David1980

Yeah, they really need to have a more robust efile system. There's really no reason to reject it in the first place. If they got the $250 just reduce the refund by $250. That's the final outcome anyway.

They did, but they're still letting Red Gear run it independently.

My first year preparing taxes I worked for an H&R Block. The third party designee info all said "HR BLOCK" and I don't remember what the PIN was. I did actually call the IRS up to discuss one of the returns, and it worked fine. Note that if you told them "My name is David, and I work for H&R block" they wouldn't talk to you. So when they asked you who you were, you would tell them "HR Block" and they'd take it.

Some banks will bounce the refund if the last name doesn't match. Unfortunately, not all banks will. So if you accidentally put the wrong account on there and the bank takes it you could have a very peeved taxpayer. And if you guess/hope that they will take it even though the name doesn't match, and the bank bounces it, you're now looking at it taking even longer than a paper filed return with check from IRS to get that refund. Seems that there are a variety of "non-bank" banks out there that will take direct deposits. Kind of like a secured visa card that allows direct deposit, that sort of thing. May be worth it for the taxpayer to look into getting something like that.

Any form that asks the taxpayer if they got money, and if the taxpayer says yes it reduces their refund, is going to have a lot of people answering it incorrectly. IMO.

Head of Household should be easy. Mark provides 100% of the support for his mother. Claim the mother as qualifying relative & that also qualifies for HOH, so long as he did pay over half the cost of maintaining a home. EIC would be a no. Only person he could claim to get EIC would be Thomas. However, under the new dependency rules for 2009 if a parent can claim the child as qualifying child, a non-parent cannot claim the child. So Mark cannot claim Thomas.

Sort of. The Housing Assistance Tax Act of 2008 requires that the exclusion be prorated starting Jan 2009. The Schedule D instructions refer to Pub 523 for this situation, however Pub 523 is still the 2008 version on the IRS website. There will probably be a worksheet in the new Pub 523 when released with the actual calculation. This was done to close the loophole where an investment property could have it's gain excluded if the taxpayer simply moved into it for two years before selling. Excluding $250k($500k) every 2 years was a sweet deal indeed, if you were willing to invest in homes that you were willing to live in. I think it's just a simple pro-rated calc. IE, taxpayer lived in it for 2 years, rented it out for 2 years, they would have 50% of the exclusion. But because it wasn't retroactive, periods before Jan 2009 of nonqualified use aren't used in the calc. So if taxpayer sold home 12/31/09, rented it the whole year, rented it for the prior year, and lived it in the two years prior to that they would have 2 years qualified and 2 years non-qualified use, but only one of those years of non-qualified use is used in the calc so they get 66% of the exclusion. ATX might already have a worksheet for this, or maybe just wait for 523?

Obviously it still applies for support so the question comes to who paid over half the mother's support. Her SSI, or the daughter? Obviously if the daughter only had $10k income that would be a hard sell. If the daughter had $50k income it wouldn't be hard to believe at all. There was a relevant discussion on the TTB forum recently. http://www.thetaxbook.com/forums/showthread.php?t=13355&highlight=support

If there's a partnership there's a partnership. Two people go into business together with no formal agreement it's a partnership. Just like how you don't have to apply for anything to have a Schedule C, you just start doing the work for money as a sole proprietor and you have a Schedule C. If they wanted to go LLC or S-Corp, etc... then they would have to worry about whether it can be done retroactively. But a partnership just is.

I can't help but wonder if the form not being ready (Well, it is now on the IRS a final version as of last Friday?) until late was intentional to make it harder to claim the credit. In order to cut down on the massive fraud they had last year?

Only one that really surprised me. I'll bet that a lot of these are due to an incorrect SSN for the dependent. (So they're probably combined with 501/504's).

I'd probably disagree with that. Perhaps for a password protected zip file where the password is easily guessed, but if you had something like GPG encrypted email it would be unrealistic to try to break it. Probably months of computer time processing... maybe more? No idea how a password protected PDF compares. I do think even something as simple as a password protected zip file or PDF would prevent information theft, simply because you can get the info from someone who doesn't do that. Just like a locked car, it's still a piece of cake to smash a window but why bother when the next car has unlocked doors and keys in the ignition.

