Catherine

"Hey, we're the tax agency. We don't have to make sense!"

I am recommending payments NOW (whether via coupon-and-check, or Direct Pay), and e-file later.

We have the FinCen requirements on our annual document checklist, but for 2023 I'm putting it in the engagement letter, too. As soon as the draft comes out and I can edit it.

The e-signature for a 2848 also has to be approved by the taxpayer through their own online account. Forget that! Not sure I have even one client whom I would trust to do that correctly. I have uploaded wet-signed-and-scanned 2848s to the online submission portal and had them accepted. Faster than faxing them! As far as I've ever been able to tell, Memphis CAF uses the faxed pages as paper airplanes. They don't seem ever to get them entered. I always faxed to Ogden - those at least get entered.

I'd expand a bit on Tom's advice. This is an instance where I'd advise thinking long and hard about putting any assets into joint names. The operating checking account (for the electric bill and groceries and the like) should be fine, but I'd keep everything else separate. Further, if the financially stable person has any health issues or is in a risky profession, the couple should talk to a trust attorney and consider if that person's assets be placed in a trust whose secondary beneficiary is the spouse-to-be, for their benefit but not for their ownership. This gets into legal areas and I'm not giving legal advice - just advice to talk to someone able to give legal advice! Trustee who is not the liened spouse would have to be chosen, perhaps a trigger for wrapping up the trust once the IRS issues are resolved (or not, if the spouse-to-be is still bad with money). It would not be simple or cheap, but possibly less expensive (and peace-of-mind-bringing) than the idea of leaving substantial assets in the hands of one with a track record of making poor choices and bad decisions.

Our now-retired dentist, when he wanted to keep an eye on something, would say "One of three things will happen. It will get worse, it will get better, or it will stay the same." With the first, you act. With the second, you give thanks. With the third, keep watching!

I had one client (fired long ago!) who would promise and promise and promise. At the end, I was charging him quadruple my regular fee plus a late charge, and he was getting IRS late-filing penalties, and he never cared. I got sick of him and dumped him. If I wanted to nag people, I had teenagers at home (at the time).

I just got an email from eFileMyForms stating that 2023 forms are now available. At the least, you can go play, put in your vendors and their contractors. Until you save, put in cart, and check out, nothing happens. @JimTaxes

You can do either. Each 1099 gets added to your cart, and you can check out at once with all of them. Got info for two, and that customer needs to confirm the ssn/ein or amount for the last contractor? Get the two done, go back later for the third.

Probably on January 2nd. I've never had a problem filing 1099s or W2s very early in January.

As if we were not busy enough?

My mother-in-law had a SEVEN-DAY to-the-minute pre-Thanksgiving schedule. Starting from cleaning the refrigerator to make room for it all, grocery lists for serving by number of people, then when to take the turkey out of the freezer to thaw in the fridge, to when pie crusts were prepared, then pie fillings, side dishes, stuffing, and more. She even had charts, on grid paper, comparing roasting times by weight for stuffed versus unstuffed turkeys, plus suggestions for coping with the chaos and dealing with leftovers. It was truly astounding. But this also pre-dated Excel, so it was all on 5x8 index cards, plain paper, and grid paper. 31-page pdf from her paper records. Does that still count?

(Oldy but goody, adjusted for clean speech - extrapolate on your own) Choose a new password: potato Sorry, password must contain at least 8 letters. boiled potato Sorry, password must contain at least one number. 1 boiled potato Sorry, password cannot contain spaces 50bleepingboiledpotatoes Sorry, password must contain capital letters. 50BLEEPINGboiledpotatoes Sorry, capital letters must not be consecutive. IwillShove50BleepingBoiledPotatoesUpYourPosterior,IfYouDoNotGiveMeAccessImmediately Sorry, password must not contain punctuation. NowIamSeriouslyGettingPissedOffIwillShove50BleepingBoiledPotatoesUpYourPosteriorIfYouDoNotGiveMeAccessImmediately Sorry, you can't change your password to a password that has already been used with this account. Choose a new password :

I have used it for years and like it a lot. Send a PM if you want details, but in general I've found it very easy to use. PDF copies are now available instantly, too. Years ago when I first started using them the PDFs were available the next day.

UMass Tax School still exists, too - but I don't recommend it. It used to be fabulous, and I went every year. Yes, there were old fogies sleeping and snoring (one guy always amazed me that he never fell off his chair!). The best ever Ethics class I ever attended was at one of those; all about the grey areas and when trying to help a client pushes the preparer, all unwittingly, against those limits. I learned SO much from that one class and it has really stuck with me. Unfortunately, the man running it retired and it was taken over by a self-important bimbo who made it all about her. It was awful, and useless, and annoying, and I stopped going after the first year she ran it. She had been one of their "featured speakers" for a couple of years beforehand, and I always gave her the worst reviews and written complaints. She was truly atrocious.

If you do this regularly, they do sell pre-punched paper that would at least relieve you of one long hard slog of a task!

I have Mercer as agent for E&O. Switched away from Hartford some years ago when Mercer had better coverage limits for less than Hartford. They shop out to different companies; currently covered by Carolina Casualty. Cyber is separate through ERO Cyber Security.

I've seen them demand - and have mailed to them with the letter requesting it - Form 1310 FOUR times before they finally get off their fat duffs and ACT on it. It's as if the entire agency has a grudge against Form 1310 and orders from On High to stall, delay, obfuscate, pretend it wasn't received, and re-demand it. Not new; I've watched this recurring debacle for twenty-five years at least. It's one of my biggest complaints about the Service.

This one I've not seen before. First time I had to log in using ID dot me to get to EFTPS. Had to try twice after getting through the ID send-you-a-code step. First time said no record. Okay, fine. It's possible to mis-type a password. It's even possible when copying from my secure pw manager; all that would need is to accidentally get a space as well. Second time worked. Got to the end, and then it tried to tell me that I was "not authorized" to pay Form 941 tax deposits - for my very own single employee for my very own business; not for any client. I've been paying these taxes for well over a decade, and have never seen this error until ...gee, the first time I have to log in with ID dot me. I'm suspicious. I was able to pay anyway, on my second attempt, as I got a "continue" anyway choice (the other two were abandon the payment, and edit the payment). Anyone else see anything like this? Or am I the only lucky one?

I don't do tons of representation, but the information I've gotten from these has been enormously helpful. I've staved off more in-depth audits, I've known exactly how to respond to some of the stranger letters that clients get, I've known more what and how to ask about oddities I see in paperwork. Further, I know exactly when something starts to look like more than I want to handle, and who to contact in that case.

My recommendations would be: Have the client make any payment either by check with coupon, or using DirectPay. Then e-file in January. I had to paper-file a prior-year decedent return after the SSA shut down the SSN and the e-file was rejected. State already dealt with it, but we've heard nary a peep from the feds.

For me, I'd just annotate the return with the changes made, and why, rather than amend. Else the IRS is going to be inundated with these no-tax-change amended returns, and in general they don't want to be bothered with amendeds unless tax change is greater than $50. YMMV.

Good to know about Square. I do like to have authority for docs with clients. A few are now out of date - thanks for the reminder to get updated signatures from those clients.

I've done a bunch online and will be at the NE IRS Representation Conference Nov 30-Dec 1. I think they still have online "seats" available. It's always fabulous. https://irsrepconference.com/

QBO does not allow you to delete accounts; it's one of the more horrid aspects of that particular abomination. Best you can do is make them inactive, and configure all reports never to display inactive accounts.