User talk:Illini

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- Tim Doyle, TaxAlmanac Moderator - Talk to me 17:19, 11 January 2007 (CST)

Bonanza36

Howdy -

My name is Steve, screen name Bonanza36. Right now I am not a pilot and don't own a Bonanza 36. I do own a few aviation related websites and when I recently opened my practice in Louisville after being laid-off I picked an office on the second floor of Bowman Field (Louisville's GA airport). I have dreams of finishing work on my private pilot's license and then (eventually) getting an F33 and eventually stepping up to a B36 or A36 (G36 would be really nice). Those are the dreams that keep me slogging through returns!

Where are you based out of? Do you have a plane? If so, what type?

If you ever fly into Louisville, let me know.

Take care,

Steve

Your "529 Guru" info

Hi, Randy -

I edited one of your posts today, on the 529 Distribution to Non-Beneficiary discussion, because you'd posted an entire article from the savingforcollege.com website, which is likely copyrighted content. To comply with TaxAlmanac's copyright policies (i.e., don't post anything that's possibly under copyright of another), I thought it was probably best to provide a direct link to the article, along with the gist of the topic, rather than the copied content.

Just wanted to let you know what I did and why. Of course, you can go back and edit the post again to provide a better summary of the article if you'd like.

Thanks,

Trillium 20:22, 13 May 2009 (CDT)

NRA to NRA query

Hi, Jokes aside, any thoughts on my question/s  ? Thank you

Thanks for the information, it helped a great deal.

Thanks for the inputStunts65 15:21, 6 July 2009 (CDT)

Simple Ira

Randy: Call me to discuss: 303-433-3247, Mountain Time. MartyMarty1970 13:11, 11 January 2010 (CST)

kids claiming themselves

Had a client come in yesterday like yours, but did not want to add to your post from the other day. They have two sons...22 & 20. Both are FT students and parents are paying for school. Elder son had $9000 of earned income. Younger son $0. Elder son was ticked off at mom & dad and filed his return with TurboTax....as HOH with younger son as qualifying child. Took all of the tuition credits, EIC, etc.... Checked every box he needed to get the answer he wanted. Got huge refund...and has now blown half of it. It is quite interesting to see the family dynamics. Dad tells the kid to amend or the no more deposits to the checking account or school for food plan. Dad also says they (the parents are filing as they should...with the kids & tuitions credits), if the son gets busted...fine, her deserves it. Mom on the other hand...no let's no Jr in trouble. I told them that if they are not going to file in accordance with code/regs, I am not preparing. I am waiting to see who wears the pants! Davidcpa 21:03, 4 March 2010 (CST)

Fees => PM/BG forum

Hi, Randy - just a reminder, since you've now got two discussions about fees active in the tax forum: we're trying to keep all of the practice management-type questions (including questions about fees) over in the Practice Management/Business Growth forum, so that the tax forum is limited to actual issues regarding taxation. This is based on requests from two vocal groups - one that wanted a separate place to discuss PM/BG topics, and another that only wants to see true tax questions. We can keep both happy by dividing the questions between two forums!

Some of the long-timers seem to avoid posting questions to the PM/BG forum, perhaps thinking nobody goes there, but these days it's nearly as active as the tax forum. There are fewer discussions, but generally more posts per discussion. So discussions stay active longer, and get a lot of interest. You also avoid the cranky posts from people in the tax forum asking "why is this in the tax forum?" etc.

Since it's the weekend, and traffic is pretty light throughout the site right now, I don't think it hurts anything to have your fees discussions in the tax forum for now. Particularly your second one, which touches on Circular 230 issues and therefore is in sort of a gray area anyway. If the site starts to get busy, or somebody pushes it, I'll shift the discussions over to PM/BG - you'll still be able to get to them via your "my contributions" link at the top right corner of the screen whether they've been moved or not.

(On the "4 steps to starting a new tax question" page, you can see that after the choices for "basic tax Q" or "advanced tax Q" etc, there's one for questions "about CPE, licensing, software, fees, E-filing; any practice management/business growth topic" - you can either click there to get future fees discussions started in the PM/BG forum, or you can go directly to the PM/BG forum and start a new topic there. The latter is far shorter (no screens for non-pros, etc.), but you may be more used to the process for starting tax questions, so you can use whichever process you prefer.)

