Catherine

True, but I have on occasion used Zillow with a caveat. I find a same-vintage "comp", see what Zillow said it was worth, see what it actually sold for, and apply a percentage correction factor. Document everything (screen shots, etc) and detail your reasoning. Sometimes it's the best that can be done.

I did find that I had to CALL to resolve this one; repeated letters did absolutely nothing. Once I had someone on the phone, we resolved it (I hope!!!). It did take about an hour on the phone, but quite a bit of that was holding while the agent went to look up something or try to fix something. Think I played solitaire for a while, while waiting.

@Abby Normal thanks for the info on startup monitor and autoruns; I am going to look at both of them (tomorrow; today's already full).

Once it's an S-corp, it can sell shares to new shareholders as long as there is only one shareholder class and the total number of them does not go above 100. You'll need to do special allocations the first year to deal with when the new s/h came in, and remember to start tracking the basis as well.

That's a joke anyway. It gets ignored by ALL the robo-callers, and no one enforces it. So why do we even have it?

That's what must have happened to MY client! C-corp in existence since before I was born has *always* filed a fiscal year return. We got letters demanding calendar year tax returns because they "had never been filed" for like the last three years (all the letters within a week of each other), plus problems with application of estimated tax payments for the corporation. Took a LONG time on the phone to get it straight, and the IRS agent was never really able to articulate why it got messed up in the first place. We'll see for sure in October, when I file the extension request for 2016 fye 9/30/17. Thanks, Judy!

Me, too - but more and more programs are insisting that they *must* live on the C drive. So no more partition for tax software, partition for acctg software, partition for client data, etc. Next machine I'll dump the partitions and just use folders. Ah, well.

Not necessarily; depends on the details of the annuity and how much (or little) control they have. If it's the Ozzie version of social security, they don't have a foreign trust. If they an a US-style annuity (that they were required to pay into), they may have a foreign financial asset. Or they may have a foreign trust. The devil is in the details - which need to be obtained, pronto.

Jeepers, sounds like I have been involved in the wrong kind of class action suits! I couldn't even buy a large pizza with my settlement!

Great story, @JohnH! A friend spent a couple of years working out in the Marshall Islands. Depending on which direction the trip was, it either took two full days or less than one. Those flights cross the International Date Line. (Did you know that Magellan and his crew, when they got back from the first-ever circumnavigation of the world, were close to getting accused of being witches? Because their calendar was off by a full day! I forget how they got out from that one, but they did.)

I got $13 and change from a class action suit some years ago. Yeah, they sound great - but the only ones who profit, it seems, are the lawyers. Maybe the bad guy gets spanked.

What E = MC^2 means, @BLACK BART is that energy and mass are equivalent, subject to a large correction (the speed of light, times itself). So how much energy resides in a tiny bit of matter? Astounding amounts (hence the amazing destructive abilities of nuclear bombs). How much matter could one form out of energy? Teeny tiny little insignificant amounts (it does go both ways, after all, and explains the electric bills of particle accelerators). The limerick, however, addresses a fact learned from Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity, which tells us that time is a PHYSICAL property. It moves more slowly with increased gravitation and with increased speed. Two cesium clocks, at different altitudes, run slightly differently (not so as we'd notice; the difference is less than a second per million years). Which one is right - BOTH are! Because time itself is different at different gravities - and higher up there is less gravity. Likewise, time slows down with increasing speed (you have to get to more than 40% of the speed of light to notice). Your link goes to the Time Dilation equation where you can calculate the effect for yourself. So if twin brothers split up, and one goes on a space journey to Alpha Centauri and comes back in - let's say fifteen years - he is a couple of years YOUNGER than his twin upon arrival home, because time slowed down for him. The speed of light is a theoretical limit (I am not going to go there, don't worry) but the limerick implies that if the barrier is broken, the girl in question can come home before she left. Great trick, as she can remind herself to bring whatever it was she forgot... no, wait, that gets us into time paradoxes. Let's not go there, either, at least right now. Relativity, Special Relativity, and Quantum Physics get weird and surreal *very* quickly - and anyone who is lacksadaisical about the implications of these principles really does not understand them at all. In fact, they are SO bizarre and ridiculous that the *only* thing they have going for them is that they are undeniably factual.

