Accountant Megathread - At Least We're Not Actuaries

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Epi Lepi: Oct 29, 2009; You can hear the voice
Telling you to Love
It's the voice of MK Ultra
And you're doing what it wants

This house has been around for a long time if it's fully depreciated. Are you sure that your predecessor captured all of the capital improvements done to the house? I'm guessing if it usually showed a profit then he didn't just treat all improvements as repairs.

If your client can provide solid proof of any of these improvements that were missed you can possibly add to the basis. Those improvements should have been reported and depreciated over time of course but depending on the scope and scale there could be something to work with.

What did the father spend the money on? You said he's sick, are we talking major medical? Did he invest it? He may cry and whine but selling his new stock to pay his taxes isn't the worst result. Maybe he'll be lucky and have some losers he can sell at a loss.

Before he freaked out, have you discussed payment arrangement options? Obviously this is gonna be more complicated than a normal 9465 if the balance is as high as you said, but I'm sure if you can get him to chill and get someone on the phone at the IRS(lol) after you file the return you can figure out a payment plan. It's work but it's doable. You may even be able to attempt an offer in compromise.

# ¿ Jan 21, 2020 17:15

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# ¿ Apr 28, 2024 10:04

Epi Lepi: Oct 29, 2009; You can hear the voice
Telling you to Love
It's the voice of MK Ultra
And you're doing what it wants

Covok posted:

Your post made me realize how funny it is we all use the same thread. I work in a small regional office where I manage two workers. I do individual tax for 700 people myself and 1900 in the total office. I have roughly 100 business clients. Our office does their bookkeeping, sales tax, payroll tax, etc. I oversee this.

How about everyone else?

I'm similar to you (I think we're both on Long Island too), one of three accountants in a firm servicing about 500 businesses and 1500 individual clients. We have about 7 support staff, and do bookkeeping, sales tax and payroll tax for most of our business clients. Some handle those things themselves.

# ¿ Mar 20, 2020 17:30

Epi Lepi: Oct 29, 2009; You can hear the voice
Telling you to Love
It's the voice of MK Ultra
And you're doing what it wants

Covok posted:

New York put a lockdown on all businesses considered nonessential. We told all our clients we were closed and to drop off files. Changed our messgae service. Forwarded our calls. Changed the autolocks. And did a million things.

At the 11th hour, our parent company says we are essential.

My boss says gently caress it and says we can come in if we want and work from home if we want and says she is gonna try working from home. And says the office is technically closed.

Her mom, who is 96 with dementia, caught COVID-19 today so is bracing for the inevitable news now. It's been rough.

Yeah if you check the executive orders from earlier in the week accounting counts as an essential financial service. Still, with the delay in the deadline and everyone else recommended to stay home there shouldn't be much pressure on us for a while. Better to keep processing so we don't have to crunch later if you can.

I'm figuring out a process for myself to work from home, haven't had to do it much in the past.

# ¿ Mar 21, 2020 22:12

Epi Lepi: Oct 29, 2009; You can hear the voice
Telling you to Love
It's the voice of MK Ultra
And you're doing what it wants

Covok posted:

This stimulus package is such poo poo.

Yesterday, they limited the $10,000 grant to $1,000 per employee to a max of $10,000. I have a singe person business who is pissed at me now because their grant went from $10,000 to $1,000 and that doesn't even cover the rent on their yoga studio. The Paycheck Protection Loan is even worse, in a way. Banks are supposed to give us a 1% agent fee for preparing the return. The law has this in the text so that we won't charge for applications. Guess what? Every bank I've seen has their own way around.
TD doesn't let you complete the application if you say you're using an agent.
M&T says on their website that your accountant can't complete the form for you.
PNC has it in their application that they WILL NOT pay agency fees if you used an agent.

And so on and so forth.

Anyone know a way around this? The banks are getting 5% on these loans. They're supposed to give us 1% because we aren't charging the clients.

Well gently caress me, I never saw about the $1,000 per employee bit. Where did you hear that? I wasn't aware they had even issued any of the grants yet.

