frightened passenger apologized to the driver and said she didn’t realize a mere tap on the shoulder could frighten him so much. The driver replied, “No, no, I’m sorry, it’s entirely my fault. Today is my first day driving a cab. I’ve been driving a hearse for the last 25 years.” ____ The Heart Mechanic A motorcycle mechanic was removing a cylinder head from the motor of a Harley when he spotted a well-known cardiologist in his shop. The cardiologist was there waiting for the service manager to come and take a look at his bike when the mechanic shouted across the garage, “Hey Doc, take a look at this!” The cardiologist, a bit surprised walked over to where the mechanic was working on the motorcycle. The mechanic straightened up, wiped his hands on a rag and said, “So Doc, look at this engine. I opened its heart, took the valves out, repaired or replaced anything damaged, and then put everything back in, and when I finished, it worked just like new. So how is that I make $30,000 a year and you make a million when you and I are doing basically the same work?” The cardiologist paused, leaned over, and then whispered to the mechanic, “Try doing it with the engine running.”

It's ok, Eric, I've done that too, mainly because I use it seldom, although like Tom I do find some of the posts very interesting. Feel free to ignore mine.

If they are not filing MFJ, the instructions say they can only take the share they paid. See Pub 17, page 164.

You never forget the ones who are gone, but the new ones do help you to accept it. Be sure and look at the cat pix posted today.

I invited you. For those looking for him, he's listed as Thomas Carlson Controller at The G B Group, Inc

Washington, D.C. (June 19, 2014) By Roger Russell The Supreme Court has held that a taxpayer has a right to conduct an examination of Internal Revenue Service officials regarding their reasons for issuing a summons when he points to specific facts or circumstances plausibly raising an inference of bad faith. In a brief filed with the court on March 17, Michael Clarke and his partners in Dynamo Holdings, LP argued that they are entitled to a limited evidentiary hearing to show that summonses were issued improperly by the IRS as retribution for their refusal to extend a statute of limitations. The Eleventh Circuit earlier ruled in Clarke’s favor, and the IRS appealed to the Supreme Court (see Supreme Court Hears Case on IRS Summonses). In his brief, Clarke argued, “Under United States v. Powell, 379 U.S. 48 (1964), an individual or entity that receives an IRS summons is entitled to the opportunity to show, at an adversary hearing, that the summons should be quashed because judicial enforcement of the summons would constitute an abuse of the court‘s processes—including, for example, if the summons was issued by the IRS for an improper purpose.” The government argued in its brief that the Eleventh Circuit decision “erroneously reduced to zero the amount of evidence that is required” to rebut the IRS showing of good faith. In its decision, the Supreme Court vacated the judgment of the Eleventh Circuit and remanded the case to the Eleventh Circuit for further proceedings. Justice Kagan, writing for a unanimous court, said that the Eleventh Circuit applied a categorical rule demanding the examination of IRS agents without assessing the plausibility of the respondents’ (Clarke’s and Dynamo’s) submissions. On remand, the Court of Appeals must consider the submissions in light of that standard. “It’s not as if you get an unlimited right to inquire into the motive of the IRS just because you say there is misconduct,” said tax litigation attorney Barbara Kaplan, a shareholder at Greenberg Traurig LLC and chair of the firm’s New York tax practice. “The court held that a taxpayer is entitled to examine the IRS agent when he can point to specific facts and circumstances that plausibly raise the inference of bad faith,” she added. “Making allegations of improper purpose are not enough. The taxpayer must show some credible evidence that gives rise to a plausible inference of improper motive. The taxpayer doesn’t have a blanket right to do that or conduct a fishing expedition and automatically get the right to a hearing.” Nevertheless, “it’s a taxpayer victory,” she said. “Although its breadth may be limited by the requirement that the taxpayer contesting the summons must first put forth credible evidence to support allegations of an improper IRS purpose, in the past, evidentiary hearings were rarely granted, even if such evidence was presented, and now the burden will be on the IRS to show the background for issuance of the summons from its files.”

