Roberts

When they issued you the 1099r, they didn't include in the taxable amount the interest you failed to pay yourself on the loan. That amount is generally forever included as a balance owed on the 401k. That amount must be paid "to yourself" before you are allowed to take out another loan. I think it's referred to as a loan receivable or something like that. While you are an active employee - the 401k rules don't allow distributions from retirement plans so they came up with this loan program. They are required to receive the interest owed before another loan is made to keep within the IRS rules for a 401(k).

The land doesn't receive the stepped up basis but the corp stock does for his widow. To sell the farm land and flow through the stepped up basis, the company needs to be shut down in the same calendar year (the company reports a gain via the K-1 and then the widow reports an essentially equal loss on liquidation of shares). The attorney's know this but are supposedly moving the farmland out of the corp before selling it which I believe is a problem.

Wouldn't it be irrevocable upon death?

I have a final year 1120S with essentially 1 major asset in it and only one owner who died. The estate attorney has transferred the asset (non-depreciable land) from the 1120S to an irrevocable trust. I'm guessing the cost basis is his date of death and this isn't a taxable distribution? The trust will sell it next year with this new cost basis. Edit: I'd report the distribution but have an equal cost basis I'm guessing?

It takes me about 3 minutes on a laptop. Reality is though without a working hard drive to boot it - may as well toss it in the recycle bin. I have a 17 year old Sony laptop I still play old 32 bit games on occasionally. Makes me wonder why I never bought another Sony laptop.

When you unfreeze, you can set it up to automatically re-freeze a few days later. We essentially pay cash for everything so it isn't a major deal. We needed a bridge loan to buy our current home until we sold our last home so I did the unfreeze.

I hate it when high income people show up at my office wanting to pay me to work. As a small business owner it's sort of a nightmare scenario to be paid.

Mine was exposed but my wife's wasn't. I claimed my allotment last Thursday. I highly recommend you put a freeze on your credit reports. It takes a little while and may be an inconvenience if you need to open new credit but it is a really good idea and free. KEEP THE PIN THEY GIVE YOU to unfreeze later. It's highly unlikely your ID will be stolen if your credit accounts are frozen. Capital One Credit Cards was hacked and 100 million people had their information leaked. This is not going away anytime soon. Your data is likely >90% to be available for purchase on the dark webs.

And with tracing rules, the source of the debt or the asset used as collateral doesn't really matter & it can be deducted on Schedule C also. As you say & I said - don't co-mingle a HELOC with personal funds if you want to do this. If you take a cash advance on your credit card - it can be claimed to be a business debt if done properly. You had better show it properly and clearly in the accounting.

Yes you can use a HELOC as a business loan and it happens ALL THE TIME. When you do the first tax return with the debt, put a declaration in the interest paid showing exactly what you've done and make sure it is a loan on the books of the company. Tell the client to not mix the HELOC with personal funds. Also make sure the client realizes (I'm sure they do) that the loan is their personal responsibility in the end regardless of how they document it. Corporate bankruptcy doesn't get rid of the loan. Many people (like me) use a cash out mortgage on their primary home to buy a rental property and then have the business pay off the mortgage. This has been talked about several times on this board over the years. The interest is then deducted on the Schedule E.

Spend 30+ minutes on the phone with the IRS on hold - 30 seconds into actually speaking to someone the call is disconnected. That has happened 2x today. grrrrrrrrrr

Looks good. How do you plan on advertising your web page to get traffic to it?

Mailed in a state power of attorney form - state says it takes up to 16 weeks to process their mail. Mention it's over 16 weeks - well it may have been lost. Mailed in an amended return because client said she received her IRA distribution and then later figured out she rolled it over. It's been 16 weeks and IRS has sent her two bills for past due and still hasn't processed the amended return.

It's rather shocking to me that sending in a return doesn't produce a letter from the IRS requesting those missed years.

My wife and I send texts routinely to each other that never get received or will show up a few days later. She had one from a co-worker show up 6 months later. Unrelated- I had a UPS envelope that I put in the box - there is a chance I put it in the fed-ex box because they were literally right next to each other. It showed up at its destination exactly 365 days from the date I put it in the box.

Oh well, woops.

A few years ago when I renewed by EFIN the IRS gave me a new one. Or at least that's what I thought at the time. Yesterday I receive a letter declaring they are inactivating my old one within their system for inactivity. Is that normal or do you think I set up a new EFIN that year instead of renewing?

So they can take the money when they correct the return but they can't take the money when the taxpayer amends the return? That sounds like an amazingly well thought out system essentially designed to generate interest for the government.

I've had demands from Colorado, Washington and Oregon to pay taxes in those states for offices and employees that don't exist. As an investment broker, we had a single client in Vermont and their regulator wanted us to pay $500 per year to be licensed in the state. I told him that the client moved there, we didn't solicit business in their state and every other state offers an exemption for a number of clients that do that to avoid paying the fee (we generated maybe $150 in commissions from her in a year). They said they would look into it. Oddly the exact same day we received a fax from the regulator wanting a campaign donation for the new position he was campaigning. We didn't make a donation and their determination was that we needed to be licensed.

When I took a representation course one of their piece of business management advice was to buy a cordless headset. That way you can move around your office building and do work while on hold with the IRS. I make the calls from my cell phone and a headphone jack. If worried about the "minutes", use an app to make VOIP calls only via your office wifi. Another of their suggestions - always charge clients while on hold. ALWAYS. You often times can do double the work.

We may be wrong but that's how I'd do it also. Any value in that 10 year old water heater is less than the cost of an appraisal.

When I first got into taxes back in 2005 I was on a board like this. Any time a question like this would come up, the same poster would declare something to the impact of "If the client refused to get a full appraisal on every item and didn't deliver it to me in a timely manner, I would immediately fire them." There was usually a part added on about legal liability he had surmised if his demands weren't met. Always wondered if he was trolling or had 2 clients left. Same guy always declared every small business tax return he did had to have a full audit of their accounting by him or he wouldn't sign the return. Somewhere he'd determined that by signing the return we were guaranteeing to the IRS the validity of everything the client provided us.

If you haven't done so already, now might be a good time to consider locking your credit reports. It takes maybe 30 minutes to lock them up but be sure to keep a copy of those PIN numbers they give you to unlock later. It's sort of a pain to unlock without them.

This is my major issue and I devote a lot of time to it. I have a ton of clients who routinely give me bad information on their estimated tax payments and then blame me when the IRS sends them a letter or refund check later. My current issue is with a client who owes $25k to the IRS with penalties and interest - she didn't tell me the $25k refund in 2017 that was applied to 2018 was paid to her my mistake. She had a meltdown in my office. Writing a $25k check for her is nothing but getting the bill was huge!

I didn't know you could do future years! I always do the checkbox but that's almost always worthless by the time something comes to my attention. I like the "every other year" idea. My software will generate the 2848 so it would be easy to essentially auto generate.