# ¿ Apr 8, 2020 18:49

Epi Lepi: Oct 29, 2009; You can hear the voice
Telling you to Love
It's the voice of MK Ultra
And you're doing what it wants

sale on Banksy art posted:

Japan is just handing out thick stacks of cash to all of my clients.

US can never do that, both sides of the aisle continually poo poo themselves at the idea that someone who doesn't "need" money will get it and so everything has to be 4 million times more complicated.

# ¿ Apr 9, 2020 19:12

Epi Lepi: Oct 29, 2009; You can hear the voice
Telling you to Love
It's the voice of MK Ultra
And you're doing what it wants

AFewBricksShy posted:

Hi I posted this in the taxes thread but I was hoping someone here might be able to help too

Can someone please give me a breakdown of how S-Corporation taxes work?

Backstory:
I work for a family company as a regular employee. I was just given 25 shares of my company a couple of weeks ago (that won't go into effect until 2020 taxes, I don't get any of the payouts this year.

Now I understand that S-corporations act as a pass through, in essence the company does not pay corporate taxes, the shareholders pay them.

All numbers below are rounded to make them easier to parse...

As of right now my salary is 60,000 a year, I pay roughly 1/3 in taxes, and I'm done, with a little bit of a tax refund at the end of the year.

For next year though, I'll have the payout of the stock, call it $100 a share.

So how do my taxes work next year?

Am I taxed on $62,500 at my normal tax rate and I'm done?

Or am I taxed $62,500 at my normal tax rate plus whatever percentage of the company taxes I pay?

Or am I taxed at $60,000 at my normal tax rate, plus whatever percentage of the company taxes I pay?

It's kind of confusing. Sorry to bother you guys with this.

You will get a K-1 with your share of the profit or loss. This is separate from any distributions of cash you actually receive. That profit or loss gets added to your gross income and you get taxed on the resulting taxable income(after all the other bits and pieces of your return as normal).

# ¿ Apr 20, 2020 21:17

Epi Lepi: Oct 29, 2009; You can hear the voice
Telling you to Love
It's the voice of MK Ultra
And you're doing what it wants

Empress Brosephine posted:

Interesting, a lot of I guess "drama" when it comes to the world of banking!

ANyways I think my question is pretty basic, basically "if my business started this year, how do I dictate what "payroll" costs would be if I didn't give myself a draw or payment yet? Can I pay it out in one lump sum to myself or pay it over several weeks?"

Understand if you don't want to answer, I can seek out an accountant either way but any help is appreciated!

The PPP is a giant clusterfuck, there's probably no money left for it anyway and I still haven't heard a clear explanation of how a self employed person can use the funds and get the loan forgiven like I assume the goal is.

Just don't bother in my opinion. If you're making $1k a month your max loan is probably $2,500.

If you still want to pursue it, talk to your bank about what they would want you to provide them to prove any of your payroll costs without having been in business last year.

# ¿ May 1, 2020 20:23

Epi Lepi: Oct 29, 2009; You can hear the voice
Telling you to Love
It's the voice of MK Ultra
And you're doing what it wants

Covok posted:

My month is ruined

I am a middle manager at a tax accounting office.

My employee wanted to leave in July to take over his family business. We put out a job ad. It was an entry level tax accountant position with work experience preferred.

We got a really good replacement. It was also our only applicant. No one wanted to apply for some reason. She had another offer so we agreed to give her her annunal raise early.

All in all, she got 54,400/year, two health insurance plans, 10 paid vacation, 10 paid sick, 11 paid holidays, dental vision, 401k and roth 401k with 12% employer match, life insurance, HSA, and the potential to get commissionn on financial referrals upon completion of a minimum series 99 license.

She worked 4 days. She was great. She didn't really need any instructions. We already let the other guy go. He really wanted to just leave and get setup with his dad. He was kind of just bumming it.

She quit today citing family issues and now I have no idea what we're going to do. I really don't know what we did wrong. She said we didn't do anything and she just can't juggle taking care of a family member and a fulltime job. We offered a part time job instead and she still said no.

Next month is going to be awful and it's not a lot of time before busy season.

We can't hire remotely because we rely on relationships built on face-to-face appointments to drive clients to our financial advisors.

