NECPA in NEBRASKA

This was my last April 15th when I have to care about anyone else's return except my own! I just finished a bunch of extensions, but I still feel like a huge weight has been lifted. This has been the worst tax season ever. I didn't think that it could ever be worse than losing my Mom, but this last five months of having my husband so sick has been the pits. It was getting so hard to concentrate and get enough sleep. We got a new puppy, too for my husband. He turns out to be a Morkey, not a Poodle but I am happier with him anyway. I am also pretty sure that he will never know to go to the door to be let out. He is way too small, anyway. At least he is very good at using pads. Between a dog and 3 cats, it keeps me busy cleaning up. I just hope that we can find a condo that will allow 4 pets when we move.

It was a sad and happy day. Lots of hugs and tears, and I will miss my clients. I got some beautiful bouquets, a customer made blankets for both my husband and me and gift cards to go eat. I did get a gift that I bet none of have ever received. My clients sent me an adjustable leg rest because they know that my leg is still a mess after my scope and that I will be getting a replacement. My client had just broken his leg very badly and was using this after his surgery. 

I have been blessed and still have a ton of work to do. I am hopeful that my husband will improve so that I can get a part time job out of the house in anything but taxes. 

Thanks so much for everything. See you all soon!

I don't know what I would do without all of you and a couple of groups that I belong to on FB. I am hesitant to ask questions of some groups, but this bunch of awesome people are willing to help and be kind. All of my cronies here are dead, retired or just said that they had had enough. I hope that it's OK if I hang around here for awhile after I retire. I am just letting my permit go inactive, in case I get desperate and have to work for somebody else in Colorado.

DANRVAN, Than you so much for your advice. This mess is being fixed. The attorney is rewriting everything and keeping it so that the remaining partners did the buyout of the old partners shares. The partnership will be terminated and the bank has no problem renaming the loan to them personally, since they already had used their property as collateral. My clients are happy and I have a little less stress. 

35 minutes ago, DANRVAN said:

Okay, so a loan was taken to buy retiring partner and was secured by the building which is owned by partnership?  Retiring partner was cashed out with a check from partnership?  If that is the case and remaining couple wishes to continue as partnership, treat it as a redemption as dictated by the facts.

The partnership took out the loan but the bank used the partners land as collateral. There are already mortgages on the rental building.  Thank you so much for taking the time to read this. The LLC is already extended, but the partner that left did not want to extend, because he owes. He is not my client.

The agreements absolutely do not address that the assumption of the liabilities are consideration to him. If I am reading it correctly, he had to pay off his portion, but I will check that out with the attorney. We are supposed to have a conference call soon. 

Thank you again. This has been way too time consuming for this time of year.

5 hours ago, kathyc2 said:

Seems like your transaction would be a debit to partner draws and a credit to loan payable. 

Too bad that they don't have any equity or money in the LLC. It would be nice if people would ask for advice before they do something. 

I got the sales agreement tonight around midnight. Of course, it's not written the way the LLC handled the sale. The remaining partners purchased the partnership interest from the termination partner. Yet, the loan to buy them out was made to the LLC and it is making the payments on the loan. I don't know how to handle this on the balance sheet or in the future. The really crappy thing is this all between relatives. I don't know if the attorney knows how the sale was really handled or if my clients explained it incorrectly. There was no loan papers from the LLC to the remaining partners. I hate to extend this, because the old partner really wants his K1s, but I don't know how to fix it. 

I did tell him to contact the attorney to see if he sees any way to remedy this. If nothing else, maybe he can write up a loan from the LLC to the partners. 

I am so glad that I am done after this year. The whole year has been full of weird messes. 

Thanks to anyone that has any ideas on anything that I am missing to report this stuff.

My client is a Texas resident. He received a NC K-1 from his father's final trust. The K-1 shows NC taxable income on Part A, but 0 taxable on Part B for nonresidents. I am trying to decide if they need to file a NC tax return of if North 
Carolina will see that they have no taxable income. I have checked Google and NC and I am leaning towards having to file, but I don't want to waste my time or client's money if I don't have to.

Thanks,

Bonnie

I get a ton, but I always can tell that they are coming through my website, because that is my only public email. I got a really detailed one yesterday about my website images violating copyright laws, blah, blah, blah. I just deleted it. The funny thing was that I had just notified the new owner that bought the website provider that I would not be renewing and it would be coming down 3/31.

