Eva Rosenberg

Who doesn't want to be better organized? With today's apps, there are lots of opportunities available to organize various aspects of your business and personal life. We asked members of the CPA Practice Advisor audience and family to share some of ...

During the first decade or two of my accounting and tax life, I always felt that everyone knew more than I did. I was always a bit intimidated by the depth of knowledge other CPAs, EAs and attorneys seemed to have – and prayed that I could know just a little more of what they knew.

Effective this tax season, our clients have had the option of deducting $5 per square foot, up to 300 square feet – instead of using the complex Office in Home rules. That provides for a maximum deduction of $1,500.

After working with clients for (mumble) decades, I still don’t know how to resolve this. Unless you think your clients would be receptive to sitting through a course (live or webinar) on “How to be a Tax Client”?

Wow! I just read an article about a woman who died six years ago and no one noticed. (Talk about a senior’s biggest fear.) It seems that she had so much liquidity in her bank account that her automatic payments lasted that long – before her mortgage company finally foreclosed.

This topic has been coming up a lot in the past week or so. And it’s a bit disconcerting to tax professionals who invest time with new clients like this.

After a divorce, if both spouses stay on title, they can both take advantage of their full personal residence exclusion of $250,000 – as long as one of them continue to use it as a personal residence AND this is specified in the divorce decree (a good reason to get along during the divorce negotiations).

Someone just asked TaxMama if there is a way to get her father’s earnings information from back in 1977-78. She needs it because his income in those years is not on his Social Security record.

A couple of years ago, a reader told me that he was very perplexed. He was trying to prepare his daughter’s tax return, but was coming up with a huge tax bill. Why?

I have been preparing tax returns for a very, very long time. Yet, I usually feel as if I know nothing. So, when someone asks me a question, even when I am pretty sure of the answer, I look it up.

There’s so much nifty tax preparation software out there these days. Don’t you just love the software that allows us to import W-2 data, stock sales data, QuickBooks data, etc.? With all those tools, we barely even have to look at our clients’ documents. But we should!