Roberts

Would it be wrong to just automatically fill one out every year for each client and submit it to the IRS for the current year? Does anyone do that? While the client is in the office, just have them sign the form and fax it in right away in case the IRS sends out a letter later. Would it be a wrong thing to do?

In my experience, that fee you are seeing is possibly also covering other expenses you aren't considering or don't know about. There may be other accounts like IRAs where they roll some of the fees into the taxable account. Trustee fees aren't cheap. They may have 90+% of their assets inside biotech or tech stocks that don't pay dividends at all to defer taxation costs. Maybe they are using some concierge services you don't know about? It's readily acceptable on this board that taxes are hard and people should be willing to pay for a professional. Oddly when it comes to managing their entire financial future and possibly that of their children and spouse those same people should go as cheap as possible because it's so easy. Would you tell someone to go to WebMD instead of their doctor to determine if they are healthy? It's dumb to get tax advice from someone who has never done or studied taxes but it's perfectly reasonable to get financial or estate planning advice from a journalism major.

Do you pay hard cash for everything? Your credit card / debit card number is being used to monitor and record your purchase history for future advertising by the bank itself and at many retailers. Ever sign up for the discount card at Walgreens or the grocery store - yep. Which operating system are you using on your computers? Hope it's not MS or Apple. Do you have a cell phone? Apple and Android (Google) are monitoring all of your activity and unless you take action could even be monitoring your location at all times. Microsoft and Apple always know when you are at your desk because they monitor when you log in and log out or time out of their software.

I've tried several going back to ACT! but as you've found they tend to be more work than reward. For at least 95% of my schedule I use GMAIL calendar thru Thunderbird. It's ultra easy to use their "repeat" feature to automatically trickle my contacts and work flow each month or week. Plus Gmail is free and ultra easy to sync with my phone for quick viewing. I don't have the work in process issue so much but when that's in play during tax season I use a notebook or I just put in a "to do" for tomorrow to accomplish the rest of the task with a note. On my calendar I have a few "to do" for each day of the year pretty much scheduled out forever based upon different re-occurrence schedules.

I only do about 100 tax returns - mostly 1041s and rental 1065s. It was all and all a good season. Monday morning I had some pickups but I had moved onto my regular job - investments and financial planning. As was mentioned - the comparison form showing income, deductions and tax for the last few years was a freakin godsend on several clients. They paid 20% less in tax overall but owed with the return. Really made my life far easier. The only pain is the horrifically late arriving K-1s.

All I have today are pickups. 2pm and two left. I've completely moved on from taxes and am back to working my normal job pretty much.

About 2 years ago a guy freaked out that his wife had about $100 in wash sales from Fidelity. Someone it was my fault and I needed to monitor her trading. I have absolutely nothing to do with her account and he couldn't really figure out how I would monitor it. Have a new client this year who admits he has day traded for years and has a massive loss that carries over every year. $125k I think and he literally has less than that in total net worth from what I can tell.

I only have a few clients who can't pay and I tell them to just make payments as quickly as they can. As long as you don't owe too much, the IRS isn't going to get all upset if you are making monthly payments on the balance owed.

Client calls Sunday and asks when I'll be in the office. M-F from 7-4pm each day at minimum. Sometimes later but I routinely have appointments outside the office in the evening. He'll be in between 12-1 on Monday. Easy stuff because he's almost completely retired now. He calls on Tuesday - just couldn't make it but he'll be in tomorrow and I repeat my hours. Calls Thursday at 4:45pm and wants to know why I'm not in my office. Calls today - he can't make it today because he works from noon-6pm. I mention I was in the office at 7am but he forgot about that. What hours do I have on Sunday? It's an ultra simple return, he's going to owe about $1k because he doesn't withhold taxes on his pension, he'll be completely shocked (again) that he owes and he'll have no clue how he's going to come up with the money on such short notice. Can he make payments?

I always quote a high cost in April because my guess is they are going to be a PIA to work with and they . Prices are always higher if you deliver in April. Grouchy clients are my new pet peeve. Client was waiting multiple K-1s and he brought me a gift certificate when he finally delivered yesterday because he felt bad. Next set of clients are still waiting and somehow the fact their accounting firm 3 states away are late became my fault and I needed to explain why they were late.

If you write For Deposit Only on the back of a check, most tellers will let it slide (not notice) with a roughly similar name or if they had a joint account. It's exceptionally common for people to find out years later that there was a small balance somewhere. They aren't going to open an estate for $300 so they just deposit the funds into a bank account that is "similar". Had a client with one like that and he kept telling me tellers refused to deposit the funds. Turns out he felt it was important to tell the entire story to each teller before attempting to deposit the check. I mentioned it might work if he just shut up and about an hour later he calls to tell me it sailed through.

Are you being paid to worry about this? The executor or personal representative from the estate needs to file the tax return if so inclined. Since you say tax was withheld, how do you know it would owe taxes?