Trillium 14:48, 20 March 2010 (CDT)

Bling

Hey, Randy - here's a page that has a list of the available designations, and the "codes" to put them on your user page: Communities & Designations. The key is to use the squiggly brackets, and to have some spaces between the "code" and the rest of your profile/user page info.

The contributor "awards" are a different story, though. Here's a cut-and-paste from the FAQ on that:

There are two kinds of forum awards.

• Award for contribution quality: this award is given to a user by another user or by the moderator, in recognition of their pattern of high-quality contributions. The award is in the form of a bronze star - a barnstar - that will be placed on a user's user page. To see how to award the forum quality star to another user, check out the Recognition Team.

• Post count (2007): When the site first began, the moderator, Tim Doyle, tracked post count and recognized those with high post counts at a few early stages of the site's development. If you see a platinum, gold, silver, or bronze user box on a user's user page, then that means that they were active on the site at that level back in February of 2007, which is the last time any kind of recognition for quantity of contributions was made. Many of those users are still active today, and while quantity doesn't necessarily reflect quality, some of those long-timers are also known as high-quality contributors (look for the bronze star on their user pages).

Let me know if you need more info. If you want other designations to be made available, leave a note on Tim's talk page; he just set some up for somebody else so I'm sure he'll be able to do some more.

Trillium 14:13, 16 April 2010 (CDT)

Q on your recent post on the health care credit

Hi, Randy - Can you please confirm that the portion of your post following "in reference to" isn't from a copyighted source? The format looks suspciously familiar (from a source that not only copyrights, but pursues people who don't follow the copyright). TaxAlmanac's copyright policies don't allow anything to be re-posted here if it's been copyrighted elsewhere, although you are free to link to it.

If it is under copyright, could you please replace the quoted content with the link or a reference to the source of the info? If it isn't, then maybe just also provide the source of the info (either way, just click "edit this tab" and make the relevant changes to your post).

Also, although Kathi's responded to your question already, you can get some additional input here: Notice 2010-44, specifically the second paragraph of Section II, B and also Discussion:Small Business Health Care Tax Credit Wife Employee.

Thx,

Trillium 18:27, 18 May 2010 (CDT)

Thx for info

On the health care bill quote: I've done some editing of the first post on your discussion (here), but of course feel free to rearrange/rewrite as you like, it is after all, your post, and if you want to remove the entire line I added (in italics, signed ~T), go right ahead.

Thanks,

Trillium 12:11, 20 May 2010 (CDT)

Long time resident/married buyer credit

I don't have a scanner and don't know how to copy & paste it into Tax Alamanac or e-mail. Kiplinger is only $39 or so. The private ruling referred to is dated 12/29/09 to Senator Grassley from a Michael Montermurro, Chief, Branch 4 Office of Associate Chief Counsel Income Taxes Dept of the Treasury and refers to Sec 36 of the Code, which says "owned and occupied". I have a few clients in this situation, who are understandably in denial that they can't get the credit. I've spent a lot of time trying to find the black & white answer to be grey, but it isn't. Complicating matters is the way it's often referred to as long-term residents in various IRS Q&A's. I should note though in the Technical Explanation by the Staff of the Joint Committee on Taxation on the WHBA Act of 2009 (JCX-44-09 at www.jct.gov. page 3 merely says "(and, if married, the individual's spouse) who has maintained the same principal residence for five years." Don't know if getting to the intent of Congress changes things, if in fact they meant both, meaning both spouses "owned and occupied", which the Code section came out to mean. This compares to Code Sec 121 on the exclusion of gain from sale which specifically says in Sec 121(b)(2)(i) if either spouse meets the ownership requirements. However Sec 36 doesn't say this

