Don in Upstate NY

Mine is an older unit, with a mechanical gear train the couples the turntable to a hamster on a wheel. It isn't clear if the energy from the magnetron is coupled into the hamster or not, but he does seem to go faster when the unit is on.

I think the employer's treatment of the reimbursement is correct. See "Reimbursement of Non-deductible Expenses" on page 10 of Pub 521 (Moving Expenses).

We have a "FreeCycle" site locally. ( http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FreecycleOnondagaCo/ ) Like Craig's list except everything must be FREE. I have an old hp4L LaserJet that I use for printing labels. My regular (much faster) printer doesn't do a good job on manually fed label stock - most of the time it skews the stock so the labels come out tilted. Anyway, a tiny plastic part on the 4L broke with the result that I couldn't use it anymore for manually fed stock. I went on the FreeCycle site and found TWO hp4Ls, which I picked up for free and brought home. --- I now have THREE printers with exactly the same broken part. --- :rolleyes:

Legally, it doesn't matter what that all agree on. The executor and the trustee must follow the written instructions of the will and the trust. According to the original post, the house was in a trust. The proceeds from the sale of the house must be distributed according to the terms of that trust, which were not disclosed. We could speculate that the trust was simply an effort to avoid probate, and the beneficiaries are the sons, but we don't know. The bank account was in the names of the mother and two sons. Again, this sounds like a probate-avoidance tactic. Why not all four sons -- who knows. In any case, at this point that money belongs to the two named brothers. There is a will that says all assets must be divided equally, but we know of no assets subject to that will. The brothers want everyone to come out even for personal, ethical, moral, or family reasons. That's not the way it was set up legally, so the only option (short of everyone disclaiming everything and throwing it all back into the probate estate) is gifts among the brothers.

At this point we have two brothers with $75K each and two with nothing. We want everyone to end up with $37.5K. Each of the $75K brothers can give $12K to each of the 'nothing' brothers without filing any gift tax returns. If they wanted to wait until next January to give the rest, that would work. Or if some of the brothers are married, it probably could all be done this year. It doesn't matter that the will doesn't mention the bank account - money in a joint bank account passes by action of law irrespective of what the will might say.

You are correct of course. [Reminder to self - think before idly combining numbers to reach a conclusion. ] It's interesting to note that Yahoo historical quotes gives the "adjusted close" (adjusting for both splits and dividends) as $0.50 while BigCharts gives the "split adjusted price" as $1.1432. So it would seem that Yahoo is more useful when calculating return on investment (including dividends) while BigCharts is more useful when preparing a Schedule D.

<humor> But no one has yet addressed the urgency of this matter as described in the subject line ... </humor>

Google GE and the first hit is the stock price chart from Google Financial. That one shows five splits since 1979 -- all in May. 1983 2:1 1987 2:1 1994 2:1 1997 2:1 2000 3:1 So your 48:1 clue is right on! Her basis is $54.87 against a current price of $37.45.

I would consider TaxWise to be forms based much in the same way that ATX is. Both (e.g.) show the 1040, you click on line 8 or 9 to bring up the B, click again to bring up the interest or dividend worksheets, etc. If you have a business you open Schedule C; rental property you open E. Both products allow you to jump around between the forms quite easily. TaxWise is superior in automatically loading forms as they are needed (e.g. 6251, 8880); ATX is superior in having more comprehensive worksheets (e.g. sales tax deduction tables). In my mind, a non-forms based program would be a program where you had to enter all the data on worksheets and didn't see any forms until you explicitly asked to see the results (e.g. Drake).

I don't see any fraud in preparing a return accurately reporting that a person properly identified by an ITIN earned wages that were improperly reported to a incorrect or false SSN. You are not assisting in a fraud -- the illegal act (if any) has already been committed by the employer/employee. Our obligations in a case like this is to accurately report what happened. See http://www.irs.gov/businesses/small/articl...=167635,00.html

Thank you. Dinner at the Texas Roadhouse, Sam Adams on draft. Who could ask for anything more.

Liiks like your F stamps are worth 29 cents. http://alphabetilately.com/G.html

Correct. It was page 54 in the 2005 version, which is the version on the 2006 CD. As an aside, how did you do that cut and paste? When I copy from a two-column IRS .pdf, I always get a mish-mosh of both columns, as in ... • Computers and related peripheral equipment, unless used only at a regular business establishment and Other Property Used owned or leased by the person operating the estab- for Transportation lishment. A regular business establishment includes a portion of a dwelling unit that is used both regularly Other property used for transportation includes trucks, and exclusively for business as discussed in Publi- buses, boats, airplanes, motorcycles, and any other vehication 587.

Correct. A printer used in a qualified home office is NOT listed property. See Pub 946, page 54.

Ah ... well ... ten months in a year ... eight from fourteen ... in the words of Roseanne Roseannadanna ... "Never mind"

In this case the funds were sold within six months of the date of death, and so were not part of the estate on the alternate evaluation date. If the alternate date option were chosen for estate tax reasons, the funds would have a basis exactly equal to their selling price. (See instructions for Form 706, page 6, last paragraph.)

For 1040 returns, TaxWise already has a conversion program from ATX (see http://www.taxwise.com/products/conversions.html ) and ATX has a conversion from TaxWise (see http://www.atxinc.com/conversion/index.aspx )

2nd Story Software = TaxAct. www.taxact.com (I think the federal plus all states plus unlimited e-file package is $500. The price with per-return e-file is about $150; per-return e-filing is about $11.50 for the first 25, and goes down from there. See the site for complete e-filing prices. AFAIK the $500 package is NOT advertised on the site, you have to call for it.)

Agreed! TaxWise is/was also a much more stable product, with (e.g.) ten updates per season instead of hundreds. And with a multi-year contract with the IRS/AARP, they have a more stable customer base. I expect TaxWise to survive.

HDD (But I cheated in the usual manner) Hint: LBB CBYH TSITM TCITC ...

I'm not sure that is true. The publication on EIC (Pub 596) gives an example where the parents do not have valid SSNs, and so do not qualify for EIC. They apply for valid SSNs, but do not receive them on a timely basis to file. When they do finally get the SSNs, the publication says to file an amended return to get the EIC.

And the taxability of any social security the parents are receiving.

You think the USPS is trying to emulate the IRS in being user friendly?

Not so fast there! Letters now cannot weigh more than 3.5 ounces to get that rate. If your "letter" weighs more than 3.5 ounces, it is not a letter. It is either a large envelope or a package. A large envelope weighing less than 7 ounces costs more to mail than what we used to call a letter of the same weight. The "forever" stamp currently costs 41 cents.

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