David1980

Usually unless you get a 1099-C there's no COD income. And even if there is COD income, it wouldn't be the FMV of the home (box 4). Most likely either box 4 is more than box 2 (in which case there is no COD), or it's non-recourse. If there was COD, it would be just the difference of FMV and balance outstanding (the amount that balance outstanding exceeds FMV) but without a 1099-C I wouldn't assume it. Another possibility is the debt isn't cancelled. It's entirely possible for a bank to take a home that doesn't satisfy the debt and then still try to collect on the remainder.

Well one reason to do it that way is because a lot of tax offices close down after April and it's impossible to get in contact with them. Kind of removes a lot of the point in paying someone to preparer your taxes when you can't call them up to ask if it's a smart idea to pull $50k out of your 401k for buying a home or other tax questions. Then again, I guess for some it's about the tax prep and nothing more. I'd be careful with the survey. Obviously you can't talk about specific situations with clients. Other than basic things like "How is the efiling this year?" "How were the hold times calling the IRS?" I don't see what more they can get.

"per diem allowances for lodging" = basically never. He can do the M&IE per diem and then add actual expenses for lodging, but cannot use the per diem for the lodging.

Instead of focusing on what they missed out on, perhaps focus on what they got? Had they bought their home 4 months earlier they wouldn't have gotten even the $7500.

True, but you wouldn't get the number doesn't match reject. You'd get the EIN issued in current year reject instead. 0502 for a mismatch, 0505 if the EIN is issued in the current processing year. If I get a return like that where after a couple days the taxpayer still doesn't have the information to get it through, I'll often suggest paper filing. I always try to get them to adjust their withholding to prevent huge refunds so hopefully it's a prior client that listened to me (yeah right) and is getting only a small refund which they're OK with waiting on.

Well first it would make sense to check if the taxpayer ended up filing a return or not. They often have someone available to preparer military returns when they're over there so it's possible he filed a return single or something without knowing he shouldn't. Assuming he didn't, I'd try resending the return. After all there have been issues with certain IRS service centers in the past, so it's possible. Like last year when they had those bogus 515's. If that fails next step would be to paper file. That might go through fine and you never hear another peep, or maybe you'll get an IRS letter. If you get an IRS letter just do whatever based on the letter.

Appears to be a yes, but reduced by 50%. http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/f5405.pdf So even though she's the only owner it still is maxxed out at $4,000 for 2009 or $3,750 for 2008.

Last year I had people asking me where their stimulus payment was. Before congress had even passed anything.

Appears to be 7 year /12 year AMT since it's not classified anywhere as something else. A couple threads I found talking about the dog breeding business and depreciation: http://www.taxalmanac.org/index.php/Discussion:Dog_Breeding http://www.taxalmanac.org/index.php/Discus...ing_business%3F

The Washington state excise tax is a transfer tax and not a property tax so it's not deductible. See pages 149-150 of Publication 17 for "taxes you cannot deduct" which lists transfer taxes. You can add them to the basis as a selling expense, but if it's a personal home that probably doesn't matter anyway.

What is the purpose of a 1040-A anyway? I mean I understand the EZ, being one page of paper. It's also simple enough for anyone to figure out. A 1040-A though. Two pieces of paper. Simpler? Not really, considering you have to be able to determine that you qualify for a 1040-A and that's more advanced knowledge than anything simplified.

Well, I'll usually show the taxpayer a "various" short-term date with $0 basis and that motivates them to either find it or yell at their broker until the broker caves. I don't have too much pity for the taxpayers on this though, if you have the money to invest in stocks you should do the minimal research necessary to determine what records to keep. Or ask me when I'm doing the tax return and I'll tell you. Whatever you do though don't randomly do stuff with money without understanding all the consequences.

I always have people take it in to the local IRS office in-person as it avoids a lot of the problems. No waiting for a rejected application for some minor error. It's either accepted or not and I find out right away.

Assuming the SSN is legitimate and not a "borrowed" number you should absolutely use the SSN.

You don't need to file the 1045 even if there is a carry forward. Form 1045 is just used to carry the amount back. It's often used in software to calculate the NOL amount as well, but is not filed when use d for that purpose. So if you know the amount all that needs to happen is it needs to be a negative amount entered on line 21 of the 1040.

