Catherine

I do the opposite - I have the client keep tax years utterly separate. Even when it means getting a refund and sending a separate check in for nearly the same amount. Why? Because if something is amiss and the IRS changes the refund amount, now you have dragged another tax year into the mess. The year that did not get the expected refund, and the year that did not get the expected estimate tax payments. Neither is wrong, just a difference in style. But to my mind, keeping the years separate is worth the slight extra hassle.

Congratulations! Please keep stopping by to chat with us. I sold 85% of my practice last December to some folks I've known for years. Most of the "client" stories I've told this year are from that batch. I've been working with my friends to make sure the transition goes well. Plus I dove in to help (at their request) when two people came down with the flu in March. All I kept were family, some close friends, and a few elderly clients (who, sad to say, are *not* a long-term concern) for whom a transition would have been difficult. Retirement doesn't mean you have to go away from your friends here. Heaven will still be a while off...

When that happens with our clients, we include a copy of the letter with the re-filed return. Hoping (probably futilely) that whoever sees that will at chagrined, not that anything will change. Those letters (e-file acks too) can come in handy, especially to refute penalty assessments for non-filing.

Very true to both! Not that we don't appreciate you, Jack - but you've been open with us, therefore we know more about you than perhaps you wanted us to know. I have also avoided W10 and will continue to do so on my machines for as long as I can. My practice has always been to delay installing updates until plenty of other people have done so and there have been no sudden screeches about system instability or printer drivers suddenly ceasing to function (always around April 8th, of course).

jack wants to bank where you do!

The day the IRS (or any large bureaucracy of any kind) operates in a sensible fashion, I will need smelling salts. I remember the tale, and sympathize! I have also eaten the time and effort to fix quite a number of errors over the years.

Never heard of VirusTotal - I'll have to look that up. Thanks, @Medlin Software!

that's the truth!

Gee, I've been saying this since the new tables came out. It was obvious that the new amounts were too low. The cynical side of my brain says it's deliberate, so that next April people will be angry about a tax cut. Because who - outside of my clients, who are drilled and drilled and drilled on "how much they get to keep" on Line 60-whatever - notices the total tax? They just want to know the refund amount. "Whaddya mean I owe! I *always* get refunds!" will be the cry across the land next year, except for people who asked us (as in tax pros, not my company) what to do and then followed our instructions on withholdings.

A good idea regardless of what software is used. I should think that all vendors have those download pages (I know that Drake does).

You can pass a TAX to affect the entirety of the current year. Increase or decrease. What is NOT allowable is to enforce penalties on entities for not making payments towards a tax that did not yet exist. Probably includes the interest, as well, but I would not swear to that.

I see a class action lawsuit based on it being against both the US Constitution and (to my knowledge) all state constitutions that ex post facto (after the fact) laws are NOT allowed. The feds/states may NOT treat as transgressions actions that were legal at the time made.

Ain't it just!

Ain't Judy just the BEST?!

While refunds older than 3 years are forfeit, on occasion they will apply those amounts to later-year taxes due. It doesn't hurt to ask.

While I agree with @Evan S. Golar that this AFFECTS the states, that is far different from the claim that it is an unConstitutional law because of state effects. Changes to bankruptcy law (authority given to the feds in Article I, Section 8 ) also affect the states - but that is a power given to the feds by the Constitution. All the states to be affected could decide to cancel their income tax immediately and instead impose a state sales tax to fund their operations. Or expand their lottery programs. Whatever. That is an area reserved for state control. The high-tax states could be said to have been subsidized by the feds all these years because they allowed state taxes to be deducted, in full, from income (for itemizers). Wasn't that the reason the no-income-tax states fussed until the IRS added state sales taxes in to the mix of what could be deducted? Because it wasn't "fair" to deduct income tax but not sales tax, when a state chose the latter method for raising funds? As for @Edsel's comments in his first paragraph - I happen to agree. The federal system has been subsidizing both high-income-tax states AND private home ownership. The original intention was to encourage home ownership and relieve some local tax burdens. But as is usual for any government program with social content, no matter how good (and pure) the intent, eventually it has the opposite affect from what was intended. Home ownership, because of the deduction for mortgage interest and property taxes, ultimately made it harder for people to buy, because prices increased. Remember when credit card interest was a deduction? When that went away, people started refinancing their houses to pay off their credit cards (turning short term fun like clothes and trips into thirty-year debt obligations), and we now have the task of teasing apart actual house (purchase or improvement) debt from what was used for the new car or the fancy vacation. Even the charitable deduction - yes it rewards people for being kind (by lowering the cost of so doing) but it also tricks people into thinking that the government should be involved (even obliquely) in a decision to donate to a charity. Hence the year-end "get your deduction!" drives every December. As for changes to the law in the future - what was it Mark Twain used to say? Something about Congress being in session means we're all in danger.... We can only be certain that the law WILL be changed. All other considerations are up for grabs.

NOT the mamma! NOT the mamma! and AGAIN! lol.

Welcome back, @BulldogTom, you've been missed! I hope someone can help you out, because while I've used QB for construction, they were all tiny companies. You're out of my league there.

I'll send 'em to you! I have found that they always want them yesterday, and want them for free. Neither of which is acceptable to me.

That is *always* the case, and the more complex the situation, the more minefields laid! Good luck.

I go with Jack on this one. The 16th amendment authorized the federal government to "collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment..." (apportionment was required under Article I of the Constitution, so had to be specifically addressed). This amendment affects only the FEDERAL government. For the states speciously to claim this affects them points only to desperation and grasping at straws. (NOT political; speaking truth about Constitutional issues as that is my other full-time job. Please note the lack of smart-aleck comments about state spending. But I thought them!)

I am certainly NOT going to mind doing multiple scenarios (requested by the lawyers of divorcing clients) on the tax affects of alimony X, Y, Z, P, Q, and R. I hate those.

A CPA I worked with years ago disregarded any discrepancy (for his corporate clients) under $10K as being not worth his time (and the client's money) for him to track down. Journal entry, it goes poof! and on we go with life.

I like Gail's answer, but will only add to watch for required state filings (LLC annual report, for example, is due in MA).

BAD taxpayer! NO early payments! NO cookie! We let you off penalty THIS time....grrrr.