Roberts

The stress was unbelievable since it was a 1x per year test and you didn't find out your score for months! I'd never done another persons tax return before sitting for it and I'm not sure if that was helpful or harmful. My niece is taking the nursing boards this week - her freaking out about it reminded me of that test. The stress of having to admit to your co-workers and former students that you failed - wow. When I took the CFP exam - literally nobody except some co-students in a class I took even knew I was in the program.

Was this an annuity within a tax deferred account? Seems like if it was, the money would still be within the IRA type of account even though there was a lump sum distribution.

Mark Zuckerberg, one of the world's wealthiest people and in the tech industry physically puts $.03 of tape over the camera on his laptop - consider what that means.

working at 70 1/2? Mentioned one day at the office that our rental condo would likely be our home in this metro area when we retire and we'd use our primary home to fund the purchase of a condo in Florida or someplace else. My 82 year old co-worker about fell over - the horror of retiring. Why would anyone want to do that????

MalWareBytes, Avast, CCleaner, IOBit malware fighter. The reason I prefer Avast is it will do a Boot Time scan. That will catch things that a normal scan won't catch. everything is backed up on another computer (at my home) in real time using BitTorrent Sync - the folder is encrypted. I don't trust cloud services - their interface can be very vulnerable.

Yes, I'd love to know how you efile if you aren't connected to the internet. Downloading an update onto a zip drive and installing onto your server is NOT that much safer.

I think there are multiple definitions but I'd say for ownership change - the sale is completed when the primary paperwork agreement is completed and money is transferred. Conditions in the sale which may need to be met don't really delay a change of ownership. In a stock sale, ownership has changed hands either on the day of the trade or at least when the money changes hands. When you later determine there is a stop on the stock certificate - doesn't mean you now still own it. You just haven't completed all the conditions of the sale.

And yet, those articles and TV shows are out there every hour implying expertise. Everyone is under the impression they are informed if they read a little on the subject. Taxes, medicine, investments or financial planning, legal matters, foreign policy. The danger is that you don't know what you don't know. How many of us haven't complained about a client being uninformed in taxes because they didn't consider ALL the facts? Same is true in everything else yet a few articles almost always gets equated to full knowledge. There is an entire advertising campaign about this phenomena: Did you stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night? I do rather extensive backpacking trips in the wilderness. You'd be shocked how many people think they have a complete grasp of back country safety from 4-5 outings, a dozen webinars and having grown up in the country. The first true medical emergency when they are 200 miles from a road changes their understanding of the scope of that knowledge.

Unless you know the person's entire financial situation, making blanket proclamations can be very dangerous and why people get in trouble. They read somewhere that this is what you should do when in reality it was based upon assumptions that don't reflect their situation at all. Age of the client, their health, how assured they are tax laws or government entitlement programs will not change in the future, their pension or inheritance expectations and their total of assets are just a few of the factors that make blanket generalizations worthless at best, more likely dangerous to the uninformed who think they are informed.

Have a client who's been doing this every year for 4-5 years. It's bizarre to watch. I also hate it but a lot of people are switching from traditional IRAs into Roths, paying the tax and the reality is they would have avoided most or all the tax anyway if they withdrew from the trad IRA over 10-20 years. Had a 60 year old client who did this - she only had about $150k for retirement. When I told her she likely wouldn't have paid anything in tax (or very little) when she slowly withdrew in retirement she got mad at me - not the broker who did it to her.

I believe in most cases you get to make the choice. When you do the Schedule B of the 1041, you first determine the Distributable Net Income and then lines 9 and 10 will inform the IRS who is getting taxed. An attorney I work with will also flip this year to year. For example a set of clients get only the income from the trust and it's not a massive amount of money but the equity securities can generate substantial capital gains. It would be overly burdensome to flow the tax to the beneficiary so we have the trust pay the cap gains taxes and some years it pays the income tax also (rarely). I believe you are right on the Cap gain figure John.

JMO but if you aren't going to use it for the internet, get an e-ink version like the Paperwhite. Battery life lasts a really long time and the screen is far easier to read. Size of storage isn't important as a book is generally pretty tiny at around 1 MB. My wife purchased a Nook and while she'll say she reads with it all the time she hasn't touched it in 6 months. She gets books from the library and reads about 1 per week.