Their might be some arcane provision for working at a foreign embassy, as those are considered to be "foreign soil" once on the grounds. But just putting up a sign; nope. That's going to show up on one of the "Dirty Dozen" lists soon.

Well, yeah - but it still makes them hang up FAST. And I get to use an announcer's super-perky type of voice, too. Y'know, of the type that says "call before midnight tonight and get - for NO additional charge! - the Ronco combination turnip masher and diaper steamer - just pay shipping!"

I have started answering no-caller-ID calls at home (and on my cell) with "who are you and what do you want?" because apparently if they start with "is this X?" and you say yes, that is then taken as consent to be called. If they won't start by self-identifying, I want nothing to do with them. Then I congratulate them; telling them their phone call has cost their company $20K when I report them to the FCC for calling a number on the do not call list. I generally don't get all the way through that before they've hung up on me... but it's still a LOT more fun than just hanging up on them.

If other class action suits are an indication, I'd say about enough for a cup of fancy coffee... maybe $7. Twenty years from now.

Maybe he needs a reminder that he works for you, and not the other way around. Try calling him at home on a Sunday afternoon with a planning question. Or after dinner. Several times over the course of a couple of weeks. He might get it, then.

Even more so when it's competition with ZERO repercussions for the bad/unfair competitors.

One of my husband's cronies, back when he lived in the San Jose area in the early 80's, paid close to $1M for a house that had originally been a chicken coop.... I kid you not.

This one is starting to look like a truly tangled mess.

As long as YOU are happy with what you are making - and you can pay your bills - it kinds doesn't matter what you make. However, do NOT sell yourself short and undervalue your services just because you are "doing OK."

The biggest issue I found when trying to sell my business last year was "buyers" who were not certain (or upfront, but I'm trying to be charitable) about what they wanted. Got all the way to an offer to buy with one set, who at that stage changed everything we had been talking about and only wanted the file-by-April 15th clients; no one else. Another guy who was all fired up about getting an office west of Boston where he has as slew of clients - then changed his mind and decided to move all operations to inside Boston (and he was mainly interested in storefront businesses). A lady who thought she could run my business part time while working elsewhere (hah!). Standard pricing seems to be roughly 1 x annual, paid out over a couple of years after a big down payment. Make sure you have a lawyer look at the contract, and make sure there are provisions for increasing your take if, for example, new clients call you and you refer them to your buyer. Non-compete covenants are getting increasingly hard to enforce, which can work on your side but also means your take will be less if clients do not transition over. I ended up dumping the thought of selling and instead will merge my practice with some colleagues I've known for years, and then gradually back out. They'll pay me, over time, for all the clients who stick with them.

Our hobby is watching online soap operas...

Oh boy, this just gets more fun with every post! My client only worked for these folks for two years; 2013 &n 2014. I had used a working assumption that a refund for 2013 could still be filed, even after SOL runs out, because of the DOL's overturning of this particular applecart. I had not even *thought* of issues like gross-up, overtime, etc. We'll wait and see what (if anything) the former employer sends my client between now and fall - and what the IRS might send, as well. In the meantime, keep on posting! I will be making a nice *long* list of "gotcha's" to be on the lookout for. Thanks to all, and over this weekend remember all those who gave their lives for this country.

Anyone here in western Idaho or the Spokane area? I'm going to a conference (non-tax) in late October and may need a place to crash overnight before flying back. All the flights I am seeing either leave too early in the day for me to get there (after the last conference event on the last morning) or end up with a red-eye and/or 4-hour layovers in some airport somewhere en route.