Bogleheads.org

An HSA is like an IRA in that it is an individual account and so different individuals' accounts cannot be blended. You cannot transfer funds from your HSA to your spouse's HSA as a tax-free rollover. You may be contributing to your HSA under the higher limits due to family coverage of your High Ded...

You may benefit from paying for a properly priced tax professional, possibly only for a consultation, at least to understand the principals behind whatever options you may have on handling expenses and future depreciation. Turbotax can probably handle it, but if you don't understand how it SHOULD be...

Can I keep the same HSA account and just contribute the family limit this year ($6450) or must I establish a new account? Maintenance of the same HSA is entirely separate from the determination of the amount you are eligible to contribute. There is no requirement to open another HSA if you change f...

I think a big part of the judgments of the worsening state of current and future generations of retirees comes from increased expectations. As the article points out, things were not always that great for retirees of earlier generations, but now people expect to live longer and many expect to have b...

I don't see that this would be considered anything other than a reduction of your cost and therefore not taxable income. These negative origination fees are being used to reduce other closing costs and not actually being paid to the borrower.

HouseStark, You are absolutely correct that Schedule E is included in the child's return, as well as Form 8615. So that forces the return to be filed separately? If so, I feel better after doing it for all these years. I have been using TurboTax to do the returns, and yes, it is tedious, only becaus...

Why would Interest, Dividends and Cap Gains (typical pass through items from a Trust), show up on Sched E or require an entry there? However I'm not sure you could claim the FTC on your return; thats another question. I didn't say the income from a fiduciary return, which is reported on a K-1 Form ...

You need to file individual returns for the kids. A return reporting income from the trust will include Sched E page 2 identifying the trust as the source of the income. Since these children are presumably subject to the "kiddie tax" and their unearned income exceeds $1900, their returns w...

I'm finally throwing in the towel. Our taxes have gotten complicated enough that I think I'm being penny-wise, pound foolish insisting on doing them myself. I've actually done them on TurboTax already but I'm questioning myself on several points and would just feel better having a professional's bl...

It depends upon how your practice is set up. Are you an employee of a practice? Or are you in business for yourself as sole owner or part owner of a practice?

All I do is match what the 1099 says. I get a 1099 from TDAmeritrade that says "First Clearing" is the payor, so I put First Clearing on the tax form. Actually, TurboTax puts FirstClearing on the tax form. Many brokerage account 1099s show a clearing agent as the payer, such as First Clea...

Having a rental property could mean a wide range of varying complexity in what is involved in the tax returns. What type of property? What gross income are you talking about? How organized are the financial records you provide? Does the CPA have to sort through a jumble of receipts to sort it out? A...

A general principle in the tax law is that you can't deduct expense which are the obligation of another. If it were otherwise, you would have the person in the highest tax bracket make the payment for the greatest tax benefit. The IRC doesn't work that way. Bruce I don't see how that principle appl...

You should be able to reconcile your year-end pay statement with your W-2. Was the $5000 for the FSA medical actually deducted over the course of the year? You should try to make sense of it, but your payroll department or human resources would be the ones to explain.

In my experience using Wells Fargo online bill paying, the bank does not send paper checks whenever possible. My bill payments to credit card companies, other lenders and utilities are all being sent electronically. They can do that because I have signed the recipients up as vendors that Wells Fargo...

My HSA provider is Select Account. Amounts under $3000 must be kept in the basic account earning miniscule interest, but with no account fee. Amounts over $3000 can optionally be transferred to an investment account with about a dozen name-brand mutual funds. The investment account has a fee of $1.5...

If an employer can be authorized to do a background check, then an individual must be able to do the same background check on themself by using one of those companies providing such a service. As a starting point, I think your friend would want to know exactly what information potential employers wo...

Probably nothing will happen to you, but the IRS could flag your return as being wrong and notify you about the discrepancy. If your tax return is wrong, then you should correct it anyway, as has been suggested. Review your tax return with someone who actually knows something about taxes. It would b...

You could start by going to irs.gov and looking for the Free File link. Pick a provider, input your information and answer the interview questions and see where that gets you. How did you get to the point of having a variety of sources of investment income and yet not knowing anything about income t...

I don't know exactly what you mean by "miscellaneous wages", but if you 're talking about making something up and putting it on your tax return, then of course, no, you can't do that. That would be filing a false tax return. You're really that concerned about getting a Roth contribution th...

I don't know for certain whether your tax preparer is giving you bad service or not, but there needs to be some mutual understanding about what service you can come to expect. Tax preparation and tax planning are overlapping services, but I don't think it's realistic to expect a tax preparer in the ...

If you file Form 1116 (needed for foreign tax over $300 single/$600 joint), your foreign tax credit is the lesser of the foreign tax you actually paid, or the percentage of your US tax that was imposed on income taxed by the foreign country. If you are this position of having no more than $300/$600...

In addition to the considerations already described, is there any impact on state income tax to consider? ? Some states, such as Minnesota, use federal taxable income as the starting point for determining state taxable income, so not using itemized deductions to lower federal taxable income could ha...

The only reason I can think of that you would need to amend your 2012 return would be if your Roth contribution affected any other IRA contributions, meaning if you had already put a Traditional IRA contribution on the return, or if your Roth contribution made you eligible for a Retirement Savings t...