Also, our clients hate remote appointments. We had a lot of negative backlash due to COVID forcing remote appointments. Our clients skew middle age or older. They tend not to use emails often or, if they do, they prefer a physical meeting over a phone call. Getting them to drop off was like pulling teeth and I even got cursed out by one client over it.

That sucks a ton. Our clients are similar to yours demographic-wise (I think we're both on Long Island as well as dealing with lots of boomers) but we didn't have quite as much of a backlash to remote appointments. We already had a stable of mail in clients who get finished by phone call and a lot of the ones who are traditionally come to sit down are used to sending their info ahead of time.

I've got some employee angst as well. I'd like to replace the young guy we hired at our office last summer. To put it simply, he's still making the same mistakes that he was making when we first hired him and he hasn't actually lightened my load at all. He's not too long out of school and maybe I didn't do as good a job of teaching him as I was hoping when we hired him, but regardless I need a potential replacement for one of our accountants who's retiring in the next few years and he's not it. I'm not gonna fire a guy during a pandemic cause that's just hosed up, but I'm not sure how next tax season is going to go with or without him. All I know is it will probably suck big time for me.

# ¿ Aug 28, 2020 23:37

Epi Lepi: Oct 29, 2009; You can hear the voice
Telling you to Love
It's the voice of MK Ultra
And you're doing what it wants

I became an accountant solely so my relatives can half rear end gifts to me by giving me an endless amount of mugs with phrases like "You bet your assets I'm a well balanced person" on them.

# ¿ Oct 13, 2020 03:11

Epi Lepi: Oct 29, 2009; You can hear the voice
Telling you to Love
It's the voice of MK Ultra
And you're doing what it wants

Covok posted:

The inventory might move. They're cars. The client could sell them. He could LCM to take a loss when they become worth less than the purchase price or just wait for the car to sell and use the COGS to lower the income to less than $0 from the sale. Unless he's leasing the cars, which he isn't, he can't depreciate them. You can't depreciate cars that are just sitting on the lot. They aren't getting wear and tear. You hold the COGS until you either sell them or dispose of them. Either way, it isn't depreciatation.

See, he specifically wanted exaclty 80k of depreciation because depreciation is added back in mortgage calculations. And 80k is what the client would need in profits to get a mortgage. So, the broker planned for the client to report a loss for taxes and pay nothing in taxes but report a gain for a mortgage application when the depreciation is added back. He wanted me to come up with the number to get 80k in depreciation.

So, you're right that depreciation wipes out the taxable income. He wanted the client to take expenses in a manner that allows him to get the best of both worlds.

However, it's just not simply legal in the slightest.

So like, does the client have an 80K profit that they want to get rid of with depreciation or does he already have a loss/lower profit and they want you to report the expenses as depreciation so they can add it back?

Reminds me of a broker I dealt with who's underwriter did not understand that a vehicle's depreciation and loan payments are not going to line up. They kept saying that they needed to see the payments on the depreciation line and I kept having to try to explain, through the broker since you can't talk to underwriters, that those are not the same thing. The vehicle was put in service the year before, there's nothing I can do to change what the amount of depreciation taken in the current year is.

# ¿ Oct 13, 2020 23:19

Epi Lepi: Oct 29, 2009; You can hear the voice
Telling you to Love
It's the voice of MK Ultra
And you're doing what it wants

I'm a preparer at a family owned office and we serve local small businesses and individuals. In general I love my job, love talking to people for an hour every year to catch up and actually do their returns. It's the perfect amount of social interaction for me.

Like Hurt Whitey said don't plan on taking days off February to April or early September. I've always been lucky enough to still get Sundays off except the ones leading up to the actual deadlines.

This year has been total rear end because of COVID, and I'm definitely feeling burnt out, but we're past the final deadline so I can focus on catch up work until tax season starts again. Before COVID my office was having one of it's most productive and efficient tax seasons, but the additional work of helping clients navigate unemployment and the government loans on top of continuing to prepare returns on top of half our staff including one of the other preparers not being able to work well if at all remotely kind of hosed that all up.

Hopefully we can figure it all out for next tax season.

