Catherine

Yes, like a sale. I forget which boxes mean what and have no examples to hand (they're all at the office, where I am NOT; my poor husband just got in from snow-blowing and looks like a drowned rat), but I can get those to you later if you need/want. The forgiven debt *should* come later on a 1099-C and if the person is lucky that will come sooner rather than later. Those can show up YEARS afterwards, when the poor schmuck is no longer insolvent and then they have COD income and a tax bill.

Just please note it is different IF they are called on-duty "for the duration" of an emergency. For example, a nurse client of mine was called in, in advance of a big snowstorm (not today's!) to be working/available for three days. On her "off" shifts they made a hotel room available for sleeping, bathing, etc. And gave the nurses so called in a meals allowance. Had they not been given a meals allowance, I can see the cost of those meals - where they were stuck due to employer mandates and weather - as being possibly added to a 2106. That is a hugely different situation from dinner break on your regular shift, though.

It's late and I'm tired so I did NOT go through all your numbers, even in my head. But in general, as long as you make taxable income the source of payments, you can take the ed credits. Who gets them and refundable or not is in the details that I'm too tired to parse out.

Bursar's Office printout of charges and payments (with dates) for the year.

And we can celebrate Tau Day in late June! Vi Hart explaining Tau: Vi Hart on Tau (link to you tube video)

That is *exactly* what I am doing - slow-motion work on easy returns. Tomorrow (Monday) will be spent pulling together stuff to work on at home Tuesday, as we are supposed to get a blizzard with a 1/2 feet of snow. Which reminds me, I need to set up auto-respond so people will know. And I hope that YOU feel better, too! I am definitely doing better but I'm not back to normal by a long shot.

SO sorry, Joan!

Can parent treat the money as a gift and then deduct the taxes themselves?

As long as they see it on the Schedule A, they *never* make the connection to the "itemized or standard deduction" on pg 2 of the 1040. It makes them content, and saves me TONS of time explaining things they already have their minds (wrongly) made up about. Print the Sch A!

And he is probably too big to put over your knee and spank, too. Worse yet - he might not be too big, but would enjoy it! (ick) Candidate for a Rita hug?

I have a lady (real nervous nellie) who has called twice a week for a month either talking my ear off or leaving long rambling messages with ZERO information. She dropped off some missing papers - put them IN my assistant's hand - then called me the next day to "make sure I got them" (no, my assistant used the paper as rolling papers because we now have medical marijuana here in MA and if YOU aren't a valid reason I don't know what is... but I digress, and I'm not serious about that). Her bill is going up $5 for EACH phone call. Now, the crazy lady who calls several times a week - we're lucky. She calls the trustees of her special needs trust (you see, she really *is* crazy) several times a DAY. They just pay our fee, knowing there is a hazardous duty portion tucked in there. And *we* are grateful not to them *them* dealing with her daily calls.

I did this for a client a couple of years ago; she took the money to buy a new condo, and re-deposited it on Day 58 (or was it 59?); close but still inside the window. While everything was fresh, I wrote the CP2000 response letter and had pdf's of all the support documentation. When the IRS letter showed up, I opened the document, put on the current date, printed the whole kit and caboodle, and off it went. Solved. I wish we could write ahead for all these issues when everything is fresh!

I have my annual mid-tax-season nasty cold, and would be happy with a Friday where my fever went down and stayed down...

Get a printout from the Bursar's Office of actual charges and payments in 2016 to see what really happened. I have seen several 1098-T's with NOTHING in Box 1 but scholarships listed - but the Bursar's Office statement clearly shows charges for tuition and other fees, scholarships, and payments. Those forms (in my experience) have a tenuous connection with reality.

@Elrod - that baboon is a better IT expert than far too many out there charging very high prices! (This most specifically does NOT include our IT specialists here on our forum - but I bet you folks know some "colleagues" you'd love to send the clients with the power outages and missing "any" keys.)

Your client may get a 1099-R next year for this - or maybe not. They (the IRS) keep telling us not to bother with amendments that change taxes by less than $50, so unless/until I got a 1099-R, I'd ignore it. But that's just me, and I spent the morning at the dentist, have a splitting headache, and there's not much right this minute that I don't feel like ignoring...

It's actually pretty fascinating. If you take a length of rope - say a foot. Cut it in half, you have six inches of rope. Cut it in half again, three inches. And it *seems* like you can keep doing that ad infinitum - except you can't. At the Planck length, whatever you are trying to divide LOSES any definitive location and instead is suddenly everywhere *in the universe* at once. No locality. Dr. Feinman once said of quantum physics that (and I am paraphrasing here) it is utterly preposterous and ludicrous, and in fact the *only* thing going for the entire field of study is that it is undoubtably true.

Good point, @Lion EA, and one I had not considered. It is possible for kids to work younger than teens (think of child models, for example) but I have never looked at the rules. When my girls were little and they worked for me, I paid them out of pocket and did not attempt payroll. They got $1 for each 1/2" of paper stacked for shredding, and I would put the shredder in the living room and they would feed it during commercial breaks while they were watching their favorite shows (they each got one 1/2 hour show a day to watch, and were allowed to watch their sister's show as well).

Quartic surfaces are super-cool but definitely weird (and some of the "simpler" ones look a whole lot like the descriptions of sub-atomic orbitals). A few decades ago I *might* have been able to at least tackle the equations that define them. So I side-stepped your entire statement by running for cover to the Planck limit, where all lengths lose locality. That's how: by having a brain full of only loosely-related nerdly trivia.

Well, this one is a twist on a topic I've seen once or twice. Parents have a business and were going to hire the two kids to work in the business. I cautioned them about the kids needing to do actual work and not merely be a cost-shifting tactic - and that at ages 6 & 9, that was a bit young to be getting serious work done. Parents ended up not putting kids on payroll for 2016. But they did put $5,500 for *each* child in a Roth IRA. Obviously that needs to be removed and reported. They have removed the excess contributions and the growth - but how do I report this? The kids would otherwise have zero need to file. Can this be reported on the parents' return or do we need to file for the kids? And do I wait for 2017 returns - since that is when the 1099-R will be issued - or does it go on 2016? The Tax Book had all kinds of useful information on calculating contribution limits and where to report x, y, and z - but nothing specifically germane to this oddball situation.

But I am *sure* they asked the barber's brother in law! He said it was fine, and he knows WAY more than any of us do... doesn't he?

Progressive lenses are really important to get right in the frames. If the place where the change starts is even the tiniest bit non-level from one side to the other, or the tiniest bit tipped in one lens, you will never get used to them. However - if they are the right prescription and made right, they are wonderful. I have two sets of progressives; one for real life and an completely separate set called "computer glasses" where the top is the right prescription for me to see the computer screen directly, straight, and in-focus, and the lower portion so I can see papers on the desktop properly. I brought measured distances from my monitors and desktop with me to the eye doctor; "averages" from most people mostly don't work when one is only 5' tall. Oh, and a set with sunglasses for the car. Love 'em. If it takes more than a week to get used to them, there might be something wrong. If it feels like your eye is getting pulled up or sideways, there is *definitely* something wrong with the lenses.

MA annual LLC fee is $500 - plus $20 for the "privilege" of filing it online (which is mandated). So really it's $520. You can buy a LOT of insurance for $520 a year.

My scientific wild guess is $650 to $800 - and that's assuming the five out of state rentals were at least in the same state. If it's five different states, add $300. But it could have been more.

They now sell "cyber" insurance and I bit the bullet and purchased that this year. In addition to my E&O, I get far better protection for me and my assets for about the same fee as the annual state LLC fee. And I would *still* need the insurance, and that insurance would cost the same.