User talk:Uncle Sam
From TaxAlmanac
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accounting students
Uncle Sam, I saw the message you left for Tim. If you are concerned about this issue, why did you answer the other students' questions? Personally, I will not answer any true/false or multiple choice questions for a student. They should be able to do a little reading on their own and come up with the answers. If you provide the answers, they will keep coming back to ask more questions. If they do not get answers, then they will go elsewhere.Natalie 14:34, 27 November 2006 (CST)Natalie
Accounting Students
Uncle Sam:
I agree that accounting (or tax) students coming to TaxAlmanac just to have their questions answered is inappropriate. However, I see nothing wrong with students coming to TaxAlmanac to learn. I also hope that students will come to TaxAlmanac to help to build the content on the site by writing articles about tax topics, etc. That being said, feel free to join in on the Discussion:Code of Conduct that we are working on. Oops - you already have! Thank you!
- Tim Doyle, TaxAlmanac Moderator - Talk to me 11:30, 12 December 2006 (CST)
S Corporation Income
Uncle Sam:
I saw your response about S Corporation shareholder income and wanted to ask a question. If a corporation has 3 equal shareholders, but only one has invested any money ($20,000 loan). The S Corporation pays the shareholder interest income on the loan. How is this income recognized at the end of the year?
I need some advice please on a client issue
Hey there;
If you would like to hear the particulars, then please write back. I just need some advice as a new potential client is asking me to perform some functions that I am nervous about. I just am looking for another opinion and since we have spoken before, I thought perhaps I might ask you.
I don't want to put much here because this client actually found me on TA.
Thanks if you don't mind that is :)
SandySea
Forensic Accounting
Uncle Sam, I appreciate your response and as I am in the process of discovery, I will pass your comments to my lawyer to ensure we ask the correct questions and receive proper documentation. Thanks, Forensic
Non professionals
Uncle Sam:
I would like to discuss the issue of non-professionals with you. If you are willing to have me call you, please send your contact information to taxalmanac@intuit.com.
Thank you,
- Tim Doyle, TaxAlmanac Moderator - Talk to me 11:03, 10 October 2007 (CDT)
Telephone Number to IRS
On a discussion page you listed a phone number to the IRS Unit for late S Elections, however, that number appears to not be in service. Do you have a more current phone number? Thanks!LShearman 09:37, 4 January 2008 (CST)
Gleim CD's
Sorry, but Sandy's already got her paws on them :p. Good luck to your wife. She should have no problem with that last part.
TheTinCook 12:31, 16 January 2008 (CST)
PS: Love your fan mail!
No, that is not acceptable. Please forward the email to taxalmanac@intuit.com.
- Tim Doyle, TaxAlmanac Moderator - Talk to me 14:52, 19 January 2008 (CST)
Never mind - I see it on your talk page now. - Tim
did you ever get rid of that jerk who was leaving you
improper email? Kevinh5
Hey....please email me directly
I have now watched some banter....please be careful...I got burned bigggg time......
SandySea
P.S. You are my hero...or at least a mentor who knows his s**t...hehehehe
LOL, sometimes I return phone calls a little late
but that question I asked back in January. LOL. I know you've been busy. I'm almost sure it was the same jerk WPCPA/WPBCPA that others have had run-ins with. I see you've already been notified of his dirty dealings in Florida. Yeah, he can dish it out, but he can't take it. At least I can take it as well as I dish it out, which I seem to do regularly. Kevinh5
TA - for tax professionals?
I agree, which is why I chase DIYers away so much and request a profile. I have received much criticism for these actions from others who like being able to answer the easy questions, and my chasing the questions away leaves them feeling unfulfilled. I probably have done more than my share of chasing, and have unintentionally intimidated several qualified people from posting ANY comments (for the good or for the bad I don't know - I do know that there is ONE particular credentialed poster who regularly gives incorrect or at best irrelevent answers).
My understanding of a WIKI board is that it is a virtual community - and just like a physical community has to have rules and standards of conduct, a virtual one should also.