Before IntelliTax was bought out they did have the "archive" version of their 2007 and older software available. The archive versions did not require activation through transmission. So if you could find a copy of that, you would be set. I'm really shocked that TRX did not keep a copy of it for this exact situation. CCH I understand didn't want anything to do with it at all, but TRX could have taken care of their customers by keeping the archive version for prior years of the very software they sold. If you still have a working 2007 install, I remember there being a work around they had me do once. Something about exporting the system config and then importing it onto the new machine. If done in the right order it would negate the need to transmit for activation. You would still need some way to install the updates. I think they are stored somewhere on the hard drive so you could probably find and copy them to the new machine.

Why so paranoid? It's just a tax return. Only useful information there is the taxpayers name, address, social security number, how much money they made, where they worked, and their bank routing and deposit numbers. Surely nobody would ever be interested in that...

I think you get a lot of people in some of the chains who would have prepared it themselves if it was not for the RAL. So perhaps they qualify for free tax prep due to low income or EIC, but don't want to wait a week or two... In which case the $200 or $300 a big chain charges for a couple kids with child tax credit and EIC could be considered part of the RAL. After all, the taxpayer treats it that way. I also think the interest rates fell quite a bit from last year due to some change in the regulations. Pretty sure the "technology fee" did not exist for any of the tax prep softwares, yet they all have it now. The reason being the software companies were getting rebated money from those bank finance fees. It made it look like a bank fee to trick us into thinking it was the big bad bank and not the big bad software company. This year everyone's got a technology fee of some kind. Speculation here, but I think the banks had to drop the rates to meet the regulation and as a result stopped paying the software companies out of the bank interest charges. So the software companies simply took their fee and called it a "technology fee" so that they keep getting paid.

TaxWorks has a decent page for rates. Not sure it's current. http://www.taxworks.com/BankEnrollment.aspx Looks like Chase is the most expensive of the banks they have there. It also has a very convenient interest rate to work with (1% of refund). 1. $32 fixed bank fee $50 interest charge. (I suspect they might actually consider the amount financed to be less the $32 fixed bank fee, but it isn't clear.) $82 Chase fees. $10 transmitter fee $14 technology fee $98 total fees. 2. $32 fixed bank fee $100 interest charge. $132 chase fees. $10 transmitter fee $14 technology fee $156 total fees. 3. $32 fixed bank fee $132 interest charge ($132 max fee) $164 chase fees. $10 transmitter fee $14 technology fee $188 total fees. 4. $32 fixed bank fee $132 interest charge ($132 max fee) $164 chase fees. $10 transmitter fee $14 technology fee $188 total fees. So looks like it's the most expensive APR for the small refunds. As it increases upto $1320 refund the fees gradually fall as a percentage of refund. They fall dramatically faster after $1320, as the fees are already capped so the % falls. Also makes me wonder if Chase approves a lot of RALs for about $1320 of the total refund ... since if the taxpayer were to apply for a $10,000 RAL and only get approved for $1320 chase makes exactly the same amount of money with a lot less money held up on the loan. The cheapest RAL you can get? Reduce withholding... get AEIC if you qualify. Wish the taxpayers would listen to me...

Was looking at it again today, they now have Advent showing. They also have "ADVENT BANK is OFFERING REFUND TRANSFERS ONLY and they are still accepting applications additional applicable fees may apply." on their main page. Oops, guess Advent wasn't doing RALs after all.

And I was so sure the SBBT thing would blow over. So wrong... not that I like RALs anyway. One comfort is that anyone else with SBBT is just as screwed. So yeah, it is a disadvantage over non-SBBT preparers. But the SBBT preparers are on equal footing. I tried the link there for advent, and the ERO app only had SBBT as an option. They must have forgotten to update it or something,... Interesting though, if Advent is still taking apps I wonder if one possibility to get around the SBBT problem is to sign on with TRX? Though, I know CCH has problems with the same EFIN being used on both ATX and TRX. Still, since TRX is just TaxWise, you'd think if TaxWise works with Advent Bank that CCH could move people to Advent. A google search didn't help trying to pull up information on the Advent Bank. As far as Republic, I'm sure they would love to expand their business. But can't, due to the stricter regulations as far as how much money they must have on reserve in order to offer RALs. They probably just can't come up with the funds to take people on for RALs. So same problem as SBBT, except they are able to do the ones they already have, just not more.

