The IRS has this advice for anyone who receives an email claiming to be from 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; and

Do not click on any links in a suspicious email or phishing website and do not enter confidential information. Visit the IRS website and click on ‘Identity Theft’ at the bottom of the page for more information.

Here are five other key points the IRS wants you to know about phishing scams.

1. The IRS does not initiate contact with taxpayers by email or social media channels to request personal or financial information;
2. 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;
3. The address of the official IRS website is www.irs.gov. Do not be misled by sites claiming to be the IRS but ending in .com, .net, .org or anything other than .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 their site and report it to the IRS;
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 they are 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. Forward a suspicious email to phishing@irs.gov;
5. You can help the IRS and other law enforcement agencies shut down these schemes. Visit the IRS.gov website to get details on how to report scams and helpful resources if you are the victim of a scam. Click on “Reporting Phishing” at the bottom of the page.

Under this rule most types of income are taxable. Income can include money, property or services that you receive. Here are some examples of income that are usually not taxable:

• Child support payments;
• Gifts, bequests and inheritances;
• Welfare benefits;
• Damage awards for physical injury or sickness;
• Cash rebates from a dealer or manufacturer for an item you buy; and
• Reimbursements for qualified adoption expenses.

Some income is not taxable except under certain conditions. Examples include:

• Life insurance proceeds paid to you because of an insured person’s death are usually not taxable. However, if you redeem a life insurance policy for cash, any amount that is more than the cost of the policy is taxable.
• Income you get from a qualified scholarship is normally not taxable. Amounts you use for certain costs, such as tuition and required course books, are not taxable. However, amounts used for room and board are taxable.
• All income, such as wages and tips, is taxable unless the law specifically excludes it. This includes non-cash income from bartering – the exchange of property or services. Both parties must include the fair market value of goods or services received as income on their tax return.
• If you received a refund, credit or offset of state or local income taxes in 2012, you may be required to report this amount. If you did not receive a 2012 Form 1099-G, check with the government agency that made the payments to you. That agency may have made the form available only in an electronic format. You will need to get instructions from the agency to retrieve this document. Report any taxable refund you received even if you did not receive Form 1099-G.

If you have not received your W-2, follow these three steps:

1. Contact your employer first.  Ask your employer – or former employer – to send your W-2 if it has not already been sent. Make sure your employer has your correct address.

2. Contact the IRS. After February 14, you may call the IRS at 800-829-1040 if you have not yet received your W-2. Be prepared to provide your name, address, Social Security number and phone number. You should also have the following information when you call:

• Your employer’s name, address and phone number;

• Your employment dates; and

• An estimate of your wages and federal income tax withheld in 2012, based upon your final pay stub or leave-and-earnings statement, if available.

3. File your return on time. You should still file your tax return on or before April 15, 2013, even if you have not yet received your W-2. File Form 4852, Substitute for Form W-2, Wage and Tax Statement, in place of the W-2. Use the form to estimate your income and withholding taxes as accurately as possible. The IRS may delay processing your return while it verifies your information.

If you need more time to file you can get a six-month extension of time. File Form 4868, Application for Automatic Extension of Time to File US Individual Income Tax Return.  If you are requesting an extension, you must file this form on or before April 15, 2013.

If you receive the missing W-2 after filing your tax return and the information on the W-2 is different from what you reported using Form 4852, then you must correct your tax return. File Form 1040X, Amended U.S. Individual Income Tax Return to amend your tax return.

Call us to get you the latest Forms and instructions.

Let us help you with your tax return. Call 718 258 1829 for more information.

If you received income during 2012, you may need to file a tax return in 2013. The amount of your income, your filing status, your age and the type of income you received will determine whether you’re required to file. Even if you are not required to file a tax return, you may still want to file. You may get a refund if you’ve had too much federal income tax withheld from your pay or qualify for certain tax credits.

Even if you’ve determined that you don’t need to file a tax return this year, you may still want to file. Here are five reasons why:

New questions regarding the filing of Forms 1099 have popped up on 2011 tax forms and are giving practitioners heartburn. Starting in 2011 Forms 1120 and 1120S, and Schedule C of Form 1040, all contain the following new questions: Did you make any payments in 2011/2 that would require you to file Form(s) 1099? and If Yes,’ did you or will you file all required Forms 1099? The new questions coincide with an increase in the penalties, effective in 2011, for failing to file correct information returns and payee statements. Practitioners are concerned that their clients may not be focused enough on the ramifications of not correctly reporting Form 1099 income. And practitioners are also worried about their own liability for checking these boxes and taking a deduction for amounts that the taxpayer can’t substantiate.

