What a day.....

[LdiJ]

What is the name of your state (only U.S. law)? NA for this thread

I had one heck of a day at the office today, it seems like every single person who came in today was someone who did NOT have us prepare their taxes, got a CP-2000 letter for 2013, and were desperate for someone to help them fix the mess that they made.

Of course I am exaggerating...it was the people who just walked in, not the regular appointments.

Anyway, I am sure that the other tax professionals here will appreciate this one:

Guy comes in with a CP-2000 letter showing a proposed balance due of over 20k. The CP-2000 letter was about 20 pages long filled with stock sales, dividends, capital gains distributions etc. I asked him if he had his original tax return, and he hands me a HAND WRITTEN tax return, in pencil, and all of his original docs...shudder....Anywho, I had an appointment reschedule so I had some time available so I decided to tackle it while he was there.

Turns out that he has always done hand written returns, but until 2013 his returns were fairly simple. However, in 2013 his father died and left him numerous brokerage accounts.

I decided that the only way I was going to make heads or tails of it was to recreate they original returns in our system, using his original docs, to try to see what was really missing. It turns out that he had all of the original docs, but simply had no idea how to handle them. I was able to ascertain fairly quickly, with a bit of trial and error, that he had properly included all of the dividends and interest from the brokerage accounts, but that he had identified many of the dividends incorrectly. The amounts were correct, just identified wrong. In additional he left off all of his capital gains distributions and stock sales.

Long story short, he only owed about 3.2k instead of 20k, he was thrilled, we got it all written up with a nice, neat package to submit to the IRS and he promised to make an appointment to do his 2014 taxes, so the whole thing wasn't nearly as bad as it could have been.

Moral of the story? People REALLY need to understand when things have changed enough that they are over their heads...and seek help. He is not the first, and won't be the last taxpayer that I will deal with who received an inheritance and totally bungled things. Thank goodness that he didn't panic more than he did and just sent off the money to the IRS, because its a whole lot harder to clean it up when people do that.

 

[davew128]

I'm convinced the average person is an idiot, and that's nothing to do with understanding the tax code. We started sending efile authorizations through a nationally known digital signature service. It's so easy a caveman should be able to do it. Click the start button on the email, start button on the web site you go to, type your name in, click finish and away we go. The response from some of the older and slower and older-slower people was less than enthusiastic.

"I don't understand what this is" ...because you've never seen an efile authorization form before???
"How do I do it?"...try reading the email. Its written in English with small syllable words.
"Do you get it sent to you?"...try reading the confirmation email you got 10 seconds later that says both parties get a signed copy.
"Should I download it, print it, sign it, scan it, and email it back to you?"..not unless you want to be called an idiot for wasting my time.
"Nothing on the internet is secure"...yet you emailed all of your documents to me....


All of these are real responses.

 

[LdiJ]

I'm convinced the average person is an idiot, and that's nothing to do with understanding the tax code. We started sending efile authorizations through a nationally known digital signature service. It's so easy a caveman should be able to do it. Click the start button on the email, start button on the web site you go to, type your name in, click finish and away we go. The response from some of the older and slower and older-slower people was less than enthusiastic.

"I don't understand what this is" ...because you've never seen an efile authorization form before???
"How do I do it?"...try reading the email. Its written in English with small syllable words.
"Do you get it sent to you?"...try reading the confirmation email you got 10 seconds later that says both parties get a signed copy.
"Should I download it, print it, sign it, scan it, and email it back to you?"..not unless you want to be called an idiot for wasting my time.
"Nothing on the internet is secure"...yet you emailed all of your documents to me....


All of these are real responses.

I've got another one along those lines. We email a lot of tax returns. The email system automatically generates a password so that the returns are password protected. The body of the email clearly explains to the taxpayer how to figure out the password. However it never fails that at least 60%, if not more, of the people who receive the emails end up calling us up and saying "I cannot open the email, it needs a password"...and then get offended when we tell them that we cannot give them the password, that they have to go back and actually READ the email.

 

[single317dad]

I'm convinced the average person is an idiot

I used to think exactly that way, but over the years I've changed my mind somewhat.

I think the problem is that so many people are specialized these days. Myself, I'm a "jack-of-all-trades" kind of guy; there are a few things I do really well, and many things I'm competent at. Most people, though, start in late high school or college learning one single thing and go with it. Their entire adult lives, they groom themselves to be one thing: an accountant, a business leader, a medical professional, etc. Many, many people who are experts in their field don't know a single thing about anything else, which is exemplified by the number of folks who can't do basic auto maintenance like checking or changing their own oil. The majority of people don't know how to grow a small garden or fix a leaky pipe; they just never learned those things in their race to climb the socioeconomic ladder.

I've gone through a great deal of existential contemplation in recent years, and I don't know which way is better for the masses, but for me, I like being able to eat food I grew and prepared myself, weld two pieces of metal together, rebuild a transmission, and crochet a warm blanket.

 

[davew128]

I used to think exactly that way, but over the years I've changed my mind somewhat.

I think the problem is that so many people are specialized these days. Myself, I'm a "jack-of-all-trades" kind of guy; there are a few things I do really well, and many things I'm competent at. Most people, though, start in late high school or college learning one single thing and go with it. Their entire adult lives, they groom themselves to be one thing: an accountant, a business leader, a medical professional, etc. Many, many people who are experts in their field don't know a single thing about anything else, which is exemplified by the number of folks who can't do basic auto maintenance like checking or changing their own oil. The majority of people don't know how to grow a small garden or fix a leaky pipe; they just never learned those things in their race to climb the socioeconomic ladder.

I've gone through a great deal of existential contemplation in recent years, and I don't know which way is better for the masses, but for me, I like being able to eat food I grew and prepared myself, weld two pieces of metal together, rebuild a transmission, and crochet a warm blanket.

I had a similar discussion recently with a fellow board member of the local high IQ society. We talked about specialization, and how people don't know how to do things we were all expected to know and do 20 years ago. Younger people don't know how to use problem solving skills and older people don't want to change adapt and grow. Then we talked about school curriculum and why much of if it actually IS important (from a fundamental standpoint) with the exception of English. Communication of the main language of the land is important but the hyper advanced concepts of grammar, syntax, etc are absolutely a waste of time for any purpose outside of teaching the language academically at a high level. It isn't necessary for communication, ergo it isn't necessary.