Year: 2013

December 10

Employees who work for tips – If you received $20 or more in tips during November, report them to your employer. You can use Form 4070.

December 16

Corporations – Deposit the fourth installment of estimated income tax for 2013. A worksheet, Form 1120-W, is available to help you estimate your tax for the year.Employers Social Security, Medicare, and withheld income tax – If the monthly deposit rule applies, deposit the tax for payments in November.

Employers Nonpayroll withholding – If the monthly deposit rule applies, deposit the tax for payments in November.

• By Leon Clinton
• December 1, 2013
• 0 comments

If you’re selling your main home this year, we have some helpful tips for you. Even if you make a profit from the sale of your home, you may not have to report it as income.

1. If you sell your home at a gain, you may be able to exclude part or all of the profit from your income. This rule generally applies if you’ve owned and used the property as your main home for at least two out of the five years before the date of sale.

2. You normally can exclude up to $250,000 of the gain from your income ($500,000 on a joint return). This excluded gain is also not subject to the new Net Investment Income Tax, which is effective in 2013.

3. If you can exclude all of the gain, you probably don’t need to report the sale of your home on your tax return.

4. If you can’t exclude all of the gain, or you choose not to exclude it, you’ll need to report the sale of your home on your tax return. You’ll also have to report the sale if you received a Form 1099-S, Proceeds From Real Estate Transactions. Please call us if you need assistance with this.

5. Generally, you can exclude a gain from the sale of only one main home per two-year period.

6. If you have more than one home, you can exclude a gain only from the sale of your main home. You must pay tax on the gain from selling any other home. If you have two homes and live in both of them, your main home is usually the one you live in most of the time.

7. Special rules may apply when you sell a home for which you received the first-time homebuyer credit. Please call us if you need additional information about this topic.

8. You cannot deduct a loss from the sale of your main home.

9. When you sell your home and move, be sure to update your address with the IRS and the U.S. Postal Service. File Form 8822, Change of Address, to notify the IRS.

10. If you have any questions about the tax implications of selling your home, please give us a call.

• By Leon Clinton
• November 27, 2013
• 0 comments

The 2014 filing season is likely to be delayed one to two weeks to allow adequate time to program and test tax processing systems following the 16-day federal government closure.

A final decision will be announced in December, Acting IRS Commissioner Danny Werfel said.

The original start date of the 2014 filing season was Jan. 21, and with a one- to two-week delay, the IRS would start accepting and processing 2013 individual tax returns no earlier than January 28 and no later than February 4.

Programming, testing, and deployment of more than 50 IRS systems is needed to handle processing of nearly 150 million tax returns. Updating these core systems is a complex, year-round process with the majority of the work beginning in the fall of each year.

The government closure came during the peak period for preparing IRS systems for the 2014 filing season. About 90 percent of IRS operations were closed during the shutdown, with some major workstreams closed entirely during this period, putting the IRS nearly three weeks behind its tight timetable for being ready to start the 2014 filing season.

IRS processes, applications and databases must be updated annually to reflect tax law updates, business process changes, and programming updates in time for the start of the filing season.

Additional training, programming and testing demands on IRS systems are also taking place this year in order to provide additional refund fraud and identity theft detection and prevention.

Following the 16-day closure, the IRS has experienced heavy demand on its toll-free telephone lines, walk-in sites and other services from taxpayers and tax practitioners; however, as is always the case, we are available to answer any tax questions you may have. Don’t hesitate to call us.

• By Leon Clinton
• November 19, 2013
• 0 comments