For example, how is a contractor, who sporadically picks up day laborers during the year to perform occasional work, going to answer the new questions? If any of these day laborers are picked up several times during the year, the amounts paid to that worker will most likely exceed $600 so that the contractor is responsible for issuing a Form 1099-MISC to that individual. How will the contractor prove that he didn’t pay more than $600? Basically, without proper records, a taxpayer can’t prove he paid anything to anyone. If the taxpayer doesn’t issue a Form 1099 or provide support for payments under $600, the IRS will disallow the deduction.

PRACTICE TIP: Practitioners should advise their clients to have the laborers, or any other worker they might make payments to thatwill add up to $600 or more for the year, to complete a Form W-9. To the extent anyone is paid more than $600, a Form 1099-MISC should then be issued at the end of the year. Practitioners should also document in their files that they’ve had this discussion with clients and may want to consider revising their engagement letter to reflect the documentation a client will need in order to take certain deductions on the return.

A person that fails to file a correct information return by the due date and cannot show reasonable cause may be subject to a penalty. The penalty applies if the person fails to file timely, fails to include all information required to be shown on a return, or includes incorrect information on a return. The penalty also applies if a person files on paper when required to file electronically, reports an incorrect taxpayer identification number (TIN) or fails to report a TIN, or fails to file paper forms that are machine readable. The amount of the penalty is based on when the correct information return is filed. For returns required to be filed on or after January 1, 2011, the penalty is:

(1) $30 per information return for returns filed correctly within 30 days after the due date (by March 30 if the due date is February 28), with a maximum penalty of $250,000 a year ($75,000 for certain small businesses);

(2) $60 per information return for returns filed more than 30 days after the due date but by August 1, with a maximum penalty of $500,000 a year ($200,000 for certain small businesses); and

(3) $100 per information return for returns filed after August 1 or not filed at all, with a maximum penalty of $1,500,000 a year ($500,000 for certain small businesses).

For this purpose, a business is a small business for any calendar year if its average annual gross receipts for the most recent three tax years (or for the period it was in existence, if shorter) ending before the calendar year do not exceed $5,000,000.

Persons who are required to file information returns electronically but who fail to do so (without an approved waiver) are treated as having failed to file the return, and are therefore subject to a penalty of up to $100 per return unless the person shows reasonable cause for the failure. However, they can file up to 250 returns on paper; those returns will not be subject to a penalty for failure to file electronically. The penalty applies separately to original returns and corrected returns.

For each fifth calendar year beginning after 2012, each of the dollar amounts described above is subject to indexing for inflation.

The penalty for failure to include the correct information on a return does not apply to a de minimis number of information returns with such failures if the failures are corrected by August 1 of the calendar year in which the due date occurs. The number of returns to which this exception applies cannot be more than the greater of 10 returns or 0.5 percent of the total number of information returns required to be filed for the year.

The penalty for a failure to include the correct information on a return does not apply to inconsequential errors or omissions. If a failure to file a correct information return is due to an intentional disregard of one of the requirements (i.e., it is a knowing or willing failure), the penalty is the greater of $250 per return or the statutory percentage of the aggregate dollar amount of the items required to be reported (the statutory percentage depends on the type of information return at issue). In addition, in the case of intentional disregard of the requirements, the $1,500,000 limitation does not apply.

A qualified disaster relief payment is an amount paid:

• To reimburse or pay reasonable and necessary personal, family, living, or funeral expenses that result from a qualified disaster.
• To reimburse or pay reasonable and necessary expenses incurred for the repair or rehabilitation of your home or repair or replacement of its contents to the extent it is due to a qualified disaster.

Qualified disaster relief payments exclude any income replacement payments, such as payments of lost wages, lost business income or unemployment benefits and would be taxable. In addition, although an employee is not required to substantiate that the qualified disaster relief payments are related to a qualified disaster, the employer may exclude such payments from income only to the extent that insurance does not otherwise compensate the employee for the loss.

To be deductible in 2012 these payments must be made by December 31, 2012.

It is a very good idea to purchase an inexpensive program such as Quickbooks to help categorize your income and expenses. You can email the “Accountants copy” to your accountant while you continue to work in Quickbooks. Any changes your accountant makes can be imported back to Quickbooks. Call Matis at 646-580-1099 or email matis@1099bookkeepers.com for help in setting up your Quickbooks program.

1. In most cases, the IRS does not require you to keep records in any special manner. Generally, you should keep any and all documents that may have an impact on your federal tax return. It’s a good idea to have a designated place for tax documents and receipts.

