My Online Bookkeeper Blog

In a recent study, the IRS determined that over half of all under-reporting is attributable to Schedule C, the form used by self-employed individuals to report their profits or losses for the year. It is no wonder that the audit rate for Schedule C returns has increased substantially and is among the highest of all rates. Based on 2010 IRS figures, Schedule Cs have a 300% higher chance of being audited than either a partnership or an S-Corporation. Of the Schedule Cs audited in 2010, the average adjustment exceeded $9,000.

Among the areas of underreporting are:

Personal Expenses – Over-deductions attributable to the inclusion of non-deductible personal expenses and the failure to allocate for personal use of a vehicle.

Underreporting Income – Failure to include all income. To counter this problem, the IRS has initiated merchant card and third-party reporting that will provide the IRS with all income from credit card sales.

Worker Misclassification – Misclassifying workers as independent contractors instead of treating them as W-2 employees, thereby avoiding the employer’s share of payroll, unemployment, and other taxes. The IRS currently has a Voluntary Classification Settlement Program in effect that allows eligible taxpayers to voluntarily reclassify their workers for federal employment tax purposes. Voluntary programs usually precede more aggressive compliance measures.

Failing to Issue Information Returns – Generally, businesses are required to issue 1099s for fees they pay to individuals other than employees or to corporations. This is a huge area of non-compliance that denies the IRS the ability to ensure that payees are properly reporting their income. In an audit in which a 1099 should have been issued and was not, the IRS will generally disallow the deduction for those services. The 2011 Schedule C asks two catch-22 questions: “Did you make payments that would require you to

file a Form 1099?” and “If yes, did you or will you file all required Forms 1099?”

Hobby Losses – Some businesses are actually hobbies, where there is no real intention of ever making a profit. Businesses deemed to be hobbies have special rules that limit the expense deductions to the income and require the deductions to be taken as itemized deductions on Schedule A. Watch for a future article on hobby losses that will appear in the March newsletter.

If you have questions related to your Schedule C or any of the issues in this article, please give this office a call.

Now that tax season is upon us, so are the e-mail scammers pretending to be the IRS. Most of these scams fraudulently use the IRS name, logo, and/or website header as a lure to make the communication appear more authentic and enticing. They lead you to believe you had a refund of some sort coming and request personal information. The goal of these scams – known as phishing – is to trick you into revealing your personal and financial information. The scammers can then use your information – like your Social Security number, bank account, or credit card numbers – to commit identity theft or steal your money.

DON’T BE A VICTIM – THE IRS DOES NOT INITIATE E-MAIL CORRESPONDENCE

The Internal Revenue

Service receives thousands of reports each year from taxpayers who receive suspicious e-mails, phone calls, faxes, or notices claiming to be from the IRS. If you find something suspicious, you should immediately call this office before responding. In fact, it is a good policy to check with this office before responding to any inquiry from the IRS or state or local tax agencies.

Here are some tips you should know about phishing scams.

1. The IRS never asks for detailed personal and financial information like PIN numbers, passwords, or similar secret access information for credit card, bank, or other financial accounts.

2. The IRS does not initiate contact with taxpayers by e-mail to request personal or financial information. If you receive an e-mail from someone claiming to be a representative of the IRS or directing you to an IRS site:

Do not reply to the message.

Do not open any attachments. Attachments may contain malicious code that will infect your computer.

Do not click on any links. If you clicked on links in a suspicious e-mail or phishing website and entered confidential information, you may have compromised your financial information. If you entered your credit card number, contact the credit card company for guidance. If you entered your banking information, contact the bank for the appropriate steps to take. The IRS website provides additional resources that can help. Visit the IRS website  and enter the search term “identity theft” for additional information.

3. The address of the official IRS website is www.irs.gov. Do not be confused or misled by sites claiming to be the IRS but ending in .com, .net, .org or other designations instead of .gov. If you discover a website that claims to be the IRS but you suspect it is bogus, do not provide any personal information on the suspicious site.

4. If you receive a phone call, fax, or letter in the mail from an individual claiming to be from the IRS but you suspect he or she is not an IRS employee, contact the IRS at 1-800-829-1040 to determine if the IRS has a legitimate need to contact you. Report any bogus correspondence. You can forward a suspicious e-mail to phishing@irs.gov.