# ¿ Oct 19, 2020 05:15

Epi Lepi: Oct 29, 2009; You can hear the voice
Telling you to Love
It's the voice of MK Ultra
And you're doing what it wants

Empress Brosephine posted:

Wow I'm not so sure now

Clients can suck but if you�re not a complete misanthrope you will probably grow to like many of your regular ones. It�s a treat every year to spend no more than an hour catching up with some of my clients seeing how they�re business has grown, if they�ve got married or had a kid. As someone who�s not great at small talk it ends up being the perfect amount of interaction.

Then you have the clients who want to spend 3 hours on the phone going through their return line by line and you wish they were struck dead or at least mute.

# ¿ Nov 24, 2020 14:31

Epi Lepi: Oct 29, 2009; You can hear the voice
Telling you to Love
It's the voice of MK Ultra
And you're doing what it wants

Send them a letter saying you're tripling your rates due to the complexities caused by COVID. They'll fire themselves or maybe they'll be lucrative enough to deal with.

I haven't actually done this but I've thought about it.

# ¿ Dec 2, 2020 23:27

Epi Lepi: Oct 29, 2009; You can hear the voice
Telling you to Love
It's the voice of MK Ultra
And you're doing what it wants

black.lion posted:

A lot of my clients are seriously small small businesses (like <$100k gross a year) and a lot are body workers (PTs, massage therapists, etc etc) so they're all super thirsty for the free money

This round you're only eligible if you can show a drop in gross receipts >25% in a single comparable quarter (or comparing annually)

So I have a thousand disorganized clients asking if they qualify for PPP and they all feel they need to know right now and that should come before all the payroll filings + 1099s we have to do in the next 10 days, and also can we fill the app out for them, and also can we do the forgiveness app for the first PPP they still haven't done

Many of these clients only give us their gross receipts once a year for their return, but try telling them we don't have their quarterly income lmao "BUT I SEND YOU MY NUMBERS EVERY YEAR"

Also iirc the PPP did run out for the first round until the Fed dumped more cash into the pot & changed the rules; a lot of these clients remember the funds running out before they got replenished so they're functioning on the assumption this will run out also.

I love my clients but I wish they could just smoke some weed and chill tf out I guess, idk tax season blech

I'm also studying for FAR rn so it's possible I'm just cranky and feeling overwhelmed

Hi yes, are you me? Cause I'm in the same boat with clients bugging me about whether they qualify and can I do the application and forgiveness for them pretty please. As if I don't have a billion things to do before tax season gets into full swing.

# ¿ Jan 21, 2021 23:01

Epi Lepi: Oct 29, 2009; You can hear the voice
Telling you to Love
It's the voice of MK Ultra
And you're doing what it wants

Blotto_Otter posted:

In fairness, I think auditing is perhaps the accounting topic that is the hardest to get a feel for based on what you learn in the classroom. It's very much something you learn on the job, not from a textbook. Like most accounting courses, the auditing theory and concepts you learn in the classroom are important to know but are not something you think about as much when you're actually doing the work, and when you do think about them, it's more interesting when you're dealing with a real-world situation. I realize this is true for much of accounting and college education in general, but I think it's extra true for auditing, the disconnect between classroom learning and the actual work is even greater than in the other accounting topics IMO.

Don't get your hopes up too much, but if it is boring, the good news is that it'll probably boring in a different way than actually being an auditor can be boring. The quality of the class is going to depend a lot on the quality of the teacher. If the teacher is a retired public accountant who actually did audits, that's a good sign. If it's a young person whose on the academic track and has never actually done an audit.... ehh, not so great.

Agreed on this, I don't think I ever actually understood what they were trying to teach in my Auditing class in college and only gained a little more understand when I studied for the Auditing part of the CPA test. I learned enough to pass the test but I also still wouldn't say I understand auditing.

# ¿ Feb 23, 2021 21:05

Epi Lepi: Oct 29, 2009; You can hear the voice
Telling you to Love
It's the voice of MK Ultra
And you're doing what it wants

Good Citizen posted:

Unless you've got massive student loan interest and some other stuff you aren't telling us about, you're standard deductin this year

Aaaahhhhhhh that�s not how itemized deductions work please don�t do anyone else�s taxes and maybe not even your own.

