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Gabriel Grub posted:I've found that small business owners tend to get way too detailed/philosophical about their expenses and end up using and creating tons of unnecessary expense accounts. We have more than a few clients that we just let do their own thing when it comes to categorization because their needs are different. Like, some clients will routinely expense everything and we'll capitalize everything over a threshold like $500 or $1,000, whereas other clients will capitalize a $200 piece of equipment that we'd normally expense but don't adjust because my boss trusts them. We also have some clients whose expenses we analyze like a hawk because they'll try to claim sales tax credits on insurance (Federal sales taxes paid are claimable, but insurance in Ontario only has a provincial sales tax which is not claimable and must be expensed) and we need to reverse them every year. The most important thing with us is tax compliance and year-to-year consistency, unless there are additional users of financial statements like banks or other lenders.
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Feb 24, 2023 16:20
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Gabriel Grub posted:Also expensing things that are not expenses. Look buddy that Netflix subscription is related to business because I paid for it with my business card. Duh.
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Feb 24, 2023 22:31
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It's MY business buddy it's all MY money anyway
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Feb 25, 2023 00:02
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mojo1701a posted:We also have some clients whose expenses we analyze like a hawk because they'll try to claim sales tax credits on insurance (Federal sales taxes paid are claimable, but insurance in Ontario only has a provincial sales tax which is not claimable and must be expensed) and we need to reverse them every year. Too be fair I work in life insurance and the level of understanding and consistency over how sales tax works on insurance may as well be zero on the actual insurance plan side lol
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Feb 25, 2023 00:40
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italian quid posted:Too be fair I work in life insurance and the level of understanding and consistency over how sales tax works on insurance may as well be zero on the actual insurance plan side lol It’s inconsistent here because some insurance has 8% PST but others have none. It gets even weirder when you try to figure out what premiums are deductible and what proceeds are taxable (basically either both are deductible/taxable or neither are). At the end of the day I just quickly look through their bookkeeping and adjust it like I do if they claim all of their HST credits for meals & entertainment instead of half.
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Feb 25, 2023 01:26
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ya I know nothing about the client side of it but I just know the sales tax on insurance was a nightmare in the actual insurance company. they'd get tax credits held in a reserve or deposit account on certain insurance plans and I don't think there ever was a consistent implementation of how the credits were calculated or dished out. Thankfully I don't have to deal with any of that now, I hate tax accounting with a burning passion so the less I have to do with it the better lol
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Feb 25, 2023 02:02
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Gabriel Grub posted:I've found that small business owners tend to get way too detailed/philosophical about their expenses and end up using and creating tons of unnecessary expense accounts. Look if I don’t have cocaine I can’t work enough hours, it is a business expense.
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Feb 25, 2023 04:21
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So I'm a lawyer who does a lot of estate administration. I frequently have to go through the accounting firm we work with (no one in-house yet) to pull past tax returns of decedents to assess the need to file 1040s through year of death and review 1099s and the like to locate financial assets in situations where the heirs have limited information on the assets of the deceased. It would sure make my life easier to be able to quickly do this myself. I've noticed the accountants can pull past returns or transcripts in a matter of hours or days, but paper submissions for the same we have submitted have never been processed after many, many months. What tool are the accountants using to pull these so fast? Is it a taxpro account? If so, what do you need to be eligible for that/how much does it cost? The taxpro account info page suggests the taxpayer must have online access or something, but our accountants regularly pull transcripts for people who were old and technologically illiterate and are now dead so there's certainly no one taking any action on the taxpayer's end. I have a CAF number assigned fwiw.
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Mar 4, 2023 19:32
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If you have a CAF number, you can fax the POA form to the IRS instead of mailing it. I haven't had to pull transcripts for anybody but from what I've heard it gets processed much faster. I believe there's also an online portal to submit POA authorization. There's two versions, one where a tax pro requests POA from the client who authorizes it on their IRS account, and one where the pro just submits a completed/signed POA form.