Subject line vs. content

Randy, I'm doing tons of research on this and came across your discussion, 1099-A Debt Greater than FMV on Rental Property, that you posted on 04/01/10. Although this subject line shows OS debt > FMV your first line shows FMV > OS debt. I think Dave responded to the content and not the subject line. However, your later post seems to indicate that you're discussing OS debt > FMV. This is all SO confusing. Would you mind confirming for me what this particular situation was? Thanks. LJACPA 13:07, 20 July 2010 (CDT)

hey,

you have more initials after your name than I do!!!!?!?!?! Kevinh5

Views

See explanation here: Discussion:Views - What happened?. I understand Tim's ready to switch the counters back on in the next maintenance, but the timing of that has not yet been scheduled. Trillium 20:12, 5 February 2011 (UTC)

Estate Tax Issue

Hi Illini--the $5 million new exemption was passed and signed by Obama in late 2010. Included in this tax bill to increase the exemption to $5 million was the option to also treat taxpayers dying in 2010 the ability to also elect the new $5 million. No rev ruling or rev proc but part of the The Tax Relief, Unemployment Insurance Reauthorization, and Job Creation Act of 2010. The bad part of this late bill was the fact that people who took their update class in Nov or early Dec were not made aware of this quirk in the estate law. Doug 17:15, 1 March 2011 (UTC)Doug MDoug 17:15, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

Watchlist/bookmarks

The functionality of this changed a bit recently. To see all of your bookmarks, you need to click the "View and edit watchlist" link near the top of the page when you go into "my watchlist." It's the center of three links in a line up there.

By hot topics, do you mean all of the categories that are available? That is here: Categories; click 500 views to see all. Kevin and I don't have the functionality to add that to the left-side menu, but we did add a link to it at the top of each forum - in the small print under where you start a new question, in the center of the second row: "Categorized Discussions."

If that's not what you were after, please let me know.

Trillium 18:23, 7 March 2011 (UTC)

Purple and blue

Mine appear to be purple if I've looked at them recently, and blue if I haven't. Neither one is very bold. I don't really remember if this is another change in functionality/form or if it's always been that way, sorry!

Trillium 17:50, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

hey - today is the day for purple and green and gold = Happy Mardi Gras! Kevinh5

Vacation in Maine at the end of April?

Hey Randy, I can trade my timeshare (don't want to rent it, LOL) for a week in Maine. Would I want to vacation there after tax season, or is it still bad weather at the end of April? Thanks Kevinh5 15:01, 21 March 2011 (UTC)

Old and not-so-helpful discussions

As you're looking through the search results, if you come across discussions that just refer to other discussion, or are more banter than info, etc., please let Kevin or me know (rather than bumping them by adding a post to the end, which just puts another useless discussion in page one of the forum index, and also might end up with your current question being discussed in two places, which gets confusing).

We have a new section of the site, called Discussion Archives. You can read about it here: FAQ 21. We can move the not-great discussions over to the archives, and then they won't litter your search results - making the yellow box even more valuable to you and others.

Just put a note on one of our talk pages with discussion titles, a copy of the URL, OP name/date, or some clue as to which discussion it is, and we'll get it moved over to archives over the next couple of days. We hope to get a lot of old ones moved out en masse, but not sure when that'll happen - so in the meantime, we do it as the not-so-useful discussions happen to come to our attention (like by being notified by others).

That's one way you can help improve the site - so thanks in advance!

Trillium 15:22, 21 March 2011 (UTC)

Frommer's says there are two seasons in Maine:

Winter and August.

What's it like the last week in April? Kevinh5

Looking for a quiet vacation spot,

but I'd hate to have to wade through mud. Maybe I'll save Maine for later in the year. Thanks Usually I have my after-tax-season vacation planned by the end of February. I'm way behind now. Kevinh5

Guya or I would be happy to help. My hourly rate is £300/hr, which works out to approx $500/hr. I expect Guya's rate is about the same. Read up on our previous postings to see which of us you'd prefer to use - or wait for some more (cheaper) replies.

Practice Mgt topics

Hey, Randy - how ya doing? A bunch of your discussions over the past couple of days have been practice management issues rather than tax questions, posted in the technical tax questions forum. I'm going to move them all over to the practice management/business growth forum later on tonight, just thought I'd give you a heads up.