Also everyone is forgetting the medical deduction floor.

# ¿ Feb 24, 2021 04:03

Epi Lepi: Oct 29, 2009; You can hear the voice
Telling you to Love
It's the voice of MK Ultra
And you're doing what it wants

I felt worse and worse after each test but ended up with progressively better scores so who the gently caress knows how you did!

e:fixed an autocorrect typo

Epi Lepi fucked around with this message at 19:55 on Apr 1, 2021

# ¿ Apr 1, 2021 04:20

Epi Lepi: Oct 29, 2009; You can hear the voice
Telling you to Love
It's the voice of MK Ultra
And you're doing what it wants

Hellblazer187 posted:

Other people working in tax: Has this been just the worst loving season? Every year seems worse than the last since say, 2017.

I mean in terms of tax. In terms of just like regular life things have been getting worse each year since 2009.

I would agree with this for sure. So many returns that come in and just could not be completed because of the bullshit rollout of various forms this year. I'm buried in folders, I can't address all the emails I've gotten, I'm trying to work partially at home and partially in the office and I'm just burned out.

# ¿ Apr 9, 2021 23:05

Epi Lepi: Oct 29, 2009; You can hear the voice
Telling you to Love
It's the voice of MK Ultra
And you're doing what it wants

Hurt Whitey Maybe posted:

Y�all pay penalties for your clients? That�s wild as hell, in Big 4 I�ve never seen that, ultimately all filing responsibility lies with the client.

If it's my fault there's a penalty I'll try to get it abated, maybe credit them the interest. If I can't get it abated and I feel bad I'll offer to cover the penalty or credit them or whatever. Or if they bitch and moan enough I'll cover the penalty.

If it's not my fault, tough poo poo pal I'll write a letter but good luck to you.

# ¿ May 12, 2021 23:19

Epi Lepi: Oct 29, 2009; You can hear the voice
Telling you to Love
It's the voice of MK Ultra
And you're doing what it wants

When I took the test back in 2013 I felt progressively worse and worse about my performance on each part but ended up getting better and better scores on each part so :shrug:

# ¿ Sep 3, 2021 17:23

Epi Lepi: Oct 29, 2009; You can hear the voice
Telling you to Love
It's the voice of MK Ultra
And you're doing what it wants

Man I'm severely underpaid, I'm finally making $60K base, and I've been doing this for 10 years. I'm on Long Island as well but I'm at a mom and pop shop dealing with extremely blue collar families and small businesses, and you're at like an H&R or something right?

I don't think you handled the teaching thing great, you started her on too many things at once. You both overestimated and underestimated her ability to learn what she needed by February. You assumed she couldn't learn everything in time so you tried to teach too much at once. You should have focused on just one task for a few days to a week at a time before adding different things.

Everyone learns differently so I can't say that lectures are unequivocally poo poo, but for me that would have just been information overload that I wouldn't retain and for the people I tutored in college and the random interns we've had at my office over the years I think it was the same. Accounting in my experience works best when you learn by doing.

For your next hiring attempt have a plan of what work you will be feeding them. If you want them to sit with people get them comfortable with the program you use and the workflow of entering the information so they can worry about the actually interviewing the client part by February.

My office hired another person to be a tax preparer this past year who is a similar profile to your person, 6+ years out of college, worked at a payroll firm, actual tax prep experience was one tax season doing VITA and one tax season shadowing at an H&R Block. I set the goal of her working on data entry for me and the senior accountant at the firm and working up to her independently finishing mailed in returns by the end of the season, with our final approval of course. I didn't gently caress around with teaching her corporates or bookkeeping until the summer because I wanted her to get competent and comfortable at one aspect before introducing the next. Next tax season I expect her to be able to assist in preparing both business and personal returns and at a quicker pace than she was capable of last season.

# ¿ Sep 17, 2021 03:49

Epi Lepi: Oct 29, 2009; You can hear the voice
Telling you to Love
It's the voice of MK Ultra
And you're doing what it wants

Yeah it's lovely but the senior accountant will be retiring in the next few years and the practice will be mine so I can live with it. I can afford the mortgage on my condo so I'm cool.

