BulldogTom

I am still dealing with one of these. Filed 11 years of tax returns for the client. IRS did not garnish while we were working on getting the returns prepared. Owed over 100K when it was all said and done. We did the offer, and wouldn't you know, the IRS said no. Not suprising. So we just sent in an installment agreement. Waiting for the IRS answer on that. IRS has not garrnished yet. We have been able to hold them off for two years. The clients are making very small payments right now. The first thing you need to do, if you accept this client, is to get the open year returns filed. If he is really not making anything right now, he may have refunds to put in the pot. Then start working your way back to the years that they are looking at. Get them all done, and keep in contact with the IRS. As stated before, no offer until all years are filed. Usually, if the IRS is not after them, they want 7 years. That is how far the software looks back unless they have a collection issue open in a year older than 7 years. If they have an open collection issue, they want back to that year. Get your money. If this goes sideways, they will blame you for not getting them "off the hook". Tom Hollister, CA

I like LinkedIn. It is much more professional than the other social media sites, and I like following certain companies. It is not a place where people post about their cats, vacations, etc. It does keep you up to date with the lives of professionals that you deal with. I found out that one of my best friends in grammar school is now an IRS account resolution specialist in the Fresno office. Tom Hollister, CA

Are you sure that is how you meant to say that. My wife may not appreciate it. But I will make you a linkedIn contact. Blushing as I write this. Tom Hollister, CA

Thomas R. Carlson I don't hide my name. I guess I never thought that I don't use it on this board. How dumb am I? Now no one will want to be my contact. Tom Hollister, CA

Hey all, I need to get my contacts up on LinkedIn. If you are a member, invite me to be a contact. Tom Hollister, CA

The Washington Memorial, Lincoln Memorial, WWII Memorial, National Mall and Smithsonian Air and Space museum were Frikkin' Awesome!!!!!! I could not believe the number of names on the Vietnam Veterans memorial. Puts things into perspective. Tour of the Capital today. Tom Hollister, CA

Rich, When I was in the Coast Guard, I had the honor of performing at a couple of the ceremonies for veterans as a member the the Ceremonial Honor Guard. It is a very moving experience, especially folding the flag and delivering it to the loved ones. I always felt so inadaquet when I handed over the flag. Still gets me choked up. Tom Hollister, CA

Thanks for all the suggestions. We will not be driving. We will get the metro pass for the week. I have been warned about driving in DC and we have decided to use the metro and walk. Good Excercise. Never thought about the Ford Theater. Will add that one to our list. Mount Vernon is a possibility, but we are trying to stay near to locations that are on the metro lines. We are staying in Alexandria, about a half mile from a metro station. We got a hotel room with a kitchenette so we would not have to spend so much on restaurants. Plan to only eat out a couple of times on the trip. Mostly packing sack lunches to take with us on our day trips. Love the suggestion about the Udvar-Hazy Annex. Do you know if you can get there on the metro? My kids are both engineering students and they want to work in Aerospace. I think they would did that annex. Thanks Tom Hollister, CA

Good Morning All, First, and update. My youngest son will be graduating from High School in 2 weeks and has been named Class Salutatorian. He will be attending UC Berkely in the fall. MIT's loss is Cal's gain. He will also be continuing his internship at NASA AMES Research Center this summer. My oldest son continues at San Jose State and has set the curve in 4 of his 5 Engineering Classes this semester. Since transfering into San Jose State from Junior College, he has recieved an "A" in every class he has taken. Enough with the braggin'. You all know I am "Super Dad" when it comes to my kids. To reward my youngest son, we are going to Washington DC on vacation for a week. We plan to spend at least a day in the Air and Space museum, have a tour of the Capital set up, and have requested from our Congressman tours of the White House, Supreme Court, Bureau of Engraving and Library of Congress. We will also get to Arlington and the Hall of Freedom. Any other things that you think are a can't miss when you go to DC? Thanks Tom Hollister, CA

I actually agree with the AICPA position on this one. They lost, now move on. Get congress to give you the authority to regulate preparers or give it up. But I don't agree that the PTIN program should be changed. Not sure what the AICPA is proposing on that one, the article is not clear on that. Tom Hollister, CA

Disagree with Jack. If you intended to be unmarried, and did not sleep under the same roof as your spouse for ANY night of the year, you were separated all year. Millitary deployment, hospital stays, etc do not count for anything in this situation. Did he spend 1 night under thse same roof as her is the only question. Tom Hollister, CA

I am not sure how the MFS comes into play here, unless there are children involved. You always have the choice to file MFS, but just watch for the itemized rule (if spouse itemized, you must also itemize). Generally, filing a tax court petition does not get you to tax court. What you get is a very advanced auditor who will review the case and try to settle. I have had 4 of my clients file a tax court petition and none of them went to court. Everything settled out in the tax payer's favor every time. However, I did have rock solid documentation every time and the issue was that the the clients did not respond in time to other notices, and the tax amount due was really not in question. I would definately preserve the ability to go to tax court by having the client file the petition. It is only a $60 fee and you preserve all of his rights. But first, make sure that the tax return as filed is correct. This is the most important thing. The IRS cannot arbitrarily change his filing status, so if the return is correct and filed as MFS, this should be a no change review that will save him $1,100, minus the filing fee and your bill. But something is bothering me about the facts as you have laid them out. I would look very carefully at the 2011 return. It doesn't sound right that the IRS only changed his filing status. Good Luck. Tom Hollister, CA