If you have any questions or doubts related to a letter, phone call, or e-mail from the IRS or other taxing authorities, please call this office before responding or providing any financial or personal information. Better safe than sorry!

Have you received your W-2? These documents are essential to filling out most individual tax returns. You should receive a 2011 Form W-2, Wage and Tax Statement, from each of your employers each year. Employers have until January 31, 2012 to provide or send you a 2011 W-2 earnings statement either electronically or in paper form.  However, you should wait a week or so before becoming concerned. If by then you have not received your W-2, follow these steps:

1. Contact My Online Bookkeeper: Let us know you are missing a W-2. If your appointment is in the near future, we will advise you whether to keep the appointment or change it to another time. Most payroll services provide year-to-date totals of income and withholding with each paycheck, so your final paycheck for the year will probably include all the data needed to prepare your return, and you can still keep your tax appointment. Even if you do not have the year-to-date totals for a missing W-2 or 1099, it is best to keep the appointment. Everything else for the return, except for the missing document, can be completed, and you can

mail or drop the missing items by the office at a later date. That way, your return can be finished as soon as the W-2 or 1099 is available. This will speed up your refund if you are receiving one.

2. Contact your employer: If you have not received your W-2, the first step is to contact your employer to inquire if and when the W-2 was mailed. If it was mailed, it may have been returned to the employer because of an incorrect or incomplete address. After contacting the employer, allow a reasonable amount of time for them to resend or to issue the W-2.

3. Contact the IRS: If you still do not receive your W-2 by February 15, you can contact the IRS for assistance at 800-829-1040. However, we recommend that you hold off from contacting the IRS until you are certain that you will not be receiving a W-2 from the employer, even at a date substantially later than February 15. If, and when, you do call the IRS, have the following information at hand:

Employer’s name, address, city, and state, including zip code;

Your name, address, city, and state, including zip code, and your Social Security number; and

An estimate of the wages you earned, the federal income tax withheld, and the period you worked for that employer. The estimate should be based on year-to-date information from your final pay stub or leave-and-earnings statement, if possible. This office can assist you in making the estimate.

4. File your return: Even if you don’t receive a W-2, you still must file your tax return or request an extension to file by April 17.

If you anticipate that you will ultimately receive the missing W-2, this office can estimate your 2011 tax liability and file extensions for you. If you have a substantial refund coming, you may opt to have this office prepare a substitute W-2, and you can file without the W-2. Refunds for returns including substitute W-2s can be delayed significantly while the IRS verifies the W-2 information.

If you don’t anticipate receiving the missing W-2, then a substitute W-2 can be prepared, allowing you to file your 2011 tax return.

If a substitute W-2 is used and it is later determined that the information used to prepare the substitute W-2 was in error, an amended return may have to be prepared for you to file.

Please My Online Bookkeeper if you have any questions at (415) 480-5204 or info@myonlinebookkeeper.com

For tax purposes, if you receive, in your name, income that actually belongs to someone else, you are also a nominee. Being a nominee means you must file with the IRS a 1099 form appropriate to the type of income you received and give a copy of the 1099 to the actual owner of the income. However, if the other person is your spouse, no 1099 filing is required.

The most commonly encountered nominee situations include when you have a joint bank account or brokerage account with someone other than your spouse and all the income from those accounts are reported under your SS number. You will need to issue the IRS and your joint account owner a 1099 reporting the co-owner’s share of the income under his or her social security number. Then, when you file your return, you show all of the income but back out the co-owner’s share as “nominee amount.”

The type of

1099 depends upon the type of income: 1099-INT for interest, 1099-DIV for dividends and 1099-B for the proceeds from selling stocks and bonds.

Forms 1099-INT and 1099-DIV that you issue as a nominee are supposed to be given to the recipients by January 31, while the deadline for giving Forms 1099-B to the other owner(s) is February 15. In order to avoid a penalty, copies of the 1099s need to be sent to the IRS by February 28. The 1099s must be submitted on magnetic media or on optically scannable forms (OCR forms). This firm prepares 1099s in OCR format for submission to the IRS along with the required 1096 transmittal form. This service provides recipient and file copies for your records.

If you have questions, please contact My Online Bookkeeper at info@MyOnlineBookkeeper.com or (877) 893-1052!