# ¿ Sep 17, 2021 04:30

Epi Lepi: Oct 29, 2009; You can hear the voice
Telling you to Love
It's the voice of MK Ultra
And you're doing what it wants

Blotto_Otter posted:

e: I may be reading something between the lines that's not actually there, but... after re-reading one of your reddit replies about your boss' attitude towards admin staff and how she's handled those hires in the past, I suspect your boss' attitude and hands-off approach isn't helping here. I wonder if your boss also needs an attitude adjustment and shift in expectations, too - not just in that they need to reduce expectations for what rookies are capable of, but in that your boss should expect other people, including themselves, to have a hand in setting up rookies for success. It's not fair to you or the rookie to make you the sole person that a rookie spends all of their time learning from and interacting with.

Yeah I think Covok's boss is more of an issue than people are acknowledging. They sound like the "Entry Level Position, Requirements: 5 Years of Experience," meme.

# ¿ Sep 17, 2021 19:21

Epi Lepi: Oct 29, 2009; You can hear the voice
Telling you to Love
It's the voice of MK Ultra
And you're doing what it wants

There's no way that's true. You can call yourself an accountant, just not a Certified Public Accountant.

# ¿ Sep 17, 2021 23:32

Epi Lepi: Oct 29, 2009; You can hear the voice
Telling you to Love
It's the voice of MK Ultra
And you're doing what it wants

FunOne posted:

Is this the place to ask QB Enterprise questions? I'm having a hell of a time with an item just randomly changing its COGs and of course Google is no loving help. I understand average costing, but this is, something different.

I like loving with Quickbooks, so shoot. Or PM me. I'm not an expert but maybe I'll know how to fix your issue.

# ¿ Oct 27, 2021 18:22

Epi Lepi: Oct 29, 2009; You can hear the voice
Telling you to Love
It's the voice of MK Ultra
And you're doing what it wants

My initial thought is that the item on the invoice is mismatched some how, maybe it got accidentally linked to a different account or value. It happens with every new invoice? What about backdated invoices to prior to the bug?

# ¿ Oct 27, 2021 19:32

Epi Lepi: Oct 29, 2009; You can hear the voice
Telling you to Love
It's the voice of MK Ultra
And you're doing what it wants

FunOne posted:

Good thought. Took an invoice from today, posting against COGS incorrectly, and kicked it back 2 months. Posts against COGs correctly on that (270ish vs 599). Move it back to today and back to the wild 599 value.

Again, 599 is not associated with this item in any way that I can find so that's throwing me off too.

If Quickbooks is automatically applying the inventory costing method there could be a large transaction somewhere else that is throwing off the value. Maybe a purchase order with an extra zero at some point and 8/17 is when FIFO or weighted average or something comes into play. This kind of cost accounting is not what I deal with so that's probably the extent of my ideas. Thats a very strange issue and its clear that the date matters a lot but I don't know enough about Enterprise in particular to say what could be triggering your price value change.

# ¿ Oct 28, 2021 22:26

Epi Lepi: Oct 29, 2009; You can hear the voice
Telling you to Love
It's the voice of MK Ultra
And you're doing what it wants

Forgiveness is non-taxable other income.

# ¿ Dec 1, 2021 18:06

Epi Lepi: Oct 29, 2009; You can hear the voice
Telling you to Love
It's the voice of MK Ultra
And you're doing what it wants

Covok posted:

Out of curiosity, how many less hours does it sound I work compared to other people here? Part of the decision making process. To be honest, my boyfriend said if I do look for a new job, maybe consider one without a busy season.

I'm also a tax preparer on Long Island, off season I'm rarely hitting 40 hrs a week, busy season I'm doing between 40 and 60 hours a week depending on how behind we get or how close to the deadline we are. I absolutely avoid Sundays, I need one day to do chores like laundry and grocery shopping and my partner doesn't drive so it has to be me. I pretty much decide my hours.

Finally hit $60K this past year but I've been doing this longer than you, this will be my 10th tax season. It's a little bullshit but I also get an incentive commission that added up to about $15k on top of that last year, and that should increase this year as it's based on billings I specifically bring to the firm.