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Mar 5, 2023 01:16
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Ah great, thank you that helps so much
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Mar 5, 2023 01:44
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Mandalay posted:I took enough accounting to qualify to sit for the CPA exam but ended up running a small business instead. And doing the books along the way. My experience is that nobody really cares as long as you get these things vaguely correct. I’m in the process of handing off my bookkeeping to a CPA firm and the level of rigor applied to categorization is….not that high. At least for things like cleaning supplies. as a tax preparer that does books for many scorps, the level of detail i apply (if the client hasn't asked for more or specific things) is exactly the level of detail that I'll need to complete the tax return ill be preparing from these books, and nothing more. if the client doesnt care how the books are arranged, you best believe the chart of accounts will read exactly like the 1120S Hellblazer187 posted:Look buddy that Netflix subscription is related to business because I paid for it with my business card. Duh. 
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Mar 5, 2023 23:13
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So far in my experiences of doing taxes from intake, to filing, to quality review is I need to improve my vetting skills to make sure I sit down and tell clients how their taxes are working.
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Mar 6, 2023 07:22
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If your experience is anything like mine, clients are mostly either incapable of understanding taxes or incurious about how taxes work. Some small number will actually want to know how it works and what they can do to get better outcomes, but far and away your best bet is coming off convincing enough that they're confident you understand how it works.
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Mar 6, 2023 19:58
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Winged Orpheus posted:If your experience is anything like mine, clients are mostly either incapable of understanding taxes or incurious about how taxes work. Some small number will actually want to know how it works and what they can do to get better outcomes, but far and away your best bet is coming off convincing enough that they're confident you understand how it works. Yup most clients don't even look at the return in my experience
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Mar 6, 2023 21:37
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Only thing that matters is that the cover letter has no typos
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Mar 6, 2023 22:22
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and that their phone number is right!!!!
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Mar 6, 2023 23:17
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black.lion posted:and that their phone number is right!!!! They'll double check their phone number but not their SSN.
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Mar 7, 2023 08:03
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My face when they tell me it's a simple return. And then it's a person's entire stock portfolio, mortgage and itemized deductions in every possible category recognized by the American Internal Revenue Service. And they forgot to give any personal information to contact them for anything missing. I really need to make sure to do better to make things easier for myself and associates.
Annointed fucked around with this message at 09:24 on Mar 7, 2023 |
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Mar 7, 2023 09:02
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Annointed posted:My face when they tell me it's a simple return. And then it's a person's entire stock portfolio, mortgage and itemized deductions in every possible category recognized by the American Internal Revenue Service. And they forgot to give any personal information to contact them for anything missing. I really need to make sure to do better to make things easier for myself and associates. The return is simple! They hand it to you. You do magic. Return done. Simple!
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Mar 7, 2023 16:05
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Annointed posted:My face when they tell me it's a simple return. And then it's a person's entire stock portfolio, mortgage and itemized deductions in every possible category recognized by the American Internal Revenue Service. And they forgot to give any personal information to contact them for anything missing. I really need to make sure to do better to make things easier for myself and associates. The hardest part when you're just starting out is figuring what in the paperwork clients hand in you actually need and what is garbage. Being able to identify whether any of those billion pages about their stocks etc are actually relevant is something that you will learn.
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Mar 7, 2023 22:15
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"No, there is a page on your brokerage web site called 'Tax Center.' Please send me that instead of the 9,000 pages of wash sales you did last year."
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Mar 8, 2023 02:51
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I decided to look into my old job and I found them advertising for my position. 65k to 95K. That reminds me when they said they couldn't give me a 10% raise this year. They put me at 60k. Now, I make 90k and work less hours. And knowing my boss, she absolutely chose that huge price range to trick people in the door and negotiate them as close to 60k as possible.
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Mar 8, 2023 05:13
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I know California now requires job listings to state a salary range, so employers are doing that "between one thousand and one million dollars" thing.
