Bob F

Each year, when I file, I can see what percentage of my income goes to taxes. It's usually 6 and change due to a lot of deductions and the child care credit. Wouldn't it make a lot of sense to allow people to just pick a percentage of their pay to have withheld based upon their previous year's tax liability? So, all I would do on a W4 would be to put down a simple number, 7% to have withheld. Does this make sense?

I was reviewing a tax return prepared by my boss at our office yesterday. The taxpayer listed among her expenses "72 trips from lodging to office at a total of 1,060 miles (~14 miles per round trip)". I thought that this looked an awful lot like she was trying to deduct commuting expenses and I rejected it. Just curious if I did the right thing. She also listed expenses for trips to Austin, TX that included "hotel room approx. $70, hotel room $79.09, hotel room $35.50, food for a 1-day trip, approx. $50, food for a 2-day trip, approx. $60" and the preparer listed a total of $122 in travel expenses, which I also found odd. Thoughts?

I had a client yesterday, and they rented out a snow plow to do snow removal. They didn't do any actual snow removal themselves. They got a 1099-MISC from the company that rented the plow, and it listed the amount as non-employee compensation. I told them this looked more like rental income and they should speak to the company they did business with.

Is there a better way to handle this? Or was the company correct in doing it this way?

Thanks in advance.

I'm doing taxes for a local Liberty Tax franchise. I've already passed levels 1 and 2, but the level 3 exam was a bit of a bear. There are a couple of topics I did especially poorly on, and I was wondering if any of you could recommend specific study material.

My worst topics were (in order from worst to mediocre):

Resident and Nonresident Aliens

Rental Property (this hurts, I used to rent out a property in the 90's)

Employee Business Expenses (I get reimbursed, so I have very little experience in this area)

Thanks!

Normally, I wouldn't have trouble changing his monitor's settings, but because he set the screen to all black, I can't even see where the menu selections are even when I bring up control panel or the windows display settings. He's using Windows XP. Thanks in advance for any help!

For many years, people have been told "if your income is below $x you don't have to file, but if federal tax was withheld, you should file anyway."

With the Making Work Pay credit, that advice is outdated. EVERYBODY with earned income should file, even if they earned $200 for the year to get that $12 back.

Am I missing something, or should we be changing our answers to reflect this fact (at least temporarily)?

Here's an actual question from a tax prep training book:

John and Mary were married in 2010. Mary had wages of $2500 and lived with her parents all year. John was in the Navy, stationed in Guam, trying to prevent the island from capsizing, and earned $12000. John and Mary file a joint return. Mary's parents have 2 other children 13 and 15 years old who lived with them all year. Mary's parents paid all of the support for Mary and their other children.

The questions are the number of exemptions claimed by John and Mary and the number of exemptions claimed by Mary's parents. In class, we thought it was 1 and 5 (because Mary only filed jointly to claim a refund), but the answer book listed it as 2 and 4. Did we miss something subtle that we may have overlooked or is the book incorrect?

I often do a bunch of pullups for exercise. I let my legs hang in a manner where my abs are actually being engaged during the activity. Often, I still feel as though my abs are still working hours later, sometimes when I'm laying in bed when I'm ready to go to sleep. Is this odd?