# ¿ Feb 1, 2022 06:37

Epi Lepi: Oct 29, 2009; You can hear the voice
Telling you to Love
It's the voice of MK Ultra
And you're doing what it wants

Covok posted:

Maybe I shouldn't care? Yesterday, I got a dentist office as a $2,150 account. And the day before I got a doctor's office as a $800 account for just payroll, not even the tax return yet. It's hard to say.

gently caress that guy, annoying clients are not worth the billing. There's always more clients. Always a ton of folks thinking the grass is greener with a different accountant. The cheapskate clients can gently caress off as well. Either their friend really can handle it for cheaper in which case good luck to him or they'll come crawling back in a year or two when they don't get the same quality of work that you provided.

# ¿ Feb 1, 2022 18:43

Epi Lepi: Oct 29, 2009; You can hear the voice
Telling you to Love
It's the voice of MK Ultra
And you're doing what it wants

The only times I've gotten calls like that were basic "Does X own Y company" or "Is X company still operating" and that's been a simple "to the best of my knowledge yes/no" answer from me.

# ¿ Feb 4, 2022 22:44

Epi Lepi: Oct 29, 2009; You can hear the voice
Telling you to Love
It's the voice of MK Ultra
And you're doing what it wants

Covok posted:

I think I might be leaving tax accounting this year. This is my 6th busy season and I feel kind of done with it all. I have been eyeing some basic corporate accounting jobs that seem to pay decent. Any advice?

What, you don't love how tax season never fully ends anymore and you have to put up with clients screaming about how their refund is lower this year and you try and try to explain that they took the advanced child tax credit payments this year and also took out money from their retirement last year that we're splitting over three years and all the withholding was used last year so of course its lower but they just keep weeping and moaning. And then you get the one sweet old guy who can barely sign his authorization form with his arthritic hands, and the return was so simple you almost feel bad charging and then when he leaves he calls you a good person for "putting up with his nonsense" and your destroyed in a whole new way....

# ¿ Mar 25, 2022 23:47

Epi Lepi: Oct 29, 2009; You can hear the voice
Telling you to Love
It's the voice of MK Ultra
And you're doing what it wants

I don't mind 3 months of super double overtime as long as the other 9 months are smooth sailing but that has not been the case for me the last few years, partially because of COVID and partially because my firm is understaffed. I'm hoping some recent hires work out along with the fact that a lot of the tax related COVID stuff is over with or tapering off.

# ¿ Mar 26, 2022 19:07

Epi Lepi: Oct 29, 2009; You can hear the voice
Telling you to Love
It's the voice of MK Ultra
And you're doing what it wants

Covok posted:

I have a city employee subject to section 1127 of the NYC charter. He sold a house in Yonkers as a rental and received a K1. It is substantial. He was wondering if it can be exluded on section 1127. My interpretation is no. They should include it becomes they are taxed as if they were a city resident. What is the rule?

To be honest, I am like 99% certain but another preparer is working on this and he is convinced it isn't because he doesn't believe ir.

He's hosed unless he sold the property before/after he worked for the City. I'm guessing this is not his first/last year as a City employee so yeah, he's hosed.

# ¿ Apr 1, 2022 03:57

Epi Lepi: Oct 29, 2009; You can hear the voice
Telling you to Love
It's the voice of MK Ultra
And you're doing what it wants

Covok posted:

Well, my dumbass coworker might do it anyway because he didn't believe me. gently caress it, I am already planning on leaving this place.

Edit: Guy did the whole "I talked to another accountant and they said I could do it" poo poo and now my co-worker doesn't believe me.

Ain't on you, and if NYC comes knocking for the client it's your coworker's rear end who's gotta explain it to the client. The sad part is there's a nonzero chance the guy gets away with it.

# ¿ Apr 5, 2022 04:46

Epi Lepi: Oct 29, 2009; You can hear the voice
Telling you to Love
It's the voice of MK Ultra
And you're doing what it wants

You kind of need those letters if you intend to prepare audited financial statements and the like. The IRS also respects CPA's more than non-CPA's and won't brush you off as easily.