New Revenue Recognition Standard Could Affect Tax Practitioners and Auditors New York (June 17, 2014) By Michael Cohn, Editor-in-Chief, AccountingToday.com The new converged revenue recognition standard from the Financial Accounting Standards Board and the International Accounting Standards Board could have an impact on not only financial statement preparers, but on tax practitioners and auditors as well. “It’s not just accountants who need to worry about this,” said Bloomberg BNA Tax & Accounting executive editor George Farrah in an interview Friday. “Tax people will need to know about it because you might have to change your accounting method for tax purposes, and you need to assess whether or not that’s going to have an impact. They also need to be aware of it for their transfer pricing policies. Their transfer pricing may have been based on revenue estimates. Those estimates need to be looked at to see if there is any impact on them.” Farrah also pointed to requirements in the Securities and Exchange Commission’s Staff Accounting Bulletin 74 for disclosing the impact that recently issued accounting standards will have on the financial statements of a company when adopted in a future period. “Right now you can get away with saying you don’t know the implication of this,” he said. “Even though the effective date for implementation of the new rule isn’t for a while, the closer you get to that, the more the SEC is going to demand that you disclose what your potential impact is going to be.” Prabhakar Kalavacherla, a former member of the International Accounting Standards Board, said the new standard represents a “sterling example” of cooperation for the two boards, although he acknowledged that some small differences remain in disclosures, the date for early adoption and especially the collectability threshold. “I would say the only real one would be the level of collectability,” he said at a Financial Executives International conference in New York on Monday on the revenue recognition standard. “Other than that, I personally feel that both boards worked together admirably to come together.” Differences over interpretations of licensing revenue could emerge as a concern, however, Kalavacheria cautioned. FASB member Larry Smith, speaking alongside Kalavacherla, also cited collectability and license revenue as concerns. “There is one major difference, although it’s not in the wording, and that is in collectability,” he said. “We both use the word ‘probable,’ although probable under IFRS means something different than ‘probable’ in the U.S. So there is a slight difference. When it comes to licenses, I would say that is probably one of the larger areas of initial disagreement among the boards and even within the FASB. There were five FASB members that were strongly in favor of recognized license revenue over time, and then there were two of us who were more supportive upfront. The IASB was in the clear majority in terms of recognizing revenue for licenses upfront. I’d say what we crafted in the standard is really a type of compromise to come up with what we think the majority of board members would feel comfortable with. That being said, I think licenses are going to be one of the areas where there will be a fairly significant amount of disagreement as to how to interpret what the standard says.” Kalavacherla and Smith also discussed interpretations of the new standard that might arise with the Joint Transition Resource Group that has been set up by the IASB and FASB to oversee implementation issues that arise as companies adjust to the new standards (see FASB and IASB Form Joint Transition Group for Rev Rec). “This group will not be setting standards,” said Smith. “They will be discussing issues. We’ll have minutes of those issues, and then for any implementation issues that the group feels are worthy of the boards to address to eliminate diversity in interpretation, the boards will then go through their normal agenda process to evaluate whether or not to add a project to address the issue. My hope would be that the boards would act in concert to address the issues together to make sure that we don’t start off with a converged standard and wind up getting a standard that is no longer converged.” Kalavacherla agreed, but expressed some concern that not all IASB members will be participating in the transition group, although IASB advisors will be in the group. He is also worried that accountants might use the written minutes of the open meetings of the group as a form of GAAP. “I think there is a lot of nervousness in international circles about what this interpretation will turn into regarding the accounting,” said Kalavacherla, who is currently a partner in KPMG’s Audit Quality and Professional Practice group. “The minutes need to be very carefully done. Let us say that eight people in the group say they want to do it one way. If the minutes start documenting it that way, it will become credible GAAP, and I am extremely worried about creating credible GAAPs here. It has to be a good process and it cannot just be that if eight people voice something and, if there is no other guidance out there, it’s put into GAAP. That’s not the idea in setting up this transition group.” “That also means that the practice, the firms and the preparers, etc., need to be disciplined in terms of how they use those minutes,” Smith added. Kenneth Bement, director of financial reporting and corporate accounting at the defense contractor Raytheon, noted that the new revenue recognition standard contains many areas of significant judgment. Auditing firms will also need to be careful in adjusting to the new standard. “This new standard, in my view, really exacerbates an area that’s been a frequent criticism of the PCAOB inspections,” said Marty Baumann chief auditor and director of professional standards at the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board. “When complex judgments and estimates come into play, PCAOB inspectors have found more areas they’re able to pick out.” He pointed to aspects of the contract, multi-auditor arrangements, and revenue recognized over different periods. “There are a number of areas today that are challenging and will clearly be exacerbated by this standard, which requires judgments around these types of areas,” said Bauman. “Also, there are far greater disclosures required with respect to this new accounting standard. It’s come up many times at our Standing Advisory Group [meetings] that auditors do a great job of evaluating quantitative areas and presenting those to management, but when it comes to disclosures that are more qualitative, and trying to assess materiality, you don’t quite add those up the same way in the exceptions in the balance sheet and income statement. Auditing these disclosures will create a big challenge.” John DeMelis, a partner at Ernst & Young, noted that EY will be leading a robust effort to educate its members on the new revenue recognition standards. PricewaterhouseCoopers partner Dan Finneran said PwC will be rolling out training on the new standard across the firm over the next 12 months.