Follow up. The buyout check was actually written by the bank to the leaving partner, but the client didn't show it in the check register given to me or the printout of revenues and expenses. I'm waiting on the buyout agreement to hopefully determine if the payment should be 736(a) or 736(b). I hope that it's b or it will be a huge surprise to the outgoing partner to have ordinary income. I'm pretty sure that was not the intention, but I don't know how it was written up.

Thanks for the help. It was explained to me incorrectly by the leaving partner. I should be receiving a copy of the agreement tomorrow. The partnership redeemed the interest. 

Thank you. They have not given me the actual buyout agreement. It's starting to worry me a bit. I am going to ask for it again.

Partnership LLC originally had 4 partners; 2 husbands and wives. One wife passed away so her 25% went to her husband. He wanted out and made the remaining 2 partners buy him out on 12/28/23. The only assets are a little bank account, land and a commercial building. There should not be any hot assets.

My dilemma is a new loan was taken out on 12/28/23 by the LLC for the buyout of the partner. There were already two loans on the buildings and land. The remaining partners did sign personally and put up their own land and house as collateral. Is the offset to this new loan a loan to partners? the LLC did not buy anything new. I have been researching this and just don't see any other way to make the balance sheet balance. I am really confused as to why the LLC is making payments for the loan. I only have two partnerships and have not ever seen anything like this. If I am way off base, please let me know and I will try to find the correct research terms to handle this correctly.

Thanks so much! 

That's why we need to move to Colorado. Our son DIL are there to help us. My step-daughter came over today and cleaned and dusted since I don't have a robot that can dust or clean bathrooms yet. This was a first in 34 years and I was super grateful. I highly recommend RoboRocks! I had a Roomba and a separate mop before, but they are not nearly as advanced as the RoboRock. Hubby came home yesterday with 24-7 oxygen so now I have 50 feet of tubing running through the house. I have to find a way to get it off of the floor. This is a new phase for us, but we will figure it out. 

I'm glad that I'm heading out. One of my elderly clients wanted me to show her how to prepare hers online because she used to prepare hers by hand 40 years ago. She now has tons of investments and retirement income.

I should have taken some of your advice and bowed out earlier, but the new medical bills are piling up. Hubby is back in the hospital again and can't come home until they can get home oxygen here. Now we have to take our puppy down to K State, for a possible liver shunt. 

The interest income was from an annuity set up by her parents years ago. She has not pulled money out of it for years. I am not going to make her records up myself. I may just have to go with her Social Security and whatever her son can scrounge up. 

I don't know if he could find anything on her phone, because it's a flip phone. 

She was a nice lady, but was not very trusting. 

The son is personal rep. I'm beginning to think that she didn't have a checking account any longer. He thinks that she paid stuff with money orders. She paid estimates so maybe she paid with money orders. 

My client was a housekeeper for many years. She passed away and her son says that he can't find any records, including calendars, for her 2023 business. They didn't talk much. Sadly, nobody found her for a week. There is no interest on his part to find anything to help prepare her Schedule C and I certainly don't want to make it up. I'm pretty sure that it was all cash, but she always gave me paperwork with a healthy profit. I have her interest income, but that's it.

Any suggestions are very much appreciated.

Thanks!

Most of the phishing emails that I get go to my old, old email account that I never use for work or the one on my website that forwards them to another email not known to the public. They have become more sophisticated lately, but every one has a really strange email address. It really helps that I have only taken referrals for years. It's a scary world anymore.

10 hours ago, kathyc2 said:

It's sounds like you have decided this is your last year and you aren't looking to sell practice?  How about contacting your colleagues asking if they are looking for business and would like to be on a list you give to clients?  You could even ask they pay you a percent of revenue for clients that come to them from the list?

A number of years ago I had a client come to me because their preparer was in a similar situation as yours.  Talking with the client I could tell that we were similar in price and procedures.  I contacted her, chatted a little and offered 20% referral fee to her.  It worked out well for both of us. 

I wish that I still had some colleagues. All of my friends are retired, dead or got out of public practice quite awhile ago. I'm the last of everybody that I started out working with in the late 70s. My brother's CPA says that he can take some on, but I am still looking for others. Fortunately, I've had a few businesses go early and not taking on new clients for several years. 

