At this time of year, identity thieves use many types of phishing scams to try to access the data of tax professionals. One of those schemes involves a phishing email that purports to be from a potential new client. Such emails are typically from someone who is unknown to the practitioner, and the email typically has no phone number or other way to contact the sender, other than by replying ...
As practitioners prepare Forms 1040 this season, it is vital to help clients to plan for the effects of the new tax law. Tax software should include a planning or similar worksheet to allow practitioners to compute an estimate of the effects of the new tax law for their clients using their estimated income for the 2018 tax year. In addition, since the income tax withholding tables have also...
The Bipartisan Budget Act was enacted on February 9, 2018, and it includes the retroactive extension of certain tax provisions that had previously expired after December 31, 2016. As a result, these provisions are now available for the 2017 tax year. While the legislation extends many previously-expired provisions, the most significant of these extended provisions are: -- The above-the-li...
This is the second year that most software packages will require practitioners to enter driver license information for their clients. New York is one of only three states that does not allow tax preparation software to transfer driver license information from the prior year version of the software to the current year’s versions. As a result, practitioners must reenter, or copy and paste, t...
