Catherine

@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.

Electronic signatures and electronic records are now acceptable. It seems beyond stupid that they would allow an electronic signature - and then make you print the thing to paper and store it in a file cabinet. Then again, we *are* talking about gov't rules....

I never had to do any of that, either. But I *do* remember dialing calls in my town and only needing five digits (then, in another, even smaller, town, only FOUR digits - almost the last town in the state to get touch-tone dialing). And that was in the 80's and early 90's! (19, not 18, just in case you were wondering)

When it is just one state (for example, mine) I make my best guess and file - they correct and send a bill or refund. But I like the idea of using zero and letting the state figure it out. You could append an explanatory letter stating the amount of withheld tax is unknown because...

I have some clients who I *wish* were that organized....

Whipped still gets of WAY easier than one of RitaB's hugs!

True - but the "where it is" disappears at the Planck limit. Just as there is a lower limit to time, as well. The Planck limit to time is 10^-43 seconds. Tiny, but not infinitely so. Some think this lower limit is what was meant by "the twinkling of an eye" in 1 Cor 15:52, because - as it "just happens" to turn out - that is about the amount of time it takes light to transit through the human cornea.

That at the Planck limit of 10^-35cm, X loses all locality and is everywhere at once.

MA: excise paid to town/city is deductible. NH: portion paid to the TOWN (not the state) is deductible - and is usually the larger amount, too.

That matters?

Yes, but now *everybody* knows! I'm sure they are all terribly curious, too. (Eh, a minor Mass. part-year query, nothing to get your knickers in a twist about.)

So they can hear it when the ambient is noisy? To match the caller? To take out their rage against the world in general?

Almost everyone I have ever dealt with who has dug themselves a nice deep hole has done it by not making provision for SE tax. Sometimes they paid the divorce lawyer, sometimes they needed every penny to pay rent and buy food, sometimes they projected $X for the year and really made $3X and didn't save.

No home office, no cell phone. Maybe mileage. I'll have to talk to her. Yeah, this is definitely a case where the s-i-l, trying to be nice and thank my client for all the help she gave by paying her, really bolluxed things up.

I'll vote for you!