I really do get sick of banks and other businesses that insist that "their policy" overrides the customer's RIGHTS. Rarely is it truly 'the law' that makes them delay your rights, it's usually just an excuse to make things easier FOR THEM. I cheer when such attitudes bring in competition that puts them out of business.

Totally agree. They know you have no dog in the fight.

Here's a follow-up on that case: http://ij.org/michigan-civil-forfeiture-release-11-15-2013 Just hours after the Institute for Justice announced it was joining another civil forfeiture lawsuit in Michigan against the federal government, the IRS filed motions to voluntarily dismiss two forfeiture actions against innocent Detroit-area small-business owners. Terry Dehko of Fraser, Mich., and Mark Zaniewski of Sterling Heights, Mich., will each get back all of the money seized without warning from their business’s bank accounts (over $100,000 in total) by the federal government. While today’s victories vindicate the property rights of Dehko and Zaniewski, they do not solve the nationwide forfeiture problem. As recently demonstrated in the New Yorker and The Economist, civil forfeiture is now one of the greatest threats to property rights in America today. A separate federal lawsuit filed in September by the Institute for Justice on behalf of Terry Dehko and his daughter, Sandra Thomas, seeks to reform civil forfeiture law to protect the constitutional rights of property owners. That lawsuit will continue. “The IRS should not be raiding the bank accounts of innocent Americans, and it should not take a team of lawyers to put a stop to this behavior,” said IJ Senior Attorney Clark Neily. “We are thrilled that Terry, Sandy, and Mark will finally get their money back, but their fight does not end today. Our constitutional lawsuit against the federal government seeks to rein in the shameful practice of civil forfeiture.” Civil forfeiture allows the government to take private property from Americans without ever charging them with, let alone convicting them of, any crime. Astonishingly, the proceeds of civil forfeiture are used to pad the budgets of the very agencies that seize the property. Even worse, when the federal government seizes cash—even your entire bank account—the law provides no prompt way to get a court to review the seizure. After seven months, Mark Zaniewski never received a hearing before a judge to contest the seizure of his property. Terry Dehko waited over ten months. The government never charged anyone in either case with any crime.

That is true now. HOWEVER, if Congress changed the code, then there could be a penalty simply for 'not filing'. Not now, because the code is written based on the logic off your 3rd sentence. But it could change if Congress changed the code, and some want to change it just to get more revenue. The tax courts rule based on what the code says at the time.

We all fall into the trap of holding on to a problem too long, from time to time. I needed the reminder myself, which is why I decided to share it. Glad to know you got something good out of it too.

A psychologist walked around a room while teaching stress management to an audience. As she raised a glass of water, everyone expected they'd be asked the "half empty or half full" question. Instead, with a smile on her face, she enquired: "How heavy is this glass of water?" Answers called out ranged from 8 oz. to 20 oz. She replied, "The absolute weight doesn't matter. It depends on how long I hold it. If I hold it for a minute, it's not a problem. If I hold it for an hour, I'll have an ache in my arm. If I hold it for a day, my arm will feel numb and paralyzed. In each case, the weight of the glass doesn't change, but the longer I hold it, the heavier it becomes." She continued, "The stresses and worries in life are like that glass of water. Think about them for a while and nothing happens. Think about them a bit longer and they begin to hurt. And if you think about them all day long, you will feel paralyzed – incapable of doing anything." Remember to put the glass down.

