Chowdahead

Your logic confuses me. So your saying that since more people will actually see doctors, and there are too few doctors, then current doctors you know are bailing out. So they would prefer that a significant percentage of the population not see doctors so the status quo can continue? How about the U.S. actually start investing more in making doctors out of more of its citizens?

My mother works at a local hospital and on her ward is a young woman in her mid-20s who has Stage 3 ovarian cancer and will probably be dead in few weeks. If the cancer would have been detected sooner, she would probably still be treatable. However, she had no health insurance. She couldn't afford to go to the doctor. No annual physicals. Nothing. Until one day she ended up in the ER. A pap smear came back abnormal. She was told that she should follow up with her primary care doctor. She didn't have one, and she couldn't afford more tests at the time. Now she's waiting to die in a hospital bed, barely able to move. The state and federal governments will probably have to spend hundreds of thousands, if not more, on her before her life ends. If she had had affordable access to healthcare, she would probably have the chance to enjoy alot more of her life. Despite working 25 hours a week, her job didn't offer a healthplan. Sure, she could have called Blue Cross and purchased an individual plan, but the payments are at least $400.00 a month and the deductible is around $10,000. I didn't make this up. My mother just told me this story last weekend. So yeah, I REALLY want the Government to run healthcare, despite the fact that a pretty sticker got placed on a bunch of appliances without proof.

Thanks for the responses!

Believe it or not I am still working on this. The client is in no rush and I really want to get this right. The lump sum is around $45,000. The three prior years have rolled over in the worksheet. I didn't have to enter anything except the three prior years above on the worksheet. However, the entire $45,000 is showing up on Line 20a, with no mention of LSE. Is this the way it is supposed to display? Does ATX even have the capability to display the LSE notation?

I have a new client, and he owns a house b.c his brother could not qualify for it. However, the brother is the one that lives it and pays the mortgage and all taxes. Since the brother is the one that does everything, he lists the interests on his income tax return. The owner of the house has never listed the house as an assets or ever has claimed anything for income tax purposes. He said he was told that as long as only 1 person reports this to the IRS, there is no problem. The owner gets no profit. So now, they want to sell it, so once that happens, the bank will probably issue a 1099 to the owner, it is going to be a short sale so again there is no profit, who does this get reported and by whom? I recall from my HR Block days and CCE courses that the person who actually pays the mortgage and expenses is the person who can report it on their return. So how would this factor in if a 1099-A or 1099-S is issued due to the short sale?

From some research that I've done, I was under the impression that it needed to be reported despite a 1099-C not being received.

This is my first 1099-A and it's a doozy. Box 2 (balance of principal outstanding) says $266,000 and Box 4 (Fair market value of property) says $140,000. Client has not received a 1099-C. Property was 100% investment. I am still working on the Schedule D portion, and that's the tricky. However, I am trying to report the income on Line 21 of the 1040 and I only see 1099-C Cancellation of Debt as one of the categories. Would this simply be inputed to the manually entered fields down near the bottom.

I have been having continuous e-filing problems where the return shows a status as "Transmitted to EFC". Last week I had over 30 returns that I had to manually go over with a support representative in order for them to "re-hang" them. This took over 90 minutes to do including my Hold time. Some couldn't even be re-hung by the rep and had to be forwarded to advance support. The week before that I had 4 with the same problem. Now last night I notice that I have one return with the same problem. Compounding the problem is that calling support entails around a 30-45 min wait on hold. The problem seems to be with getting the acknowledgments because if I go onto the ATX mySupport site and look up the return there, I can clearly see the rejection errors. Yet my program won't receive the same rejection acknowledgement, so there is nothing I can do to fix it until I call and they rehang it. This is really frustrating. Has anyone else experienced this? I have been using ATX since 2003 and I have never seen anything like this.

Two years ago, I had a client who had received 3 years worth of Social Security Disability payments in one lump-sum. I filled out the SSA Lump Sum worksheet and determined that he didn't owe a tax. However, several months later the client received a letter from the IRS claiming that he owed a tax. He called and the IRS told him that his preparer "did not note on the return that it was a lump sum payment that was excluded from tax". It was all straightened out after a couple of weeks. I never really understood how I could have included this info in the return, other than the worksheet. I have another client in a similar situation this year. My question is how do I make sure the information from the worksheet is transmitted to the IRS? It seems to me that worksheets are not transmitted in the e-file. So how am I supposed to indicate on an e-filed return that this is a lump-sum payment over several years? Is there actually a specific form other than the worksheet for doing this? I could not find any within ATX.

