Tax Prep by Deb

44 minutes ago, Richcpaman said:

Deb:

Needless to say, you are right, but you will not be doing those returns in the future.  Send them a note next year, "Call me when you need me"  Because the preparer that is giving them the "Nurse's Meals" is also giving the "Fireman's and Policeman's Meal's" deductions as well.  Not withstanding the fake $14k Sch C so you can claim the full EITC..

Rich

Actually they both were OK with my way of doing it.  Especially when I explain the rules.  Both want It done right and the first one that had asked me about it has been coming back for years.  I just thought that maybe I had missed something and wanted a second opinion

I have a couple of registered nurses who work at hospitals that require them to stay on site thru meal breaks.  Both of these have stated that other nurses have told them they can deduct their meal expenses.  I have looked but have not been able to come up with anything to substantiate that claim.  Do any of you know anything about this?

Not if they all live together under the same roof.  I do have situations where client's are divorced or separated and the legal papers give the exemption claim to the father, but the mother is considered the custodial parent.  In that case the father can take the exemption and child tax credit, and the mother is able to claim head of household and claim the EIC.  But the situation described above sounds like they all live together so the credits are all or none.

Hey Tom,

Mine actually came with a full blown appraisal.  I was really shocked, but the escrow company required it before they would issue any title, so my client paid for the appraisal.

Ok, I will try to make this as clear as I can.  I have a family that I prepared their taxes.  Husband and Wife has two children, one is a dependent on parents return, however the second is not.  The son that is not was suppose to go away to college so mom and dad included him when they enrolled for Covered California.  He was and still is working for a company that provides health insurance.  The idea behind enrolling him under them was that he planned on quitting his job to go to school and they wanted him insured.  That never happened.

The second son (who is a dependent) had a part time job and can still be claimed as a dependent on their return but he was enrolled for Medi-Cal and is not listed on their 1095-A.  It appears to me that because the other son had health insurance thru his job he is not eligibile for any premium assistance, yet he was factored on the premium assistance given to the parents.  How do I unravel this mess?

I thought about doing a policy allocation and allocating 100% to the parents and 0% to the son.  This is just for the 1095-A reconciliation, however how do I show the amount they should be paying back because he was not eligible?  Does anyone know of a way thru Covered California to get the SLCSP amount?  I feel this should be adjusted, but I haven't been able to find the info.

Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated.

42 minutes ago, Gail in Virginia said:

From IRS publication 559, p. 17:

 

Sale of decedent's residence.

If the estate is the legal owner of a decedent's residence and the personal representative sells it in the course of administration, the tax treatment of gain or loss depends on how the estate holds or uses the former residence. For example, if,as the personal representative, you intend to realize the value of the house through sale, the residence is a capital asset held for investment and gain or loss is capital gain or loss (which may be deductible). This is the case even though it was the decedent's personal residence and even if you did not rent it out. If, however, the house is not held for business or investment use (for example, if you intend to permit a beneficiary to live in the residence rent-free and then distribute it to the beneficiary to live in), and you later decide to sell the residence without first converting it to business or investment use, any gain is capital gain, but a loss is not deductible.

Thanks so much for this reference.  I am doing my first trust return this year that is the situation mentioned above.  This will definitely get me started on the right track!

I Guess I should have included the fact that she did receive a 1099 with the amount listed as rent.  She is clearly trying to make money at this, not just a casual thing.  Throughout the year between the company that sent her the 1099 and another that did not, she received about 6,000.  I also just found out it is not a motor home but a travel trailer if this makes any difference.

She is actually using a service that books all of her reservations and collects the money then in turn gives her the net proceeds, so I would assume they are collecting any state fee's ect....

It's definitely for profit.  She did very well in one year.

Did this several times during the year.  I have records that indicate it was rented out at least once every month for about 9 months.  It is a Motor Home and I was thinking of 5 year class life as well.  It's looking more and more like this will be schedule C income subject to self employment taxes?

Any body else?  Also if on schedule E is it treated as residential rental at 27.5 years?  Or is it motor vehicle 5 years?  I've never had one of these and frankly don't really know which way to go.

Any suggestions?

I have a client who rented out her RV last year.  Would this be reported on Schedule E?

Thanks all.  I was pretty sure, however with all this due dillegence stuff it has me second guessing myself at times.  That's the way I have always treated it but just wanted to make sure.

