Carlsbad Bookkeeping & Tax, Inc.

I think I may qualify for a government pension. For years i have been preparing income tax returns ensuring that the correct tax is paid, Two years ago I started to ensure that taxpayer's health insurance coverage was correct or added an additional tax. This year, I had to ensure that California got its sales tax from taxpayer's on line purchases.

Who requires a Drivers License or State ID to e-file a tax return? The IRS just recommends it. We keep seeing different information on which states are requiring it. First it was Alabama and Illinois. Then New York was added to the list. Today, the list is Alabama and New York plus Ohio just got added. Where did Illinois go? Is okay to lie on a tax return? According to IRS representatives, it is okay to check No Drivers License in tax software even if the the taxpayer has a drivers license but the tax preparer does not have all the details.

Created a war on my computer by running QuickBooks and iTunes update at the same time. Both Intuit and Apple think their products are the most important and must have control regardless of what the user desires. Neither one of them can even spell their names correctly.

Accidentally spilled some fruit juice into my keyboard. Took it apart and gave the keys a thorough washing. I wonder if I washed out all the bad words? IRS. I guess not.

Upgraded security and emergency equipment for the office.

Today is Leap Day which gives me another day to prepare tax returns. Anther bonus is April 15th 2016 is the Washington DC holiday, Emancipation Day. Emancipation Day is usually observed on April 16th. But the 16th is a Saturday, so the holiday will be observed on the 15th. The IRS has moved the normal April 15th due date to Monday, April 18th 2016 for filing 2015 personal tax returns. I get a total 4 extra days. No excuses this year.

Tax season begins. Wasted an hour my first morning finding an alternative way of getting PDFs to someone that uses aim.com for e-mail. aim.com is part of AOL and AOL best knows what should be attached to your e-mail. I may require a computer literacy quiz for new clients.

To combat e-file refund fraud: California may request drivers license info before issuing a refund. FTB says including it with the e-filed return may expedite processing. Some states are requiring the info. Some W2s may have a security code in box 9 on copies B and C. It is only on W2s prepared by "certain Payroll Service Providers."

You can't leave town owing the IRS. H.R.22, a Highway bill, has attached to it a new law that allows the IRS to revoke a taxpayer's passport if $50,000 or more is owed. That includes penalties and interest which the IRS likes to pile on to their claim before any resolution. Many new tax laws seem to travel on highway bills rather than take their own road to enactment.

After updating QuickBooks 2014 with the latest release from Intuit, a pop up appeared warning me that QB 2014 is not compatible with Windows 10. I checked out the compatibility a few months ago and revisited the articles on the compatibility. Only issues noted were QB wants Internet Explorer and Adobe Acrobat but there were easy setting changes to fix this. Has Intuit "upgraded" my 2014 QB version to not work with Windows 10 so they can sell me a new version?

Renewed my IRS PTIN, Preparer Tax Identification Number, at a reduced price for 2016. The fee went down from $63 for 2015 to $50 for 2016. The IRS gets $33 for programs costs and $17 to a third-party vendor. It takes some digging to find that the third-party vendor is Accenture PLC. Accenture began life as part of Arthur Anderson, the now defunct Enron auditors. Accenture's corporate headquarters are in Ireland and per Wikipedia has about 80,000 employees in India and about 40,000 in The Philippines. Interesting that Amazon can sell and ship me many products for $17 or less but Accenture needs that much to record the payment of an annual fee.

In my previous post I linked an article by Intuit about the QuickBooks OnLine software. This is in their article "Instead of spending time trying to reconcile old bills, small business owners can focus on the things that made them passionate about being their own boss in the first place. First "bills" is not a good term to use; do they mean vendor invoices, invoices to your customers or dollar bills. What they are saying is don't worry about what we have shoved into your accounting, go do something else.

QuickBooks OnLine marches on to make bad accounting easier. In October QBOL held an event to showcase the latest enhancements to the accounting software. Enhancements in QBOL speak means a basic function has been moved to a more counter intuitive location or something with cool graphics has been added to clutter the interface. The changes are scheduled to be deployed in December 2015. http://blog.accountants.intuit.com//100-new-product-enhan/