2. Individual taxpayers should usually keep the following records supporting items on their tax returns for at least three years:

• Bills
• Credit card and other receipts
• Invoices
• Mileage logs
• Canceled, imaged or substitute checks or any other proof of payment
• Any other records to support deductions or credits you claim on your return
• You should normally keep records relating to property until at least three years after you sell or otherwise dispose of the property. Examples include:
• A home purchase or improvement
• Stocks and other investments
• Individual Retirement Arrangement transactions
• Rental property records

3. If you are a small business owner, you must keep all your employment tax records for at least four years after the tax becomes due or is paid, whichever is later. Examples of important documents business owners should keep Include:

• Gross receipts: Cash register tapes, bank deposit slips, receipt books, invoices, credit card charge slips and Forms 1099-MISC
• Proof of purchases: Canceled checks, cash register tape receipts, credit card sales slips and invoices
• Expense documents: Canceled checks, cash register tapes, account statements, credit card sales slips, invoices and petty cash slips for small cash payments
• Documents to verify your assets: Purchase and sales invoices, real estate closing statements and canceled checks

by Jonnelle Marte
Wednesday, September 7, 2011

provided by

1. “Long-term deficit? We can hardly afford our bills today.”

Worried about the future of Social Security? You’re far from alone. The Social Security Administration itself has said that unless something is done to reform the system, it will burn through its funds within the next few decades. Less talked about, perhaps, is the concern about the present: the program is having a hard time paying its bills. In 2010, the Social Security Administration collected less revenue in taxes than it needed to cover its benefit payments — the first time expenditures have exceeded income since 1983. As a result, the program had to tap its $2.5 trillion trust fund, sooner than some had expected. The same is expected to happen this year. “The depth of the recession has slowed down revenues to the system,” say Eugene Steuerle, an economist with the Urban Institute, a non-partisan think tank in Washington, D.C.

A Social Security spokeswoman points out that interest income from the Treasury bonds held in the trust fund will allow it to keep growing until 2022 — even if the agency has to siphon off some money to offset any shortages in tax revenue — and won’t be exhausted until 2036, when the first Gen Xers begin retiring. But that’s already one year earlier than previous projections. After that, the agency says tax income under the current system will only cover about 75% of benefit payments through 2085.

2. “The more you make, the less you get back.”

It’s common to think of Social Security as an individual account of sorts — what you pay in, you get back, more or less. That’s far from accurate. By design, the Social Security Administration says, the system is tilted in favor of lower-income workers who have fewer resources to save for retirement. In practice, that means that the more money you make, the less you get back, at least as a percentage of your salary. For example, a single, 66-year-old man who earned $50,000 per year on average and retired in 2011 would get an annual benefit payment of about $22,800, or about 45% of his annual salary. If he had earned $150,000 per year, he would get annual benefits of about $30,670 — just 20% of his annual salary. “People act like the percentage of benefits of your salary you get is the same for everyone and it really isn’t,” says Jo Anne Barnhart, former Social Security Commissioner.

That’s particularly true for the highest earners. Benefits are calculated on a maximum average salary of $106,800, which means anyone who made that much or more — whether by a few dollars or by a few hundred thousand dollars — gets the same annual Social Security payment. To be fair, earnings over that threshold aren’t taxed, either, and the agency spokeswoman says benefits are meant as supplemental retirement income, not full freight.

3. “This used to be a much better deal.”

Today’s workers — boomers, Gens X and Y — like to carp about Social Security, but it’s not all sour grapes or skepticism about paying into a system with an uncertain future. Employees today pay more in Social Security taxes than previous generations did. They’re also likely to get smaller benefits when it’s their turn to retire.

Over the years, as the Social Security Administration has come to grips with the cost of its benefit program — and the ranks of eligible beneficiaries has swollen — taxes to fund the program have gone up and up, a trend that experts say is likely to continue over the coming years. As a result, workers now pay 6.2% in payroll taxes (reduced to 4.2% in 2011) — nearly double the 3.6% tax rate workers paid in 1965. Over the same time period, the maximum earnings eligible for taxation have also increased from $4,800 (equivalent to about $34,500 in 2011 dollars) to $106,800.

For example, a single man who retired in 1980 at age 65 after earning an average wage of $43,500 would have paid about $96,000 in Social Security taxes, and probably received $203,000 in lifetime benefits, according to a study by the Urban Institute, a non-partisan policy think tank in Washington D.C. By contrast, a single man making the same average wage today and retiring in 2030 will likely pay $398,000 in lifetime taxes but receive just $336,000 in lifetime benefits — about 16% less than he paid in. “People who were first in the system got a great rate of return,” says Alan Gustman, chair of the economics department at Dartmouth College. “It’s the younger generation that is going to be in the most difficult position.”