Wow, that cannot be a good sign.

I would speculate they put it in there because people are bound to ask "Where the heck did the energy credits go?" What is that IRS quote from anyway? Anyway, it was not extended for 2008 but is for 2009. So 2008 is a bad year to replace windows in... See if they can return them and buy them again in 2009? (kidding!)

This reminds me of Kapp. Being on the coast we do get a few fishers and a lot would refer to Kapp's website which of course listed "won" court cases. I did read through those for one of the people and he was even intelligent enough to see Kapp actually lost those cases and was spinning it by highlighting parts out of context (like where the court quoted Kapp and it looked like the court said it). Even after losing cases though the fishers were getting caught by the fraud. And that's the reality. Even if you show people why it's not correct, often they simply don't care. They see about 2-weeks out and their buddies are getting refund checks. They don't look 2-years out at audits. Let someone else deal with those kinds of customers, you don't want them.

The big ones or me are Sales Tax (could be where I live, no state income tax, but a lot of prior year returns I see where they itemized missed it completely or only got the state rate and not the local sales tax in there) and state credits for those who moved here who lived in states with an income tax (seems a lot of people spend all their time preparing the federal and then just add a state and hope the software completed the state for them.)

There's no reason the software couldn't have a checkbox that automatically split the single Schedule C into a 50/50 split Schedule C for TP and SP. It would just be a bit more work than the old single Schedule C two Schedule SE method.

Additional child tax credit and earned income credit are both refundable credits. Credits that appear in the "payments" section of the 1040 are refundable credits.

I pulled out one of my marketing emails from Drake (I never delete anything) with download information for the Drake 2008 demo to test this out myself. Here's the info to try this out if you're interested (and have a spare moment...) https://www.drakesoftware.com/Login.aspx?Re...er/Default.aspx Use EFIN T82442 Password d2j9j The installer I think didn't like the fact my computer does not have a C: drive. Oh well, after the initial error I just told it to continue and got it to install on I:. Couldn't get states installed like the directions say, that gave me other errors. Not that I really am worried about states, I primarily wanted to see this forms mode. Also you can't create new returns but that's understandable. The test returns wouldn't show up until I did a repair index. That done, I'm not overly impressed with what they have but if I was on the fence it might be enough. Basically their forms based entry gives you a 1040 (I didn't test to see if they have it for corporations or S-corps or anything) and on the 1040 for each line that has a worksheet for it has a link to the worksheet that the entry comes from. So for example, if I wanted to enter itemized deductions I would click the link "A" on the appropriate line, and that opens the normal Drake worksheet. It does not give you a direct forms based input like ATX has though - after clicking "A" I'm on a worksheet and not a Schedule A. I can't override anything direct on the 1040 because it's just a graphic with links to drake worksheets on it. I also couldn't figure out how to do an IRC 1341 repayment from the forms entry (or worksheets, but I probably didn't look for the right worksheet long enough), did not seem to be any link to it. That's exactly the kind of thing I need forms mode for is because I don't want to go poking around worksheets when I know where it goes on the form. Yet the forms mode for Drake doesn't help with that. It only helps with the stuff I wouldn't need help with anyway. But at least it's something. On the other hand I do like the change in their printing interface. It's basically like the taxworks print mode ("peek") where you can select just what you want to print. I hated the old Drake print so that's a huge improvement for me.

I'd be tempted to treat that as investment property (and allow the loss) since they never lived there. However, it's a good catch on what IRS Pub 523 says and I agree with your assessment for personal home. I tried it in another software and it too failed to report it to Schedule D. My guess is the programmers are only looking at Schedule D instructions page D-2 and not Pub 523 which clarifies the loss/1099-S situation. Can you manually add it on Schedule D?

I wonder if TaxWise supports it.

It would appear to be ATX. I looked through the California 1346 and while there's a lot of small changes (updated fields/formatting) there's no real big changes and they still accept RDP returns electronically. I can't fathom why ATX would discontinue the support for RDP returns, as none of the changes were that large. Sure would be nice if error messages indicated "The tax software doesn't support efiling this" versus "The state / IRS doesn't support efiling this." I think almost universally all software tries to give a generic "not supported" message so that you don't know if it's a program weakness or the state/IRS, but it is sure annoying.