Every year or so, someone in Congress suggests a penalty even if no tax owed, but so far they have not done it. Some states, like CA, do it now. They call it a Demand to File Penalty.

As a twin myself, with a twin brother, I well remember the closeness. Congrats, Eric, they are adorable.

The Alarming Reason the Government Confiscated Money From a Member of Glenn Beck’s Staff Jun. 17, 2014 5:00pm Erica Ritz Let’s say you take out a safety deposit box for precious family heirlooms, or create a bank account for your children that you don’t make transactions with regularly. How long would it take you to realize that the government has actually confiscated your property, sometimes without even informing you? That’s what happened to Glenn Beck’s chief of staff, Joe Kerry, and countless other Americans across the United States, many of whom are unaware that the state can legally take hold of your possessions if your account shows no signs of activity for a certain period of time. The law varies state-to-state, but according to a 2008 report by ABC News, the waiting period used to be in the range of 15 years, whereas it is now usually closer to three. Why has the government lowered the threshold in so many places? From the 2008 ABC report: “The 50 U.S. states are holding more than $32 billion worth of unclaimed property that they’re supposed to safeguard for their citizens. But a ‘Good Morning America’ investigation found some states aggressively seize property that isn’t really unclaimed and then use the money — your money — to balance their budgets.” [Emphasis added] The Australian government recently lowered its own threshold from seven years to three, and according to the Herald Sun, nearly $360 million was seized from from roughly 80,000 inactive accounts over the past year. That’s reportedly more than the Australian government seized in the past five decades combined. ABC, which wrote that states return “less than a quarter of unclaimed property to the rightful owners,” explained how the law affected one woman: Beck said he was talking about the situation in Australia — unaware that the United States has similar laws — when Kerry said the same thing happened to him. “I guess it was six months ago,” Kerry explained on Beck’s radio program. “[My wife, Melinda] was like, ‘Joe, we stopped getting the statements on this one account.’ And first she wanted to know if I liquidated the account. I assured her I had not. She’s like, ‘What happened?’ She started going through the statements, and on one statement, which was full of language, one sentence in one paragraph of that statement said, ‘If you have no activity on this account, we will close out this account…’” Kerry, an attorney, said he didn’t understand how the account was considered dormant when dividends were paid into it, and they were paying taxes on the money the whole time. “Never called you or notified you?” Beck asked. “Nothing from the state,” Kerry responded. Kerry said he and his wife even went to their state senator about the matter, asking why they were never informed that the funds were set to be confiscated when all of their contact information was accurate. Kerry said they received an answer along the lines of: “Well, under this new law … you don’t log into this account in a six month period, that money is transferred to the state.” Kerry said he eventually received confirmation that the money was transferred to the state, but that the state didn’t even seem aware of how much it had confiscated. “Our state senator is calling the, I guess, Department of Treasury at the Pennsylvania level, and they could not tell us where that money was, how much was taken, and how we would get it back,” Kerry remarked. He said they were eventually able to figure out how much had been taken by looking at old statements, and were astonished when they found that the same thing had happened to a number of their neighbors. “I talked to Melinda today,” Kerry concluded. “As of two weeks ago, the state of Pennsylvania has now started sending this money back.” Beck was stunned that the American government can confiscate private property in such a way, saying “this is such a dangerous thing.” “It’s a shark bump,” Beck concluded. “If they can do this, they can do anything.”

Of course, the worker is still supposed to report the income, and, of course, they all do.......

KEEP IN A PRIVATE PLACE, BUT WHERE YOU WILL SEE IT EVERY DAY.

and http://www.irs.gov/Businesses/Small-Businesses-&-Self-Employed/Frequently-Asked-Questions-on-Gift-Taxes

Only had it happen once, I went ahead and filed the W-2, with, as you stated, zeros in the tax withheld boxes. Never heard any problem from it,

shades of Dr Seuss !

hurrah and hallelujah !!!!!