The agency spokeswoman says the imbalance is partly due to the fact that the earliest beneficiaries only paid taxes in the later stages of their careers.

4. “Want a bigger check? Go back to work.”

Most people within ten years of age 62 have already started doing the Social Security math problem: How much do I get if I wait one year to take payments? How much if I wait two years? To get the biggest bump in benefits, workers have to delay their benefits beyond full retirement age — around 66 for people born before 1957, closer to 67 for people born after. (To find your exact date, see Social Security Online.) For every additional year you wait, you’ll get an 8% increase in payments until you hit age 70. Someone who earned, on average, $50,000 per year over their working life would get $1,900 per month at 66, but $2,505 if he waited until age 70 — a 32% boost. “You’ll get a bigger benefit amount for the rest of your life,” says Dennis Marvin, a financial planner in Cleveland.

If you’ve already started collecting benefits and you’re under full retirement age, it’s not too late to get a raise. One strategy: Go back to work. If you earn more than $14,160, the Social Security Administration will dock $1 in benefits for every $2 you earn. But once you reach full retirement age, your benefits will be recalculated to account for the money you didn’t get while working. So, for example, someone who took their benefits at 62 — at a 25% reduction compared to full benefits — but went back to work from ages 63 to 66 and earned enough to zero out his entire Social Security check could end up collecting close to full benefits at age 66.

5. “Good luck qualifying for disability.”

More than 8 million people receive Social Security Disability Insurance, which is awarded to people who are unable to work because of a long-term physical or mental disability. But qualifying is no easy task, says John Roberts, manager of Myler Disability, an advocacy group. Only 30% who applied in 2009 were awarded benefits, down from 44% in 1999, according to agency data.

Some of that change can be attributed to more people applying for benefits — 2.8 million in 2009 compared to 1.5 million a decade earlier. That’s common when the economy is tough, says Gustman: The number of applications rises, along with an increase in claims that fall short of the agency’s standards. Even for people with true and serious disabilities, it can be difficult to qualify. The process can take years and often requires legal help. Most people have to wait for a hearing, says Roberts: “Best case, it is 18 months before you get approved.” In some cases, the battle goes to federal court.

To improve your chances, Roberts recommends applying for benefits as soon as you become disabled. Waiting too long could leave you in a situation where you haven’t worked long enough to qualify for disability benefits. You must generally have worked at least three to ten years before you became disabled, depending on your age. The spokeswoman for the Social Security Administration says it does not pay benefits for partial or short-term disability and taxpayers must be able to show that they cannot do work they did before or adjust to other work because of their medical condition.

6. “You can be unemployed and retired.”

A growing number of people in their 60s are collecting unemployment and Social Security benefits at the same time. Since 2002, seventeen states have changed the rules to allow people to qualify for more unemployment benefits while they receive Social Security, according to the National Employment Law Project, which has advocated on behalf of allowing seniors to claim both. It’s perfectly legal; you just have to report the income to both agencies.

There is no clear data on how many people are drawing both. About 10% percent of people who collected unemployment benefits in 2010 were 60 or older, according to the Department of Labor; the minimum age to collect Social Security retirement benefits is age 62. For those who qualify, the option has obvious appeal for older Americans struggling to find work in today’s weak job market. “We are generally talking about older workers who lose their jobs involuntarily, who are trying to survive,” says George Wentworth, an attorney with the National Employment Law Project.

Receiving unemployment benefits doesn’t affect your Social Security payments, but the reverse is not always true: In some states, collecting Social Security can reduce your unemployment checks. In Illinois, Louisiana, South Dakota, Utah and Colorado, your unemployment benefits can be reduced by half of your monthly Social Security benefit.

1. Don’t panic. Many of these letters can be dealt with simply and painlessly.
2. There are number of reasons the IRS sends notices to taxpayers. The notice may request payment of taxes, notify you of a change to your account or request additional information. The notice you receive normally covers a very specific issue about your account or tax return.
3. Each letter and notice offers specific instructions on what you need to do to satisfy the inquiry.
4. If you receive a correction notice, you should review the correspondence and compare it with the information on your return.
5. If you agree with the correction to your account, usually no reply is necessary unless a payment is due.
6. If you do not agree with the correction the IRS made, it is important that you respond as requested. Write to explain why you disagree. Include any documents and information you wish the IRS to consider, along with the bottom tear-off portion of the notice. Mail the information to the IRS address shown in the lower left part of the notice. Allow at least 30 days for a response.
7. Most correspondence can be handled without calling or visiting an IRS office. However, if you have questions, call the telephone number in the upper right corner of the notice. Have a copy of your tax return and the correspondence available when you call.
8. It’s important that you keep copies of any correspondence with your records.