I do not have any pull with Tim, any more than any other user does. But I think that as long as there are those amongst us who WANT DIY'ers to post questions, he will allow them to. We just have to keep chasing away those who don't belong here, or as D&T put it 'keep the infidels out'. Kevinh5
Your post to 'tis the season
Uncle Sam – there are sites like factcheck.org, NYT’s campaign speech factchecker's tax quotes (has a nice concise summary), Washington Post’s fact checker blog, etc. You may have to wade through to find the tax posts, and decide for yourself which are truly dispassionate analyses, but there are plenty of sites that offer that kind of thing.
TaxAlmanac’s home page, on the other hand, tends to report what has happened, not speculate on what will happen (I can’t imagine Intuit being comfortable any other way).
You should also see the Election Tax Plans discussion that's currently going on over in the Chat Forum - what you asked for is also what the OP asked for there, more or less.
(I didn’t want to post this on Natalie’s discussion, as I believe she meant it to focus on how to handle political discussions – since some people want to be able to avoid them – and it seems to be heading off topic a tad (not such a surprise, I suppose, but I didn’t want to nudge it further off topic!).
An even better site
Seems to be exactly what you'd asked for: http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/publications/url.cfm?ID=411750 (that's the cover page; download the pdf for the entire "updated" executive summary). Note that the full 45-page report, from June, is here.
you're welcome, nice to have met you too
and I enjoyed talking with your wife. I hope your mother's event went well today. You missed a great ethics Jeopardy game. You'll have to ask some of the others about it next time you see them. The banquet just ended. Kevinh5
How nice of you to ask of me :)
Hey there!!
Natalie wrote me....nothing going on but have been very very busy from early morning to late in the afternoons :)
Thank you for thinking of me!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! It means so much to me
SandySea
do you think I stepped over the line on this one?
Discussion:Question about S-Corp Loss deduction treatment
Moderator
I kind of took it that Tim saw that we were self-policing the forum (removing copyrighted material, removing spam, chastising abusers, etc.) enough that he only needed to come in once in awhile to make sure everything was OK. If the community does that, instead of just letting this place fall to the DIY'ers and students, then it still is viable. If it falls to the DIY'ers, I'm out of here.
I tried to find the NAEA discussion forum that Frank Degan was telling me about, but all I found was the research 'ask a question' page. Do you know where the NAEA forum is? Kevinh5
DIY Posters
Uncle Sam:
Thank you for your comments regarding the continued DIY posters. We've had notices in place for quite a while now which inform potential posters to the discussion forums that they need to be professionals, but it looks as though this has not deterred them. I have just made a change to the account registration process which informs anyone attempting to create a new account that TaxAlmanac is for professional tax preparers. Please let me know if you do or do not see any improvement. I agree, we need to keep this forum for professionals and direct the DIY preparers elsewhere.
- Tim Doyle, TaxAlmanac Moderator - Talk to me 13:17, 3 December 2008 (CST)
TA Changes
Tim is in the process of implementing a few changes for the better. You should notice some soon. Discussion:Looking good in pink Kevinh5
moving mis-catagorized discussions
involves editing the discussion post so that it says "Consumer Questions -- Add categories below this line --" instead of Tax or Accounting questions. Being careful not to lose the discussion if it is mis-typed. You can "show preview" before saving, just to make sure that it looks correct. Kevinh5
You're right -
the pink thingie belongs on top of the Accounting Forum also. I just put it there. We didn't have the ability to do that before. Thanks. Kevinh5
Consumers
We've all but blocked them out. We only get one or two consumer posts a day this year. Last year we were getting 10 to 15 during tax season! Trillium and I put up SEVERAL roadblocks, and have been moving posts to the consumer forum for those who don't seem to have a Tax Pro profile. It is working out great!!!! There is supposed to be a write up in Accounting Technology magazine in April about TA. Watch for it! Kevinh5
Problems with newbies
Uncle Sam - as you're probably aware, I share your disdain for people who claim to be tax professionals and yet are hardly qualified to be doing their own taxes, let alone apparently accepting cash from others for work they aren't really yet ready to do - maybe even couldn't do if there weren't people here willing to take them by the hand.
I actually feel more strongly about the people who are credentialed (CPAs, "licensed" pros one place or another, like CTEC or whatever Oregon's license is called, and EAs) yet they won't bother to do any of their own research and just assume other TaxAlmanac members are here as a free research service, especially when they can't even grasp the answers they get - man that burns. Well, and I obviously have a problem with people who don't even know enough to proerly phrase a tax question, let alone do any research on their own...