I'm having some what of a brain freeze.

I have a client who son is off attending college.  He lives on campus.  They otherwise qualify for EIC.  My question is does his living on campus and not at home keep them from claiming EIC or is this considered a temporary absence (attending school)?

I have had problems with this too!  You have to read it very carefully as the does and does not get passed over.  When I make myself slow down and read each word I get it, but can't speed read it or I will read in circles.

23 hours ago, Eric said:

If your computer guy hasn't tried it yet, I would suggest going to the Microsoft website and downloading the Anniversary Update update disc image, and installing it offline instead of letting Windows Update do it.

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows10

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wiki/windows_10-windows_install/how-to-upgrade-to-windows-10-anniversary-update/fab99802-4358-49d9-8278-e9664cd56311

He did that and it still gave him an install error, he tried the patch, ect....

I believe you can order copies of the W2's but they are not free, (at least that's what I remember).

I too am going cable.  Been with AT&T for years.  My price is only going up  10.00 per month for 12 months then I will relook at it.  Currently at 3.0 MBPS to 200MBPS so hoping for the best. 

Definitely upgrading Internet speed.  My tech guy says that will take care of the bog down problem, however still can't get the computer to download and install the anniversary windows 10 upgrade.

Ok, so to keep from having possible computer problems this year, I went out and bought a brand new machine with Windows10 Pro.  Within less that a month I opened a stupid email that turned out to be a virus. Shut the computer down immediately sent it in to my repair guy who wiped the hard drive and re-installed Windows.  Everything was going great but starting at about the same time I got it back up and running I started having issues with my Internet service (I originally blamed it on the weather because we have had a tone of rain this year), kept calling AT&T out who would do their testing and originally showed some problems, corrected the problems and everything seemed fine for two to three days, then Internet bogged down to a crawl, never dropping, but definite slower than slow.  I called them again and again, until the tech told me to have the computer itself looked at because if I disconnected it from the Internet service would restore and speed was where it should be, plugged the computer back in and it bogged down again.

So my computer guy checked some things and found no error log, checked router and modem and nothing, finally looked and found that Windows 10 was trying to download the anniversary update which is a huge download and his thought was that each time I would restart the computer it would stop the download and my bandwidth would be restored only for it to bog down again when the download resumed.  He suggested bring the machine in to him and he would let it download on his internet which was much faster than mine, and in the meantime I could shop for better service.  That was two days ago and he is having problems getting it to download as well.  He did say he is getting error messages, but as of yet I still don't know what's going on, except I have not been able to work for the past two days.

Has anyone else had a problem with the anniversary update?  As far as that goes, I think since I got it back in January I have only had one update, didn't really think much about it till the other day, so something is blocking the downloads.

Any thoughts would be appreciated.  I hope he can spend more time on it today and get it fixed.

Wish it was that easy, first of all you better confirm that this is for acquisition debt and not refinance with equity out not used to improve primary residence, otherwise you may have to go the insolvency route.

I've had a couple that has had it with the account reconciliation info on back.

Yes, because the child no longer meets the age test.  Has to be under 24 by the end of the year.  So my take on it is age disqualified him as a qualifying child and therefore he or she could not have earned more than his or her exemption credit to qualify which is 4000 and some change (can't remember this years limit off the top of my head).

1 hour ago, Terry D said:

Judy I had to click on the links at the bottom of the page you posted to get to this page. Had you not posted the first page I may not have found this. I too received the message in Drake but, as you said, it did not stop the e-filing. It is always a pleasure to work together on different situations. I guess I could have given up and went with the first answers received, but this bothered me enough that I had to know the right answer before contacting my client.

And in turn, we learn from your findings.  We all get one or two each year of a situation we haven't seen before, and therefore the comfort of coming here for help.  Now if this ever comes up we know the source and proper answer to the question.  So thanks for posting back what you found and having that strong desire not to just rely on this community, but digging a little deeper!  We all benefit from helping each other! 

I love my Community!

Run run run, I had a similar email and it was sent from my client but it was from his hacked email account, turned out to be a nasty virus and it will steal your email contacts and continue to spread.

Actually several of my clients do use drop box that's why they didn't suspect it and openew it and it in turn sent it to me.