Coffee Drinker

Which situation do you think is more likely to occur in 2021

1. The Seattle Mariners end their playoff drought and win their first World Series.

2. The CDC admits that Covid is fake, all those people really just died of an unusually bad flu or pneumonia virus.

3. The FBI finds stone cold proof of rampant voter fraud and reinstates Trump as POTUS.

4. Pearl and Pearl L give at least one useful answer before Yahoo Answers is shutdown.

My wife and I file jointly and get the child tax credit for our kids each year.

I understand that the latest stimulus bill increased the CTC to $3600 or $3000 per child (depending on the child's age) and that it created a provision for the IRS to send out monthly payments as an advance on the anticipated credit.

Question 1: is the increased amount ONLY for tax year 2021 or is it for future years? (I'm seeing conflicting info in the articles I've found).

Question 2: Is there an option to skip the monthly payments and just get the credit next year when I file my 2021 tax return? If so is there anything I need to do to opt out of the monthly payments?

I know its "better" to get your money sooner, but the money would just sit in a savings account at 0.05% interest anyway so I'd rather just get it all at once.

Asking for a friend: 

Couple was married filing jointly with 4 children through 2019. Divorced in early 2020, court says all 4 children live full time with Mom and she gets to claim them on taxes (actual living situation matches court order). She filed her 2020 return as early as possible as head of household with all 4 kids as dependent. It was accepted on Feb 12th and still shows as processing on "Where's my Refund" - This return has her new address and bank account on it.In the divorce, she took her name off their joint bank accounts but ex-husband kept the account open in his name only. Both the December stimulus for $600/person and new stimulus for $1400/person went to that (formerly) joint bank account and the ex-husband has pocketed the money and she hasn't seen a dime. 

1. On her 2020 return she claimed $3000 for the recovery rebate credit since she never got any of the "advanced payment" money. Will the IRS approve that claim or are they going to subtract that from her refund because they already sent it (to a bank account that she no longer has access to)?

2. The payment locator tool for the $1400 stimulus says her money was sent to that old account yesterday. When the IRS processes her 2020 refund will they see the updated account and send the stimulus to her new account? if not will she be able to claim the funds on her 2021 tax return next year?

Hi all, I'm looking for a direct reference to IRS publication that explicitly says a young adult cannot file as a non-dependent if their parents CAN claim them, even if the parents choose not to claim them.

I'm in a debate on another forum where people are discussion taxes - specifically the stimulus payments. There is an individual on that thread who claims to be a tax professional and is advising people not to claim their college age children this year so that the young adult child can file independently on their taxes and get the $1800 worth of stimulus credits.

For example one person said they have a 19 year old daughter who lives at home, attends a local college full time, and works part time. Normally the parents would still claim their daughter as a dependent. But the person who claims to be an experienced tax accountant is advising them NOT to claim their 19 year old daughter on 2020 taxes, so that the daughter can file her own taxes as a non-dependent. Thus the parents lose the $500 credit for "other" dependents but the daughter will get $1800 from the stimulus programs.

I'm fairly certain that person is wrong, and what they're advising people to do is illegal. But I want to be able to link directly to an IRS publication, quote an exact line which says this is prohibited. Thanks in advance.

I've tried to follow the updates on this stimulus bill (specifically the direct payments to individuals), but I still have 2 questions I haven't been able to find answers for.

Question 1: Is it possible that people will have to repay some or all of their stimulus in the form of an increased tax liability in 2020 if they qualify for less than what is initially sent.?

For example someone who earned $70k in 2019 would get a check for $1200, but if they got a big promotion and their income went up to $100k in 2020 they wouldn't qualify, so would that $1200 end up being added to their 2020 tax liability, or do they just get to keep it?

Another example:  what about dependents who turn 17 in 2020? If you claimed a 16 year old on 2019 taxes is the IRS going to send you an extra $500 then demand it back when you file your 2020 taxes and see that they didn't actually qualify you for the extra funds?

Question #2: Is the tax credit refundable? If so, what portion?

In other words, if someone already has $0 tax liability, (such as a married couple with only $20k combined income), would they get the full amount or a reduced amount. I know that the original bill (about a week ago) proposed making it 50% refundable, so people could get as little as $600/person, but I thought that may have changed.Note: I am aware that as of this morning it isn't final and could change (or could fall through completely).