Vanguard will ask which year you want your contribution to be credited to. If you are eligible to contribute the amount for 2012, then you should do that. That way you will still have your full 2013 eligibility for the future. Since you are talking about a Roth contribution it is not reportable on y...

Just because you see a "zero" showing on your TT forms view or print does not necessarily mean that the e-file transmittal actually contains those "zeroes". I have no knowledge of the hidden workings of TT, but that may be the case, so attempting to remove them may be pointless.

I deal with many IRS notices for tax clients, including the CP2000 notices which are generated by the automated matching system, which flags discrepancies between tax return numbers and those reported on W-2s, 1099s and the like, and I've never seen one that had anything to do with reporting differe...

You are saying "move out", by which I assume you mean convert the unit you were living in from personal use to rental property. If so, you are correct that your improvement costs will be added to your original purchase cost that was allocated to that unit. That gives your a higher basis fo...

The IRS does have a matching program, but in the past it has been inefficient. Many people have excess contributions that are several years old and therefore owe 6% excise taxes for each year. If you enter your Roth contribution into the tax software, it will tell you if you have an excess contribu...

Many IRA custodians will send accountholders a Form 5498 in January or February. I have seen this for Fidelity IRAs already this year. If they choose to do so most likely that is only a provisional version that the custodian does not actually submit to the IRS, since it would be subject to change. T...

If you are subject to a state income tax, you could often be required to also file an amended state return for that year, if the state tax would also be affected. It would not always be required since some changes you make on an amended 1040 would not result in changes to your state income tax. In t...

Distribution code "2" is correct. If this results in your tax software showing the entire distribution as taxable, that's probably because you're not doing it correctly. You need to make sure the program has information on your IRA basis. If you each put in $5000 as non-deduction contribut...

If you already were claiming itemized deductions on Schedule A, instead of claiming the standard deduction, then this should not be an issue. The full amount of gambling winnings income could be cancelled out by the miscellaneous deduction for gambling losses. If you did not itemize your deductions,...

Are you saying that you did not include either of the $2000 or $1000 gambling winnings on your 2012 tax return? If so, you definitely should file an amended return. Take care of it now instead waiting to get the IRS notice several months down the road.

I don't know Turbotax, but the issue might be related to your residency status. Make sure you are being considered as a part-year resident of each state and not as a NY resident who earned income in MD. So, TT should be generating two part-year resident state returns.

As far as any of the information relates to anything on your tax returns, it should be retained for seven years, or until the financed property is sold and that tax return year is at least three years old. Tax return items: if you deducted or amortized purchase or refi mortgage points, if you need t...

If look at the current Form 8863, which is used to claim the AOTC, it asks whether the student has CLAIMED the AOTC and Hope Credit combined for more than 3 years. It can be used up to four times, even if the student only goes half-time and takes more time than that. I wouldn't worry about whether t...

It's not unreasonable to use the 1098-T figures, but they are often wrong, so it's good to have an understanding of what you are paying. It shouldn't be that difficult to obtain and review an actual account statement from the institution. The statement should show what was billed and what was paid w...

The IRS Pub explains the important details:
http://www.irs.gov/uac/Publication-523, ... our-Home-1

As has been pointed out, not owing income tax does not necessarily equate to not being required to file a return. In any case, I think filing a tax return anyway is a good idea, even if not required. If you are in the income range of not having any tax, there is a good chance that you would qualify ...

HouseStark I think you missed the point of my post. I don't believe it is possible for the sum of the two state incomes on the w2 to exceed the total income in your example. In your example the w2 would show $65000 of total state income .... not possible if the total earned was only $60000. There i...

Just be careful though, I heard that once you file as Married Joint , you can never go back to filing as Married Separate . I'm not yet married so I don't have first hand experience with this but this is what was told to me so just be careful. Most of my coworkers who are married suggest to file Ma...

I don't think it is possible for someone to be in two states at the same time. In the Sven example, the $5k was earned in IL, not in MN. The MN income earned in that state is $55k. If the employer issued an incorrect w2, the employer needs to issue a corrected w2 (w2c). You are correct that is not ...

So you are saying that if you add the MN state income and CO state income it exceeds your federal income? That is very odd. (If this is not the case, then I would double check the assumption you were "double taxed"). Point this out to your employer - they should definitely fix the W-2 (wh...

Did the day care place have any employees? If it did, and you knew any of them, you could ask one of them, since the EIN would be on their W-2. It's a long shot, but it's an idea.

Getting a corrected W-2 would be the best option.

If you moved before you started earning those paychecks, then you are correct that you should have no earned income for MN, even though state taxes were withheld. The correct thing to do would be to file a part-year resident return for MN and a part-resident return for CO that correctly allocate the...

In addition to the investment environment, HO insurance premiums are also strongly influenced by other factors, often highly local, such as losses paid, the competition and the regulatory environment, so comparing your situation to others without knowing where those homes are located is limited in s...

I concur. You can see how this works by looking at Form 8606 and its instructions. Form 8606 is where the taxable vs. non-taxable allocation of IRA distributions with non-deductible basis is determined, for Roth conversions or otherwise. Form 8606 is only an individual form.

If you did not report the sales made for withholding, then that was an omission. But since those were zero capital gain/loss transactions, or very near so, that is not a big concern. If the IRS has not raised the issue I don't think it is worth amending prior year tax returns to correct it. You did ...