That's weird because from what I've read on Reddit - everyone is making tons of money in Bitcoin. I don't think most of the exchanges ever give tax info on the trades to the IRS because they are actually foreign based.

here is one of the websites I saw. One said you must sell and liquidate in the year of death - that seems unreasonable but the value would increase from his death. https://www.fortenberrylaw.com/step-basis-death-corporation-shareholder/ Even though the S corporation’s assets do not receive a basis step-up upon a shareholder’s death, the deceased shareholder’s estate may be able to leverage the stepped-up basis of the deceased shareholder’s stock to reduce tax on the sale of the assets. To do so, the corporation must liquidate and distribute assets in the year of the deceased shareholder’s death. As discussed in Distributions from S Corporations, liquidating distribution is treated as a sale—a payment in exchange for the deceased shareholder’s stock.[1] At the corporate level, this deemed sale results in gain to the S corporation, which is passed through to the estate of the deceased shareholder.[2] When added to the basis step-up to fair market value by virtue of the deceased shareholder’s death under Code § 1014, the deemed sale increases the basis of the deceased shareholder’s stock in excess of the fair market value.[3] This gives the deceased shareholder’s estate an extra amount of basis. Because the deceased shareholder’s basis exceeds the fair market value of the stock (due to the enhanced basis increase), the estate is treated as having a capital loss. This capital loss offsets the estate’s gain from the deemed sale (a wash for capital gain purposes). The estate’s basis in property received as part of the liquidation equals the property’s fair market value.[4] This effectively gives the estate a full basis step-up in the S corporation’s underlying assets even though the deceased shareholder only owned stock (and not the underlying assets) at the time of death.

I didn't realize it but I saw most of my thought process on a law firm's website.

I have an 1120S which owns a parking lot with an original basis of let's say $100,000. The parking lot today is worth $600,000. It is the only asset of the 1120S. The sole owner of the 1120S has died so the new owner (a trust) has an increased cost basis of their stock as of the date of death BUT the 1120S still has a cost basis of $100,000 on that parking lot. correct? If they sell the parking lot and liquidate the company in the same year, is there a taxable capital gain realized? It seems the K-1 would show a capital gain but then they would show a capital loss for the same amount on the liquidation. Tell me how I'm nuts. edit: selling to a non-related party.

I'm out of the office by 5:30 at the very latest. Any work after that is done at home. The CPA upstairs comes to work at 10am all year and goes home around 9pm three nights per week.

As a broker, we have cost basis info on all trades going back to 1932. We used to get tons of calls asking for really old cost basis information and with mergers and stock splits it would become a nightmare. For ATT I came up with a spreadsheet to plug in the original cost and it spit it out. Around 2000 a bunch of firms got together and proclaimed everything has a cost basis of $2 per share because it was essentially impossible to figure it out and the major firms were purging their systems of the data so that they didn't have to look it up.

I work up a return - client failed to tell me she sold one of her rentals. grrrrr Then when it is time to pick up the return hands me a stack of MLP K-1s she had never had before. Then wonders can she sign the return while she's in the office? Will it be done today?

Having the correct DoD on her 2017 return is fine. Yes you need a personal return for 2018 for all income up to the DoD. Trust income before the date of death goes on that personal return unless they filed a separate trust return every year which is rare. Income after death in the trust, you need to report it on the irrevocable trust return. Income earned that isn't in the trust but is earned after death needs to go on an estate return. I've never seen it legally handled that the trust can just declare all assets go into the trust upon death. You need to title it that way BEFORE death. Things like insurance or an IRA where it is distributed via a beneficiary form can do that but generally not bank accounts and so forth. They could have used "transfer on death" but why?

I've never attached a 1099. Have a client with 4 trust accounts - the smallest of the tax forms is 180 pages. It was over 1,000 pages of trading activity and dividends this year.

I do not generate the book and I don't ask for the book. If it's more than a single person entity - I tell them to visit an attorney. If it's just a single person entity I instruct them to visit a website. As long as a legal situation isn't in place already - anyone can technically write up a legal document. The problem is you can't charge for it a lot of times. For example in a divorce I can write up a QDRO, charge for it but an attorney is required to sign off on it because a legal case is in place. I can write up a trust agreement or will for anyone - it's a state issue whether I can charge for it.

Sorry, thought this title had something to do with my forehead. Is 1310 really the applicable form since no refund is being requested? The Personal Representative / executor / their attorney can sign a final tax return and the courts don't have to appoint one. The attorney should want to cover his rear that no tax liability is due before any final disbursements are made. As long as no refund is requested, I've never had the IRS question it. I'd save all your work and make notes. A tax return really should be filed IMO.

A capital improvement is any addition or alteration to real property that meets all three of the following conditions: It substantially adds to the value of the real property, or appreciably prolongs the useful life of the real property. It becomes part of the real property or is permanently affixed to the real property so that removal would cause material damage to the property or article itself. It is intended to become a permanent installation. JMO but a pond is a capital improvement. If you remove a pond it's a capital improvement. If you install and remove a pond because it is faulty - it is a capital improvement. If you install and remove based upon personal preference I have a hard time thinking it's a capital improvement.

I've had multiple problems this year that I've never had before. It's crashed multiple times and that never happened before that I remember. When I rolled over last years data to this year - some clients didn't roll forward. On clients, some data rolled forward and others didn't. For example on some people, their W2 info from last year didn't roll forward but on other people it did. I've had printing issues I never had before. Every time I've started the software there is a goofy little error. Even when I did a logmein to fix another problem - there was the error and the OLTPRO person just clicked off the error and moves on from it - completely ignoring it so it's obviously an issue.