Recently had a standard 4-way plug installed on my van for trailer lights. The plug worked properly for a couple times towing a trailer, but now I have a taillight out. The van is a 2012 Chevy Express 3500 (15 passenger van).

I ordered replacement bulb and installed it last night but that didn't fix the problem. Actually tried both the bulbs in the 2-pack, and the original bulb doesn't appear to have a broken filament.

The bulb is the style with 2 filaments in one bulb, where one of them lights up for the taillight, and the other lights up for brake light and turn signal. The brake light works properly, so its only the circuit for the taillight that's not working. Also its only the taillight on the driver's side - the passenger side works properly for both tail and brake light

I'm just looking for suggestions on what to check next. Do you think its possible something shorted out and blew the fuse? Or perhaps the shop that did the trailer wiring spliced into the taillight wire and that splice came loose or overheated or something?

I do plan to contact the shop that did the wiring, but if there's some simple fix I can do in a few minutes its easier than going back in.

Thanks for any tips.

I'm selling my house and buying another one, had everything lined up so my house would sell a week before I close on the new one. That sale fell through, but I'm still under contract to purchase the new house and want to move forward as scheduled.

In order to help cover the down payment, which was going to come from the sale of my current home, my parents are giving my wife and I $20,000.The plan is for them to wire the money directly to the title company toward the purchase of the new house.

My parents would rather not bother with a gift tax form, so we're calling it 2 gifts of $10k, one to my wife, one to me, for a total of $20k.

In order to avoid the requirement for a gift tax return, should they make 2 separate wire transfers of $10k each, to clearly show that its 2 separate gifts? Or can they just make one wire transfer of $20k, and if the IRS ever questions it just tell them is was a gift of $10k to each of us. 

Their bank charges $25 per wire transfer, so they'd rather not make an extra transaction if its not necessary, but its worth the extra fee if it means not hassling with a gift tax form.

Just wondering what the folks on this forum think.

Early this morning (US time zones) the Mariners & Athletics played the 2nd game of their 2 game series in Japan. Ichiro played in both games under the provision which allowed each team to carry 28 players for the international series. However it was widely assumed he would not make the 25 man roster when the teams had to trim 3 players upon return to the US for the rest of the season.

That assumption was confirmed this morning (after the game), when Ichiro announced through the team that this would be the end of his professional baseball career (at least as a player).

My favorite thing about Ichiro was his 10 consecutive 200+ hit seasons from 2001-2010, which marks an MLB record which might never be broken. To me this represents the greatest DECADE of sustained high level performance in history at least for a lead off hitter.

So, what's your favorite thing about Ichro's baseball career?

I work at a very large company where all the payroll & accounting is automated. I can change my W4 just by going on the internal website and typing in the number of allowances I want to claim.

My annual salary is in the low 6 figure range so normally you wouldn't expect someone to claim exempt. But I'm married, my spouse does not work, and we have 6 dependent children. As a result our tax liability is $0 after the child tax credits are applied. It was $0 in 2017, I expect it to be $0 for 2018 once I finalize my tax return, and fully expect it to remain at $0 for 2019.

So I think I qualify for exempt. I'd like to stop having money withheld which just ends up being an interest free loan to the IRS. But I don't want to raise any alarms at the accounting department and have someone lock me in at single - 1 or something.

So I'm looking for opinions. Do you think anyone would notice if I claimed exempt at a large company where everything is automated. If they did notice, would they change my withholding without telling me or just contact me to verify my situation?

I know nobody will know for sure, just looking for everyone's best guess at what might happen.

Also are there any IRS rules or income limits for claiming exempt? Like I said, my tax liability is actually $0 and I end up getting all my withholding back every year.

I have an older Subaru Outback. I know the head gaskets are failing but the repair would cost more than the car is worth so I plan to just drive it until it dies and then scrap it and move on.

The "service engine soon" light comes on a lot, the code is related to an oxygen sensor in the exhaust, but the root cause of the issue is the fact that the car burns oil or coolant or whatever.

Lately the oil light has been coming on for brief periods of time. It comes on when you first start the car and all the dash lights turn on, but when the other lights turn off the oil light will stay on a few seconds longer, sometimes for 30-60 seconds. then it turns off.

I've checked the oil many times and the oil level is good. Its been less than 2,000 miles since my last oil change and the oil doesn't look black or burned, so its not due to be changed.