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Mar 8, 2023 05:39
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I wish I was a rapper so I could drop a sick diss track on the IRS large business and international division.
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Mar 8, 2023 05:52
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Every single person who says they have a simple return has been lying to my face about it. They don't think it's simple, they think it shouldn't cost much.
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Mar 9, 2023 14:28
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Winged Orpheus posted:Every single person who says they have a simple return has been lying to my face about it. They don't think it's simple, they think it shouldn't cost much. Mine WAS easy, though! <  >. . . although, oddly enough, it was the first time I've ever owed. Which was very surprising because I was not expecting that at all. I really need to look more into that. Did something change for 2022 that would have caused me (MFJ, only income for two dependents + self) to suddenly owe? My tax preparer said something about things changing last year or this year with the calculations to reduce the amount of returns but I still need to do my own research on that I think.
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Mar 9, 2023 21:45
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the tax benefits of having kiddos got sliced down for 2022 compared to 2021 ("expired"), thats my only guess given the generalized info
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Mar 10, 2023 12:30
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black.lion posted:the tax benefits of having kiddos got sliced down for 2022 compared to 2021 ("expired"), thats my only guess given the generalized info Hmm that could be it then. Yeah, sorry the info was general and sucked! I really don't know what yet either haha. I took this job in 2021 but the relo package made my compensation for 2021 into complete moon numbers, so I was expecting this year to be "normal" and was surprised. It's entirely possible I did something stupid and deviated from my lifetime strategy of setting my W4 to 0 across the board to me trying to get to as close to "don't owe, no return" and then completely forgot because that was two years ago and there has been too much stress, vodka, and not enough sleep between then and now  I'll dig into it this weekend and come back with a book report.
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Mar 10, 2023 16:28
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Hoping y’all’s companies either do or do not use SVB as their main bank, depending on your desire for continued employment at your current position
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Mar 11, 2023 04:12
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Zarin posted:Did something change for 2022 that would have caused me (MFJ, only income for two dependents + self) to suddenly owe? it depends
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Mar 11, 2023 21:46
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My coworkers and I are planning to get our CTech certs. Is there anything we should be aware of to ensure we pass the courses and my prospects in tax and accounting?
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Mar 15, 2023 22:32
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Is that substantially easier than getting an EA license? An EA is fairly easy and will take you farther. At least outside of CA, and I suspect (though cannot confirm) that it would take you farther within CA as well.
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Mar 17, 2023 21:39
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Stupid being chickens and just do the CPA
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Mar 18, 2023 00:21
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OKAY BUT CAN I AT LEAST FINISH MY CMA EXAMS FIRST
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Mar 18, 2023 00:37
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Annointed posted:OKAY BUT CAN I AT LEAST FINISH MY CMA EXAMS FIRST No one cares about a CMA, they never have.
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Mar 18, 2023 01:07
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yall should i get the CFA and do crime accounting? or anti crime accounting mb
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Mar 18, 2023 01:16
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Ungratek posted:Stupid being chickens and just do the CPA An EA is a good first step. I got my EA in 2012 and my CPA in 2015. Helps with employment in the meantime.
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Mar 18, 2023 01:34
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black.lion posted:yall should i get the CFA and do crime accounting? or anti crime accounting mb I did the exams. You're aware of the pass rates for the exams right?
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Mar 18, 2023 01:41
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Azrial posted:No one cares about a CMA, they never have. Wait really  but I got a scholarship and all
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Mar 18, 2023 08:40
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Annointed posted:Wait really That's not correct, most jobs heavily prefer the CPA, but more an more I'm seeing CMA listed and I've even seen jobs lately that prefer the CMA or list the CMA and not the CPA as preferred or required. It also depends on what stage of your career your at, the CMA is about running an accounting department and making policy decisions etc. the CPA is about transactions. If you have a choice of which to pursue the CPA is probably more valuable in almost every circumstance, but I think that's also slowly shifting.
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Mar 18, 2023 20:31
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