7 hours ago, Catherine said:

@NECPA in NEBRASKA retire now; people have time to find someone else. Just say "personal issues" or "health issues in the family" and anyone who doesn't respect that you would not want to have as a client anyway! 

If you do not want to retire, hike the price as much as you need and then $50 more. Your family is more important.

Catherine, I am hoping and praying that I can get this last year finished out. If my husband gets more bad news tomorrow, I may have to let some of my businesses go. I am going to slap the technology fee on and then next year, they won't have so much sticker shock when I am gone. 

Marilyn, I really feel for you. I hope that your doctors can help with your eye diagnosis.  It is so hard to be working on your own these days. I don't even have enough room at home to have a part time person, let alone afford one. This IT monitoring cost is a real killer. I probably fall under the 5k PII data, but when I see all of the major companies get breached, it scares me to death. At least I will have my new computer ready to go when I retire with all of my information. Good luck to all of you this year.

I have never charged a technology charge. I probably should have.  Do I need to send out special letters to let my client's know that they are going to get charged one for this year? I just got a quote for managed IT services including backup and there is no way that I can eat this or just add the amount to the invoice without some explanation. I always had annual IT fees that are much lower than this. They are putting in another firewall that needs to be managed, because they said that what my former IT company used (they fired me for being too small) was not adequate, because they did not use commercial routers with a firewall. They are setting me up with a laptop workstation so that I can work away from this desk that is too low to elevate and ice my still swollen and painful knee. I wish that I had just retired last year. Now I wish that I had retired last year. We can't keep my husband well. We don't know exactly what is going on, but it may be his heart and COPD now. He's starting on his 4th round of antibiotics and steroids today since Thanksgiving, even after 3 days of being in the hospital. 

I'm exhausted and so far behind that I am afraid that I will never get caught up.

Sadly, I just had a knee scope for a "little" arthritis and torn meniscus that was not as successful as the surgeon hoped due to lots of arthritis that did not show on the MRI. Sitting at my desk with ice and leg elevated is basically torture, but I think that if I get a wireless keyboard and not use the keyboard drawer that I may be able to tough it out until May. I do have a call this afternoon with an IT company and my other option is to transfer it all to a laptop and use an additional monitor. I don't know if this is a great option or not. I called ATX and they told me that if I use a VPN and remote in, that it could easily affect ATX and I could lose data. 

Do any of you use a larger laptop to work? Mostly I use QuickBooks, ATX, Medlin and CFS Workshop for work programs. 

I was not planning on doing any of this until the end of the year before I retire, but my husband also had his first COPD flare up last week and was in the hospital for 3 days. I worry that this may not be the last one so I can't wait to retire and move where our son is. He, my DIL, 2 dogs and their cat all packed up and drove back the same day that the rescue squad picked him up from the pulmonologist's office last week. I'm really hoping that I can drive soon.

Thanks for any advice that you can offer.

Bonnie

3 hours ago, Margaret CPA in OH said:

I think Catherine has someone that prepared hers or worked with her. It might have been Tech4Accountants.  I took my template to my computer guy who has built my last many computers and configured everything including firewall, etc.  We worked through it together as he has done this for other firms.  I had to fill in the details about equipment the majority of which he provided, connected and secured.  He is a cyber security expert so I feel pretty good about my WISP.  We followed the IRS Pub. 5708.  It took only about an hour so his charge to review and confirm some things was not bad.

It will likely be my last straw and surely bring on retirement at the end of this 3 year license period, if not before. 

My local IT business that I have worked with for at least 15 years, decided that I am too small for them. I was really sad, but they don't want one computer jobs anymore. They had no idea what a WISP plan is and they work with some other local CPA firms, so I guess I will just keep searching. I really want to change to a laptop with a dock soon, since I will be retiring at the end of 2024 and don't want to be tied to my gigantic desk. I'm going to try to sell it, since we will be downsizing and moving out of state. 

I just attended Nebraska's webinar that is the "Farm Seminar" for 16 hours. I remember when I was still in college as an intern, starting our with these and going for years. I always swore that I would not be some of the "old people" dragging around their oxygen and snoring in class. My boss was one of them. I was 19 and I thought that he was probably 80. In retrospect, he was probably 60. LOL I still have another 8 hour tax update next month and any random ones that I can fit in.