As we come to the final days here, there are going to be those who are extra annoyed to have non-technical tax stuff in the tax forum, but after that I imagine we'll get more relaxed about it again, and leave things where they're started until they roll to the second page of the index, and then move them to whereever similar topics are usually discussed.

I'm sure you're familiar with the various discussion forums on the site, but in case not, that link is a quick overview. It's actually a couple of pages quicker to start new practice mgt/bus growth discussions directly on that forum - plus, they're more likely to stay active for an extra day or two (the people who like to read the discussions on that forum tend to stick with any given topic longer, it seems).

Trillium 22:45, 15 April 2011 (UTC)

There's no direct reply function

I can create a link to make it easier, which I do sometimes for the newbies or if I *really* want an answer from somebody. I'll add it at the end here so you can see what it's like and try it out if you want to. But it doesn't happen automatically, so I don't bother with it most of the time.

Generally, to respond to somebody, you would need to click the person's name (if it's a link) at the end of the note, then click the "discussion" tab because the link just goes to their user page, then click "leave a new message." Too many steps, right? I agree! It's one step quicker if you are reading somebody's post on the discussion forum, and want to leave them a message: click "talk" next to their user name, and then click the "leave a new message" link. Don't know if that would ever help you, though.

Thanks for the "OK" though - 'preciate it.

Trillium 23:23, 15 April 2011 (UTC) - reply to me

Easier than that

To do one for yourself, you would go to your own talk page, right-click on "Leave a message for Illini by clicking here" and then copy the URL for the page that comes up. Then type a single open bracket, paste the URL is, add one space, and type a label for the link (e.g., your label might be "Reply to Illini"), add an end bracket, and what you have will end up looking like this before you click "save page":

[http://www.taxalmanac.org/index.php?title=User_talk:Illini&action=edit&section=new Reply to Illini]

To the other person, it'll look like this: Reply to Illini

It basically just creates a link directly to the reply box. Now you can do it, too!

Trillium 14:32, 16 April 2011 (UTC)

Friend me

on Facebook please. Thanks, Kevin. Kevinh5

433 & "Financial Statement"

It's funny you should ask that - I work on and off with someone who attended a CPE course a while back and heard the instructor say that preparing the 433-A or 433-B is, literally, the preparation of a financial statement. That would imply that it carries all of the requirements and liability associated with that aspect of your practice. I wish I'd been the one attending the class that day, as I'd have followed up to find out more about how you make that decision. Sorry I don't have anything other than that for you, on this. Hope it helps, anyway.

Trillium 22:57, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

COD

Randy, one way to tackle from a reporting standpoint if you e-file: Make one input for Line 21 and show the COD income as a positive entry. Then, make a separate input on Line 21, with the same amount, but as a negative, with a description like "Form 1099-C Issued in Error." I have confirmed with my software company (Lacerte), that 2 separate line item entries like this will BOTH show up in the e-file record. Therefore, the IRS will be able to tie to the positive entry, even though the Line 21 net is $0. As such, a matching notice should be avoided. You will want to find out if it works the same way with your software provider. Obviously, if you paper file such a return, you run the risk of the IRS seeing $0 and sending out a CP-2000.

Otherwise, show on Form 982 as non-taxable...but, even though I'm not a fan of tax return attachments, make an attachment indicating that the debt in question was discharged in 2004 and is non-taxable in 2012. By making the attachment, you can later state that you made this disclosure if anything ever comes of it.

Ckenefick 04:55, 21 February 2013 (UTC)ckenefick

End of the forum

You may have heard by now that the Tax Almanac ( www.taxalmanac.org ) web site forum is permanently closing its doors effective June 1. Perhaps you have seen the pink bombshell “Important Service Announcement” when logging in.

Long-time TA user ChrisV2 has volunteered to set up a new website where TA users may continue the discussion. The site is up and running now and has an active base of contributors.

We invite you to take a look www.taxprotalk.com and join your fellow TA refugees.

Frankly (TA member and new member of TaxProTalk)