Here are just a few of the cases that we had to deal with this tax season...
1) A lady invested in an alpaca with her daughter so she wanted to claim it on her taxes. However, the animal lives with her daughter way up in another state. This is fine & she has feed & boarding expenses of about $150, plus 1/2 of the purchase of the alpaca to claim ($2500). So she had to file a schedule F for Farm expenses, but now she has to file the schedule F each year until she sells the animal to keep her farm expenses going on her taxes. Did I mention she has to pay extra for us to do a schedule F each year?
2) An old client walked in to get his taxes done & was unable to find us last year so he was stuck going to the 'Big Box' that most of us came from. Well, the lady there threw a temper tantrum about him claiming his farm expenses again & said he couldn't keep claiming a loss. She didn't put any of it on his 2007 taxes AND he had depreciation carry forwards. In the end, we filed an extension for his 2008 taxes so we can amend his 2007 & have the proper carry forwards.
3) A guy had some investments & received a 1099 on them. His 1099 amounts did not add up to the summary they mailed with it. Not only that, there is a fee for taking money out & they not only taxed him on it but taxed him twice.
4) A business owner walks in to get his taxes done a less than a week before the deadline & after inputting almost all of his stuff, he spills the beans that he's an owner of a corporation. We can't file his personal income taxes without the tax information from his business because it generates a K-1 to report on his personal taxes. The real kicker is when I was working on his extension & I called him to ask a few questions & he told me he wasn't trying to be a jerk & appreciated our help, but was fixing to play golf & that was all he had on his mind.
5) On top of tax season, we have these pesty foreign clients that are ridiculous & want us to do our book work 2 & 3 x's because they can't get it together. Well the guy comes over & starts demanding stuff with clients sitting everywhere & is unreasonable in the office. I asked him to leave but in the end - it didn't work.
6) Lots of people coming to do their taxes this season were not just bringing one year of tax data, some were bringing 2 & 3 year's that needed to be filed. One guy came in & signed 2003-2008 paperwork.
7) There were lots of cases of people selling stocks & bonds or taking money out of their retirement or investments due to the hard times.
8) In the end, we filed at least 12 extensions for people running in at the last minute with complicated returns or without all of their info together.