I'm just wondering what could be causing the oil light? Is it possible for the leaking gaskets to allow coolant into the oil? Like maybe its burning or leaking oil but the level looks right because coolant seeps in? Could there be a problem with the oil filter, like maybe its clogged or something? The coolant does run low over time, I top it off every few months but its not bad.

I'm planning to take the car on a (somewhat) long trip - about 300 miles round trip next weekend so if there's something simple & cheap I can do before then like replacing the filter I'm all ears.

Thanks.

Starting just recently, I'm seeing a ton of questions written in Chinese or Korean or something. I don't even know what language it is, I just know its a bunch of characters. I only speak English and therefore can only read & answer questions in English.

How do I filter my feed to eliminate non-english questions?

I've been using Yahoo Answers for years and this was never an issue until just a week or two ago.

Thanks in advance.

I know that for tax year 2018 the child tax credit increases to $2000 per child with up to $1400 of the credit refundable.

So someone with a high tax liability gets $2000 reduced from their liability. Someone who already has no tax liability would get $1400 added to their refund.

But what about people in between. For example lets say a person has a tax liability of $800 before applying the child tax credit. The CTC would reduce their tax liability to $0. But would their refundable portion be $600 or $1200?

I can see either one being correct, depending how the rule is interpreted.

Interpretation #1 says that since the person is getting refundable credit the value is $1400, they get $800 toward their tax liability, leaving $600 refundable.

Interpretation #2 says that the credit is worth $2000 as long as no more than $1400 is used as refundable, so the first $800 pays the tax liability and the full $1200 worth of unused credit is refundable since the refundable portion is below the $1400 cap.

I originally assumed that #1 would be correct, but when I ran a hypothetical tax scenario on the online calculator for turbo tax (and verified on another software's calculator), it appears to be using interpretation #2.

If possible, I'm curious to see reference to actual IRS website or quotes directly from the new tax law to justify which interpretation is correct.

Thanks in advance.

My wife and I own an LLC. The first couple years in business we paid a CPA to file our taxes. He filed as a partnership on a 1065 and issued K1 forms to each of us. Then the K1 forms get added to other income on our personal 1040.

I'm planning to do our taxes myself this year. From what I'm reading, an LLC can file as a "disregarded entity" and simply report revenue and expenses on schedule C as part of our personal return - but that only applies to single member LLC's, not partnerships.

I'm trying to figure out if I can use this method (schedule C) for our business since its jointly owned by a married couple. There are no other owners or partners and we intend to file a joint return for our personal 1040 so all the income will end up on that same joint return anyway. Some sources say yes, some say we can but must file 2 schedule C forms (one for each of us), and other sources say this isn't allowed at all and we have to keep doing 1065/k1 returns.

So 3 questions:

1. Can we file on schedule C?

2. If so, do we need separate schedule C forms or can I just put all the income in one spouse's name since the end result is the same anyway?

3. If we can file on schedule C, do we need to provide any notice to the IRS of our intent to change from 1065 to a disregarded entity, other than just filing the 1040 with schedule C form(s)?

Thank you,

My wife & I Jointly own a small LLC for a side business (50/50 partnership), we had revenue of about $4000 and expenses of about $8500 for a net loss of $4500 in 2016.

I just got our initial tax return back from our accountant and the K1 forms are only showing a loss of about $2000 total (split between my wife & I).

We have over $100k in other income on my personal tax return so obviously I want the full amount of my business loss to flow through to the personal return to offset other income.

Is there some sort of limitation that prevents us from using the full loss? We are fully liable for the business and personally run it, we're not passive partners or anything.

I've emailed my accountant asking for an explanation but wondering if there's some rule that I'm missing?

There have been lots of ideas thrown around the past few seasons about possible changes to the NFL playoff format, but none of them have happened - at least not yet. If you had the authority to make any 1 change, what would it be:

Option 1: Add a 3rd wildcard team. The newly created 7th seed would play the 2nd seed on wildcard weekend eliminating the 1st round bye for the 2nd seed.

Option 2: Re-Seed the playoffs, allow wildcard teams to have a higher seed than division champions if the WC team has the better record.

Option 3: Eliminate division championships and award the playoff spots to the 6 best teams in each conference regardless of division.

