by Leif Jensen | Nov 16, 2012 | General |
A tax preparer who was unhappy with the IRS trying to get a handle on all paid tax preparers and the PTIN fee filed a court case. The user fee is collected for obtaining or renewing a preparer tax ID number is valid. The preparer challenged the fee, alleging that IRS...
by Leif Jensen | Nov 16, 2012 | General |
The IRS continues to investigate and scrutinize preparers of earned income credit returns. The Service has mailed a new series of letters to those preparers suspected of making mistakes on 2011 returns that claimed the credit. Two main problems noted in the letters...
by Leif Jensen | Nov 15, 2012 | General |
An ongoing issue with a start up business are the losses sustained while getting the business going. In a recent court case, a business had a long series of annual losses. Losses do not always mean an activity is a hobby, according to the Tax Court says, overruling...
by Leif Jensen | Oct 28, 2012 | General |
Are you one of the people logging onto the IRS website to check on the status of your refund? Most of the time when clients asked our office to check, the refund dates where very accurate. It seems that we were the exception and not the rule. So this tax season the...
by Leif Jensen | Aug 31, 2012 | General |
As we slowly plod towards the November elections the country will be truly voting on the direction for our economic future. The country faces increasing deficits, underfunded pensions and a bloated bureaucracy. As well as a tax system that is financed by only half of...
by Leif Jensen | Aug 31, 2012 | General |
So I am listening to an economist giving a presentation on his predictions for the future of our economy. He has a mathematic background and the presentation was filled with detailed charts and graphs. But it was surprisingly interesting, at least to me. (I may need...
by Leif Jensen | Aug 31, 2012 | General |
Earlier in the week, I was at the ICPAS Accounting and Finance Show. I am always amused by some aspects of the show. CPA’s tend to be very cheap lot, and the vendors of the show know this, and as a result, many of my brethren stock up on all of their pens needs for...
by Leif Jensen | Aug 27, 2012 | General |
Last tax season we completed a return for a doctor and his family. The return was presented by an associate from the office. Now our typical procedure is that we present the return to the client and explain the details of the return. Then the client pays for the...
by Leif Jensen | Aug 25, 2012 | General |
I had met with a client within the discussions we were discussing where the job market is going to be in 2020? Within the great recession many of the jobs lost are gone for good, they have been eliminated and the companies have survived without them. They will not be...
by Leif Jensen | Aug 25, 2012 | General |
When I sent out the e-mail, I had a surprising amount of questions regarding the requirement for the records for the annual meeting minutes. Depending on the size of your organization there may be a small board consisting of a president, secretary and treasurer, or,...
by Leif Jensen | Aug 23, 2012 | General |
I was meeting with a client and in our discussion we got to the issue of property taxes. I had recommended an attorney I had used to fight my property taxes. Apparently she had had a discussion with another business owner who mocked her about her process or using an...
by Leif Jensen | Aug 19, 2012 | General |
The IRS has clamped down on issuing individual tax ID numbers recently. It appears that surprise! The program was riddled with fraud, according to Treasury Dept. inspectors. Illegal’s who do not have Social Security numbers and are not eligible to get them have been...
by Leif Jensen | Aug 19, 2012 | General |
We are all aware that color influences our decisions and actions. Dream research conducted by Abraham Maslow seemed to indicate that falling asleep in yellow rooms would cause people to develop nightmares during their sleep. Sociologists have begun making...
by Leif Jensen | Aug 19, 2012 | General |
The duality of man has always been a mystery to many and will continue to be for all time to come. So it should not be a surprise that I have a couple of clients that have made the plunge into the business world, by starting side businesses. They state that they...
by Leif Jensen | Aug 19, 2012 | General |
Now most of my clients who do their own payroll have their EFTPS accounts set up and utilize them every payroll. Even payroll services have to electronically deposit all payroll taxes. But now after November 18th the IRS requirement applies to all tax payments even...
by Leif Jensen | Aug 11, 2012 | General |
With the changing and improving technologies there is concern (or at least some thoughts regarding) that with the rise of smart phones will bring about the end of text-based passwords. With their touch screens, built-in microphones and cameras, the devices themselves...
by Leif Jensen | Aug 11, 2012 | General |
My client has nexus in Virginia, so the business is required to file a Virginia business return. Now we had to file a manual return for the business. Since the business needed to file a return; a personal Virginia tax return was required as well. This was filed...
by Leif Jensen | Aug 10, 2012 | General |
It appears that there are fewer personal bankruptcies this year. There are about 1.2 million this year. This is a reduction of about 365,000 from the post-bankruptcy-reform high of 1.5 million in 2010. Recently I had received a call from a (former) client that was...
by Leif Jensen | Aug 10, 2012 | General |
Payroll is never exactly an easy topic for small business owners. There is the fun of employee versus independent contactor; all the necessary forms; the overall costs as well as the actually managing of the employees. I am discussing with a client the best way for...
by Leif Jensen | Jul 28, 2012 | General |
Big data will mean big business. Target for one has been studying their client for years and have adapted to make sure that they don’t appear to be stalkers. Now once the other firms figure out how to harvest it, their marketing campaigns and they will know more...