I'd call the E&O and ask their opinion. What on earth would they be coming after you to achieve? (legally?) I absolutely hate the "Oh I thought I told you about that" storyline that people throw out after the fact. Had a client this year who had 2 years of screwed up tax returns. We walked through it this year, I asked tons of questions and explained it all when we did the return. His ex-wife is claiming he shouldn't have taken a deduction and the client is trying to blame me. He remembers me asking questions and him answering them but somehow he can't remember why he answered them truthfully.

I update individual software products, not Windows itself during that period. No time - the risk to a meltdown is greater than the risk of a hack. Client always tells me I should shift to Linux - reality is that it's just as vulnerable as Windows. Another client is a Linux developer and said because of its fragmentation of ownership - it doesn't get the news stories that a Windows hack gets.

JMO but Windows updates aren't half the problem as the random free Adobe and Oracle products on your computer. Even drivers for your printer are likely as vulnerable as Windows itself. Many wifi printers are exceptionally vulnerable. How often do you check the software updates on your router? If you are really worried about safety you should be updating to Windows 10. It's safer than the previous versions. windows had a known vulnerability that went all the way back to 3.1 and continued in each version - they didn't do anything about it until Win 10. A 2 week delay is a blip.

Yes, I hold off on security updates. A week delay isn't going to kill me. The way Windows works anyway, you are likely getting them often times significantly delayed.

Turn off automatic windows updates and do them manually when you are bored (or leaving for lunch). Too many times I've been leaving for a meeting or trying to avoid rush hour traffic on Friday afternoon and my laptop went into update mode. Now I do a manual monthly update when I go to lunch and I know what's being updated.

It's idiotic. To efile you either need a new PIN (which is worthless) or you must give last years AGI and PIN. Why not require last years AGI? Any tax software could roll that forward (even Turbo Tax) and if you have last years return you have it to enter manually. If they wanted to get rid of the fake return fraud, it would be exceptionally easy but they choose not to for a reason.

We've had people on here who've had horrific situations they've battled through - maybe your client is in the same boat. Illness / disability, death, unemployment? And you aren't a priority. I'd scan a copy of everything so it's like I still have it. I'd return them all their documents with a letter explaining what is required to restart / complete the process. They might get to you eventually. They may simply not have the $1k and don't want to deal with any of it.

I had to update my scanner software for our check scanner to make client deposits. Windows couldn't delete the old software. Wouldn't install the new software. Kept saying to close Internet Explorer which I had closed. After about 1/2 hour of trying, decided I'd close down the sticky note and bam - software immediately completed deleting and installing. Sticky note must be linked to Internet Explorer in some way. weird this happened my very first day using it.

I'd imagine it is the "rehang the ack". They fix it IMMEDIATELY when I've called but it happens about 2x per year for me and I only do about 40-50 returns with Drake. I agree with their fans 100% that Drake has exceptional customer service but in my opinion so does OLTPro. I've never had a problem with getting in contact with either of them and getting an immediate solution.

Thanks - I can use that.

I haven't had any of the problems you've had. Not sure if they are some sort of OneDesk issue or what. I had an efile not go through immediately before and just edited the efile and resubmitted it and poof- went through. Be aware that in Drake, you'll occasionally get efiles that say they are pending but actually went through. I've had to call Drake a few times and they (it seems) manually change it to accepted in the system. After the meltdown of TRX - I resolved to not deal with resellers. TRX is again bombing me with emails, a letter in the mail and they've called. Can't believe anyone would still use their product or they are still using the same names.

I've used this in my cell phone - never on my actual computer. Since I daily produce a sticky note list of things-to-do and it's usually stuck to the bottom of my monitor, this is a far better option and cleaner. I with they had a STRIKE THROUGH feature so I could mark the item off - oh the joy of completing a task.

https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/26/6103 (E) in the case of the return of an estate— (i) the administrator, executor, or trustee of such estate, and (ii) any heir at law, next of kin, or beneficiary under the will, of the decedent, but only if the Secretary finds that such heir at law, next of kin, or beneficiary has a material interest which will be affected by information contained therein; and (F) in the case of the return of a trust— (i) the trustee or trustees, jointly or separately, and (ii) any beneficiary of such trust, but only if the Secretary finds that such beneficiary has a material interest which will be affected by information contained therein. IMO a beneficiary should be allowed to review the return if they request it. I'm not sure if the request has to come from the beneficiary or the administrator/ executor.