We had a policy that we would pay for the course if it was related to the employee job and increased their skill. But we would not reimburse unless the employee recieved a grade of B or better. Had to wait until the course was taken and the grades posted to get your reimbursement. It ensured that the employee was serious about the courses they were taking. What happens if the employer is paying tax free dollars to the employee? Make sure to consider that angle. Tom Hollister, CA

Jack or Eric (or any of you other IT Geeks out there). We have a situation at my day job and I just wanted to see what you guys think. I believe this is a HeartBleed issue, but our IT guys are not sure. We have 4 Toshiba business hubs on the network in our offices, which we use to fax, scan to e-mail, scan to files, print, copy, etc. The system has been stable since we installed the biz hubs about 9 months ago. About 10 days ago, the scanning function stopped working. We could scan a document, but the scan would not go to the e-mail address or file address. Toshiba came out and says their machines show the scans are being delivered to the network (I am not sure that is the correct way to say it) and that when it gets to the network operating system, it is being blocked from delivery. Toshiba says it is a Microsoft issue. Microsoft says it is a Toshiba issue. The curious thing to me is that about 10 days ago, Microsoft put out the patch for the security issues related to Heartbleed. I don't know if this is a coincidence or not. Just seems very curious. And if I understand Heartbleed, it was using the operating system to re-route traffic on the network to a different location. If they patched the vulnerabilities in the network, would it make sense that the patch is stopping the network traffic from the Toshiba machines from going to their destination? I am an accountant and tax preparer, not an IT geek. So if this sounds totally stupid, please tell me so. No offense will be taken. Thanks for your thoughts. Tom Hollister, CA

I would have liked to be a fly on the wall when that phone call happened. Tom Hollister, CA

Watch out for the Kiddie tax. That is unearned income of the child. May end up at the parents rate. Tom Hollister, CA

The old ATX company used to have great support. I would need to call them 1-2 times per year for functionality issues. Normally, it was just not knowing how the software handles an issue. Two years ago, I stopped calling tech support. It got so bad that you had to sit on hold for more than 1 hour to get someone to answer the call, then they did not know anything about the software. They were KB readers and I had already read the KB looking for my issue. There were also issues with the integration of the bank products, and then there were issues all over the place last year with the simple task of loading the software. There are a few people at ATX that know what is going on, but they don't answer the phone. You have to find a way to "get" to them. It is too much brain damage for me. I get my support here. Tom Hollister, CA

My wife worked at HRB for 6 years. She came home all the time upset that she would sit down with a client, and when the return was done, they would compalin that the EIC was not high enough. After my wife explained why the return came out the way it did, the client would pick up their papers and walk. They would go to another preparer and tell them a different story until they got a big enough refund. One time, the clients even came back to the same HRB office and had their return prepared by a different preparer, the very next day! She came to work early and the clients were back and they miraculously ended up with 2 more children living in their home! From my wife's experiences, MOST of the preparers at the office she worked for only cared about the commissions they were getting from preparing taxes, upselling Piece of Mind, selling IRA's and selling RAL's. That may not be typical, but it was for 6 years at the office she worked at. Tom Hollister, CA

Would those "mils" include HRB, Liberty and Jackson Hewitt? Commissioned based sales staff preparing returns for a population that does not care about how much they pay, only what the "net" tax refund is. Tom Hollister, CA

I would not suggest you walk away, unless you feel that the client is not interested in properly reporting his business activities. Pull out Form 3115, the change in accounting method form. I would approach the depreciation as a change in accounting method and make all the depreciation corrections in one year. At the same time, I would make all the adjusting entries into the current year for the rents on both sets of books and take all the charges in the current year and ask for a payment plan to get it all paid off over time. You know your client. If they want to cheat, then you don't want them. I am reading into your post, but it seems to me like they had some suspicions that the books and tax returns were not up to par, and your expertise and ethics may be just what they are looking for. You may be surprised that that is what they really want. On the other hand, they may send you packing when you tell them what the issues are and go running back to the previous accountant. Either way, you will be able to sleep well. Tom Hollister, CA

I guess if you hang up, it is a successful completed call in their eyes. Tom Hollister, CA

I charge a flat fee of $25 for dependent children. It gets them in the office to meet me and I usually end up with them as clients when they move out on their own. Great way to build future business. But I don't give it away. I do make sure they get used to paying for my services, even though it is a very nominal amount. I had one parent take his kids w2 back because they could efile online for free 2 years ago. I am now doing the return. He figured out his time trying to do the return for the kid was worth more than $25. Tom Hollister, CA

It is working fine now. Not sure what happened, but it was not good for a couple of days. Tom Hollister, CA

I don't know Jack. I was not having these problems before I downloaded the new browser with the fix. Immediately after restarting the computer, every site I went to had a delay in response and would freeze up on me. It wasn't happening before I downloaded the update. It is however getting better. It is mostly a problem on sites where I have to type in information like my user name and password. At least it stopped locking up the websites when I tried to scroll through them. It is very hard to type on this board especially because of the delay in seeing the characters appear on the screen. Tom Hollister, CA

It locked up this site 5 times while trying to post this reply. I hate bill gates. Tom Hollister, CA