Thanks for the replies. Yea, I realize that loans are a qualified expense as long as they are disbursed in 2009. However, these local 1098-T are horrendously inaccurate. About 90% of them do not list anything in Box 1. They almost all list amounts in Box 2. They rarely include expenses paid by loan. This is crucial because the American Opportunity Credit is a big credit to students, or their parents if they claim them. But getting people to provide accurate information about their loans is a time-consuming process, that I am really going to start having to consider charging more money for because it is backing up my work.

That's exactly how I have the return setup, so sounds like we are all thinking along the same lines. Thanks guys!

I have two clients who are divorced with one minor child. They have a divorce decree signed in August 2009 establishing joint custody and placement with mother. The decree also gives the father the right to claim the child every other year on his income tax retuen, starting with TY2009. The child is with the father every Wednesday night and every other weekend and 3 weeks a year. They also have multiple signed 8332 until the child turns 18. Does the father claim Single, with the child on his return as en exemption? While the mother is allowed to claim the child on her return merely for EIC purposes? The father doesn't care about the EIC anyway because he is a few thousand dollars over the income limits. However, the mother could use the EIC because her income is a few thousand below the income limits for EIC. Can they both claim HH, or does one have to claim Single and the other HH? The father claiming HH would obviosly be more beneficial to him due to the higher standard deduction. I did one of these several years ago based on a return done at H&R Block, but I can't find it. Any thoughts?

I get a lot of clients who receive a 1098-T Tuition Statement from their school yet Box 1 "Payments received for qualified tuition and related expenses" is blank. There is usually an amount in Box 2 "Amounts billed for qualified tuition and related expenses." Sometimes they will argue with me that they actually paid the amount in Box 2 or that they took out a loan to pay their tuition. Are they allowed to claim the education credits based on the amount in Box 2?

By the way this entire form debacle is ridiculous. The IRS doesn't have the new form ready so any return claiming it in TY2009 is delayed. I have clients just saying they will amend 09 later rather than wait. Fine by me since I get to charge twice. :rolleyes:

I would be using the old form since I would be amending the return using ATX 2008. He is allowed to use the old form on the 2008 amendment I believe.

I have a client who purchased his first home before Nov. 6. He is finally getting around to filing for the first-time homebuyer credit, which as far as I know he is still allowed to do on 2008 because he can use the old form. The intriguing part is that he made under the maximum allowable income guidelines in 2008, before the phaseout is required. In 2009, he made over the income guidelines. So the way I see it, he should amend his 2008 return when his income was less. Because if he files for the credit on his 2009 return, he will be subject to the phaseout and he can't even file it until the new form 5405 is available. Is my line of reasoning correct here?

There is also "F" for "FMS" which collects child support and student loan debt for the government.

This is a very good answer. Hit the nail on the head!

But don't the rules specifically say the person must have been eligible for benefits November 2008, December 2008, and January 2009? Or does a person being eligible those three months indicate the person was eligible all of 2009?

Yes, the garbage company that replaced SBBT (Metabank) allows check printing and direct deposit for Refund Transfers (RTs). Basically, it's like FeeCollect, but more expensive at $32 instead of $15. But remember that ATX adds on $21 in fees also. Republic and River City also allow check printing for RTs.

Bordering on the point of riduclous now. I just noticed that in addition to the Transmitter Add-On fee going up from $10 to $11, there is now this new "SFS Bank Technology Fee" added, which means that for a RT from SBBT, the total fee is $53, before I even add a cent for my services. This is getting out of control at this point.

You can't offer FeeCollect with any other bank product as far as I know. It's one or the other. I considered FeeCollect, but many of my clients prefer to have me print the checks because they lack accounts. FeeCollect is DirectDeposit only.

Already lost 2 customers yesterday who wanted RALs. I tried to explain that they would save money by going RT or regular DD, and they said they needed the money now. One girl had to pay her college by the Monday or they were going to yank her out of class. What many people don't realize about RALs is that sometimes in this cruel world they are the lesser poison. If a person has no cash, and needs to pay the mortgage, credit cards, etc or face hundreds of dollars in late fees if they wait 2 weeks for their refund, they would rather pay the RAL fee and pay their bills.

Does anywhere here know if ATX charges the $10 transmitter fee in additon to the $15 FeeCollect Fee?

My problem with this whole situation was that SBBT wasn't clear on the entire situation. They sent out an e-mail on Jan. 6 saying that everything would be the same, nothing would change, and that we would have to sign a new agreement. They would be using the same facilities, same staff, and sames systems under the new name. They made no mention of RALs. Then yesterday they sent out an e-mail at 3:56 EST saying everything has received approval. But then they sneak into one of the paragraphs "RT Only", and reference a Dec. 24 press release that I never received a letter regarding or received an e-mail regarding. If on Dec. 24 I would have known that SBBT would not be offering RALs, I would I went back to River City or tried Republic. But now is when SBBT decides to inform its preparers of this? This is just wrong on so many levels...