AnnieR is correct, Jan 15th. You can find all of these important efile dates on the Tax Year 2009 e-file Calendar. http://www.irs.gov/taxpros/providers/article/0,,id=174255,00.html e-file Calendar for Tax Year 2009 Begin Transmitting live IRS e-file returns - January 15, 2010 Last date for transmitting timely filed returns - April 15, 2010 Last date for transmitting timely filed Forms 4868 - April 15, 2010 Last date for retransmitting rejected timely filed returns - April 20, 2010 Last date for retransmitting rejected timely filed Forms 4868 - April 20, 2010 Last date IRS will accept test transmissions - No cut-off date Last date to submit new IRS e-file Applications - No cut-off date Transmitting timely filed Forms 4868 or 2350 to meet overseas exception - June 15, 2010 Retransmitting rejected timely filed Forms 4868 or 2350 to meet overseas exception - June 20, 2010 Last date for transmitting returns on extension from Form 4868 - October 15, 2010 Last date for retransmitting rejected late or returns on extension from Form 4868 - October 20, 2010

The SBBT buyout makes absolutely no difference this year. It's like when your home mortgage company sells your mortgage to a different company. You keep making payments, you keep your house, the terms remain the same, etc... Effectively no change. You just send your bills to a new address. Same thing with SBBT, if you have them as your bank you might have to sign new documents but nothing is going to change this tax year. What they do beyond this tax year is an unknown, just as if they had not been sold. Incidentally, they're keeping the same management team, the same facilities, and the same employees. So this really is a change in name only as far as we as preparers are concerned. But don't take my word for it, just read the announcement on their very own homepage. https://cisc.sbbtral.com/index.aspx

It's only used when the taxpayer is making an electronic funds withdrawal to cover the estimated tax liability, and you are using the practitioner PIN method. Since almost noone (at least that I've seen) makes an electronic payment with their extension the form is rarely needed.

The way I see it, some would choose to attach the form in the same way they would choose to attach supporting documentation for a dependent that multiple people claim every year. If they know the information is going to be requested anyway, why not? That said, I don't see any reason to attach the HUD. If they know it's going to be questioned I'd be suspicious of whether they qualify & otherwise the IRS can request it if they want it during an audit of the FTHBC. I do agree that it probably should be required, because that would eliminate a lot of the fraud. I do require the taxpayer bring in the HUD-1 in order to complete a 1040-X for the FTHBC. It just gives me extra confidence I'm not doing work for fraudsters & the information will be necessary for the next tax return anyway (property taxes allocated to buyer and all that.)

Google Chrome is an internet browser.

I would at the minimum determine what the correct amounts are. There's worksheets for vehicle trade in basis and depreciation tables in quickfinder, thetaxbook, etc. This also gives you the benefit that you can verify what tech support comes up with as a conclusion actually has the correct deduction amounts.

I think "rich" is often a perception of relativity. For those making $250k a year, it probably doesn't seem like a whole lot compared to their friend who makes $500k/year. For the person making the median salary $250k is rich, anywhere in the country. The reality is the average person can't afford a nanny, private school, $5,000/month rent, etc... Heck, there are many people who can't afford decent health insurance. Obviously the person making $250k in a big city feels they're better off even with the higher cost of living, or else they'd relocate to a low cost of living area at lower salary. I do agree that the tax brackets and phase outs don't reflect regional variances in cost of living. It would be difficult to create a system that actually could tax everyone based on their specific circumstances. So while not perfect, the "bracket" system is one of the less crappy systems among many other crappy systems. Where the tax brackets increase, where phase outs start and end, those could be updated (and everyone would probably have different views depending on what they feel is important as to what should be where.)