User talk:Jerrykern

From TaxAlmanac

Teaching

Jerry

Sorry it's taken me a while to get back to you. This is my "busy" season -- teaching at SDSU plus doing some traveling to teach for the Interstate Tax Corporation out of Norwalk, CT. I'm in Dallas with them right now.

I got into this many years ago when I was still an auditor with the California Franchise Tax Board. UCSD started a tax certificate program through their extension service about 1976, and they asked the local FTB district manager to teach a California tax class as part of that program. He was not a very effective speaker, though, and so when he retired the next year they didn't ask him back, but asked the new district manager to recommend someone to teach the class. One of my colleagues and I agreed to do it together, and we taught that class from 1977 until sometime up into the mid-1980s. Our class lasted two or three years after the certificate program ended because there was so much demand for it! That was in the days when there were a ton of California-federal differences for individuals, and that's what the 11-week course was primarily about. The audience was local tax practitioners.

About 1980 or 1981 the chairman of the accounting department at SDSU asked me if I would be willing to teach an upper division undergraduate class in California tax. This was along in March or April, if I remember right, and I didn't hear another word about it until August when I got a notice of the time and place of my class -- so I had to scramble around to get materials together! In the mid-1980s SDSU started a Master of Science in Accounting program, and my course got moved into that, so it has been a graduate level course for the last 20+ years.

So as you can see, I got into this more or less by accident. That's not a lot of help to someone who wants to get started. I would look around my local area and see what tax programs are offered, at all levels -- community college, four-year college, and graduate level programs -- and go talk to the people who run those programs. They may be looking for someone with just your background. Universities often have some requirements, e.g. some form of advanced degree, but I don't have an advanced degree, SDSU requires one, and they don't require it of me! The reason is that I have an area of expertise that the average tax bear doesn't have. You're more likely to get on somewhere if you have an area of specialization -- international, state & local, Subchapter C, flowthrough entities, whatever.

KatieJ 21:20, 12 November 2008 (CST)

Extra help?

If you need some extra help during tax season, I'm also in New Jersey (just outside Philly). Let me know on my board, or my e-mail is anthony.mcwilliams@verizon.net. Thanks.

Deleted the acctg homework discussion

I *so* agree with your post about wanting to know who cheated in that way, so I know not to hire them in the future!. Wanted to let you know, though, I thought the advertising/spam was so blatant, especially given the subject matter, I deleted the entire discussion. So that blew away your post, too, and therefore for the record, here was your response:

"Yeah. Don't bother learning it yourself. Just send it out to someone else. BTW, if you get your homework done this way, please post your name here so that I know not to hire you."

FYI, if you see something like that that you're sure is spam and/or inappropriate, you can go to the edit tab and edit out the website links, etc. (I've been known to replace the entire post with just the word "spam" if that's truly all it is.) If somebody later notices your edits and disagrees that it was spam or inappropriate, they could always override your decision and revert the changes, but in the meantime, you're protecting others from what you saw as spam. That, and correcting minor typos/links, are valid exceptions to the rule about not editing other people's posts.

Trillium 11:13, 24 April 2009 (CDT)

Ongoing thanks

Hi, Jerry -

I've been meaning to say thanks for your ongoing vigilance against the acctg homework spam guy - finally remembered today. So thanks! I've been zapping the discussions when I finally "roll in" later in the day, but it really helps to have the offending posts gone as soon as they're noticed. And I liked your creative renaming the last time, too!

Sorry that the guy somehow keeps getting around our various blocks; I hope that gets resolved soon, but in the meantime we can at least make sure the spam doesn't get a wide audience.

Trillium 11:19, 7 August 2009 (CDT)

Do you think Rombeen is a pro?

I moved his question to the consumer forum from the tax forum because (1) his original profile was just his name, no qualifications, and (2) his question was so confused I was fairly sure he's not trained in either accounting or tax.

He then put some info into his profile about AECPA (can't find that in a websearch, and he specifically didn't say he was a CPA) and "wording on" audits - neither of which really satisfied me enough to move his Q back to the pro forum. He hasn't yet answered the questions I raised, so I haven't yet moved his Q back out of the consumer forum.

So - your opinion - do you think he's a pro of some kind - accounting and/or tax?

Thanks for your help in evaluating this.

Trillium 13:17, 9 September 2009 (CDT)

You moved it to articles, basically

By taking away the "Discussion:" flag at the start of the page name, you moved it out of the forums altogether, and it'll be sitting in the articles section available only to those who happen onto the applicable search terms.

Let me run a search for you on this; I'm sure we've had this come up before and the general consensus is to wait for the refund, then decide how to handle. Worst case, you can re-post it, but maybe we can get you an answer another way.

Trillium 09:41, 9 February 2010 (CST)

Editing to add: Not a lot of luck with searching, which you had probably already anticipated! But in case you were wondering about a penalty on the difference you'd be paying with the amended return, don't; see the posts from Mscash and Riley. Also, several discussions mention in asides that one reason to wait for the refund to arrive is so that your 1040X starting point (original return) agrees to what the IRS actually has on file, which needs to include any changes they make during processing).

I can move your question back to the tax forum, but then it'll stand out since it will be blank in the "creator name" column; which you might have preferred to avoid. If you still want to ask the question, my recommendation would be that you post it again as a new question, and I'll delete the old one (you can get to the old one by going to the "my contributions" link in the upper right corner of the screen, in case you want to copy it as a starting point for the new question). And given your strong contributions to the board, my personal opinion is that your questions should not be in the consumer forum (although it might be best if you reworded the question to be a bit more generic - don't lie about having a client (I hate that!) but you don't necessarily have to call it "my return" and "my refund" either). Yes, it's true, I've moved questions over to the consumer forum lately when a "CPA who doesn't do tax work" asked for input, but generally that's because it seemed like they wanted us to stand in for their corporate tax team with complex and multi-phase assistance, but your question isn't like that.

Trillium 10:32, 9 February 2010 (CST)

RE: networking

Jerry,

I just saw that you left me a note on my page. I thought I was "watching" that page, but apparently not! Sorry for the delay in responding. Anyway, I just wanted to let you know that I ended up passing on the controller position. At the end of the day, I couldn't see myself doing it long term, and I felt as though it wasn't fair to the company for me to take the job if I'm already looking at my next move. They were definitely looking for someone to make a career of it, and tax is really where my heart is. Thanks again for the note, I really appreciate it.

Tim

Re: Advanced Degrees, DBA

I wanted to ask if you would expand on the career path of a PhD program. My post was here [1].

accounting for leasehold improvement when purchase an existing business

One of my clients is purchasing an existing business. She is only purchasing the assets (the valuation was done on revenue and rate of return). The client is going to renew the lease for three years. There was $20,000 leasehold improvement done by the seller. Question, how to account for the LH improvement as part of purchase price, if so at the actual amount ($20,000) or book value shown by the seller.

In advance thanks for your help.

Congrats?

Noticed your user page update. Are congratulations in order for your new gig? If so - way to go; sounds interesting!