# ¿ Jun 3, 2022 22:34

Epi Lepi: Oct 29, 2009; You can hear the voice
Telling you to Love
It's the voice of MK Ultra
And you're doing what it wants

Winged Orpheus posted:

More tax than accounting but I figured it's worth asking. I've done about 4 seasons at HR Block and am pretty finished with them. A part of my brain is deeply broken and enjoys doing tax prep, though. Has anyone here taken the leap and started their own practice? I've been doing my best to research and I think it's fairly doable for me, but there's definitely a fear of falling flat on my face. This whole thing is a second job for me so it wouldn't be the end of the world, but obviously I'd rather succeed than fold. Would love to hear if anyone else here has taken that step or has stories of anyone doing so.

What specifically are you looking to find out? There are plenty of one-man-show tax prep firms out there, it's very doable. Do you have clients that will follow you from HR Block? It'll be much easier if so.

I have not opened my own firm but I intend to buy out the owner of the place I work for in the next year or so. I've been working here for over a decade at this point and my boss is looking to scale back and retire.

# ¿ Jul 2, 2022 05:59

Epi Lepi: Oct 29, 2009; You can hear the voice
Telling you to Love
It's the voice of MK Ultra
And you're doing what it wants

Covok posted:

Wow, I never thought this would happen.

Backstory. Four years ago, a woman came to my office saying she didn't trust her accountant and asked me to review her return for 3 years. I agreed to do it for an extremely low fee at the time. The return was the most fraudlent poo poo I have ever seen and ever seen since.

Married couple both filing Head of Househould claiming each other as a dependent

Fake rental that claimed they both rented out their current home for a 25,000 loss

Fake business claiming massive losses in excess of like 30k

10,000 charity deduction for a massive schedule A deduction

The accountant put a bank account that didn't belong to the woman or her husband and told her that the refund was 7k smaller than it actually was, no doubt pocketing the difference

When they got audited by the state, which is what prompted her to come to me, she was told by the office "NY state is just out of money and auditing everyone and you'll have to pay them. But if you come in extra early next year, it won't happen again because you'll get in before the money runs out."

I told her all of this was bullshit and told her that her best bet was to get a lawyer. She ran out of the office terrified, making excuses for the whole thing. I never expected to see her again.

Well, four years later, she had made an appointment with my coworker. Turns out she took my advice and got a lawyer. Turns out the guy did rob her and her husband, who she is divorced because that guy was his friend. Apparently, the dude ran a racket where he'd jack up people's refunds, lie to them about how much they were getting back, give them fake refund anticipation loans out of his own pocket, then pocket the extra money when the inflated refund went into his bank account instead.

Needless to say, the dude got shut down by the government when she blabbed and she now wants my office to do her returns. What a rollercoaster. Not 100% sure how to feel, but at least this guy isn't robbing old ladies anymore.

That's all wild. They're not entirely wrong about the NYS auditing everyone part though, since IRS audits have been so scaled back the last 5ish years NYS had to step up their own enforcement since they couldn't just sit back and wait for IRS audit changes to come in and make adjustments in their favor.

# ¿ Jul 7, 2022 20:59

Epi Lepi: Oct 29, 2009; You can hear the voice
Telling you to Love
It's the voice of MK Ultra
And you're doing what it wants

Is there really as shortage right now? When I graduated (back in 2011) I was the only one of my friends able to get an actual accounting job and that was only because I went to work at my uncles tax prep firm. My other friends with degrees in accounting could not find jobs in the field.

# ¿ Aug 2, 2022 18:10

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# ¿ Apr 28, 2024 10:04

Epi Lepi: Oct 29, 2009; You can hear the voice
Telling you to Love
It's the voice of MK Ultra
And you're doing what it wants

Wild. I've worked at the same place since graduating and we haven't had to look for new people to hire until the last year or so. So I guess I've been insulated from that reality.

Good thing I don't believe in the "Accountants will be phased out in X years" bullshit because I'm now exploring securing financing so that I can buy my uncle out and he can retire. I'm either going to have to sell off some of his clients or hire even more help though.

# ¿ Aug 2, 2022 18:43

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Ask/Tell > Business, Finance, and Careers > Accountant Megathread - At Least We're Not Actuaries

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