Okay, enough about me. What I wanted to say was that my overall impression of Michael (Brock & Associates) is that he's new, doing taxes as a side job for now, and trying to learn and grow. I don't know that I'd lump him in with the factory storefronts the way you did today (not to mention that may be seen as a little too close to a personal attack to really let stand, especially since you kind of took him on last week after he posted about some new way for unenrolled preparers to get info.)
I'm not asking you to edit out comments that you truly believe are warranted - although do keep in mind the whole "no personal attacks" thing from the code of conduct - but if you could see your way to softening any of what you said that not be a bad idea.
Thanks,
Trillium 16:17, 14 April 2009 (CDT)
Ha - it just occurred to me
You may actually have meant Block instead of Brock, and it was a simple typo! In which case, please accept my apologies for bending your ear like I did above, and would you mind going in to edit the comment to change the "R" to an "L"?
Thx, Trillium 16:41, 14 April 2009 (CDT)
Okay, so I guess it wasn't a typo, then, eh?!
I think we're coming from more or less the same place, I just don't have the same confidence as you do that a credential requirement or standardized/national test will help sort the wheat from the chaff in our profession.
This has actually been the negative part of splitting the consumer forums, for me: we make the effort to take the DIYs out of the picture, in part by getting better at enforcing profiles, and in doing so it becomes obvious that some of the worst questions (dangerously uninformed positions, no ability to research and/or understand an analysis, etc.) were actually not DIYs as we thought but were so-called tax pros, or at least people making money off others by filling out tax forms for them. Some have CPA and EA designations, or CTEC, and that's what makes me question the value of a minimum credential, but you're right, many more of them are people that just start doing it without only the most basic knowledge and little or no desire and/or ability to improve and stay up to date.
So whether it's testing, minimum credentials, or something else, I do wish we could come up with something better than "water's fine, jump on in" (open to anybody who can print business cards and get forms or software - and advice - online).
Anyway, as I already told Michael, I am backing out from between the two of you. I wasn't sure I wanted to get into the middle of it in the first place; it's outside the bounds of my responsibilities here (such as they are), and I don't have the standing to ask for favors. I was hoping to chill things out and keep some measure of peace on the forums, but there's only so much energy I can put into that. So I'm shutting the heck up. I told him his next step would be to take the issue to Tim if he wants, but I hope he won't, and I'm not sure its the gotten to the point yet where Tim would necessarily want to get involved anyway.
Trillium 12:01, 15 April 2009 (CDT)
I'm not surprised that Sam hasn't provided any information about himself. Bill 13:35, 1 May 2009 (CDT) Bill Brown
NJ/NJ tax issue
Hi UncleSam,
Thanks for your reply on the other thread NY/NJ tax issue.
I have one quick question if you don't mind. The corp in question (08 incorporated, NJ) has filed all due returns to NY/NYC.
Now if they apply for business autherization late, what will be the penalty like? On NYS website, there is no specific penalty except paying all taxes and late penalties for taxes. So not sure if they will assess anything for late registration of foreign corp.
Thanks a lot for your help.
Simplify taxes 15:10, 8 May 2009 (CDT)
No complaints
Thanks - I thought you would approve - DIY questions are down to a few a week. During tax season they were down to a few a day. The prior year we had several per hour during tax season, and it seemed like several a day after tax season.
When does your son graduate from HS? this next year?
NYSEA
Yes, I saw the education listing, but I already am booked with lots of CPE this Fall, so I chose to skip it. I got an opportunity a few weeks ago to hear Mark Dombrowski do a representation class (we were both speaking at the Ohio State Society of EAs fall conference). He is quite good.
I know that you are a dual CPA/EA, and I just read the info in the EA Alert about the fight against the new NY registration rules. While NC doesn't have that (yet), when I applied for a business priviledge license, my county said that if I was a licensed NC CPA I wouldn't have to pay a fee, but if I as an EA I would. I didn't fight it, but am reminded that I hold a grudge against the county every time I have to pay to renew.
Do you have a source for this information? Thanks!
I thought though, there IS a distinction between a CREDIT CARD (VISA, Mastercard, American Express) vs. CHARGE CARD, which is issued by a specific vendor (Home Depot, Kohl's)
A credit card charge can be deducted in year charged, but a charge card must be deducted in year paid.