Option 4: Create a minimum record in order for a division champion to earn a playoff spot. Perhaps 8 or 9 wins minimum. If the winner of any division fails to achileve the minimum wins the top wildcard team would move up to the 4th seed (and get a home game) and a 3rd wildcard team would be added to fill the final spot. So seed's 1-3 would be division champs and 4-6 would be wildcard teams.

Option 5: Don't change anything, the system is great as it is.

Option 6: something else (explain what).

I have a few questions about deducting state sales tax on federal income taxes.

1. Is this deduction still allowed - and specifically is it expected to be in place in tax year 2017 and beyond?

2. Are you still allowed to choose between an estimated amount based on your income or the actual amount based on receipts?

3. If you choose the estimated calculation, can you still add tax from major purchases such as cars on top of the estimated amount?

I haven't itemized my federal deductions since 2011 but recently purchased a house and expect to itemize again starting with tax year 2017 and beyond (due to the mortgage interest). I live in Washington state where we don't have state income tax so there's no deduction for income tax, just possibly sales tax.

I basically want to know if it would be a good idea to start saving all my receipts with sales tax starting in January 2017 to possibly boost my federal tax deduction.

I'm moving in about 6 weeks and was thinking of hiring a couple young men to help with some basic tasks such as disassembling a swing set, moving & staging some items, etc. The work would be moderately physical but nothing extremely demanding. I'd be completely flexible on the schedule and mostly have them for a few hours on evenings or weekends - whatever works for them.

I already have a couple young men in mind - its a family friend with 2 older sons, about 16-20 years old (I don't know their exact ages). They live a mile away from my current house so I would pick them up and take them home if necessary. If I need them to help with actually transporting stuff to my new house it would be in my vehicle and I'd be going with them so they wouldn't have any costs for gas and I'd pay them for the entire trip.

I was thinking that somewhere between $10-$15 per hour to would be fair. All cash, paid each day they work with the idea that if they do a good job I might give them a bonus or a gift card or something once my move is complete.

Is this reasonable? Too high? Too low?

Okay I understand the concept that your score is just how many targets you hit.

But what i mean is when you're actually out on the trap field shooting, and you can't really carry a pen & paper and you don't have time to pull out your phone and make notes, what tricks do you use so that you can remember your score when the round is over?

This would be just a casual shooting trip to the local sportsman gun club with friends, not a formal competition, so there's no scorekeeper. But I want to track my scores so I can see if I'm improving.

Last time I tried to just keep track of how many I hit from each station but by the end of the round I feel like was off by one or two. I was thinking of wearing cargo shorts or a jacket and after each shot I either put the shell in my right or left pocket depending on hit or miss, then I can count the shells at the end of the round.

Anyone have any better ideas or tricks for tracking trap scores without a dedicated scorekeeper?

I have a 2000 Subaru Outback with manual transmission. Owned it for about 3 years now and I ve had a recurring issue with the clutch getting a spongy feel. It works fine for my normal commute which is mostly freeway, but acts up in situations where I have to do more shifting such as stop & go traffic or slow curvy roads.

Basically, the clutch starts to feel spongy, and the engagement point gets lower on the pedal s range of movement. The

With the renewed push for a federal ban making news lately its conceivable to think we could be facing a new law similar to the expired 1994 ban. Some states that have pushed for their own individual bans have added language so that the restrictions only apply to centerfire weapons.

There are also some extremest who want to completely ban all semi-auto rifles. If that proposal stands any chance of gaining political support it will have to come with a clause that its for centerfire only.

So its conceivable to think that in the near future there could be new federal regulations either limiting cosmetic features of semi-auto rifles or completely banning semi-auto rifles. Its entirely possible though that any such law would apply only to centerfire weapons.

If that happened, do you think the gun industry would respond with the development of new, larger, rimfire cartridges? Or possibly attempt to revive some of the larger obsolete rimfire cartridges from past generations? What do you think that might look like?

I can imagine possibly 2 new rimfire rounds. The smaller one would be designed to replicate the ballistics of the .223/.556 cartridge. Perhaps up-size it just enough to make it suitable for use on white tail deer as a slap in the face to all the people who have bad-mouthed the AR-15 as not being a hunting rifle.

Then the 2nd new cartridge would be a .30 caliber of some kind, designed to fit in with the applications of a .308 or .30-06 and suitable for elk.