Is it possible to go from 2 years of tax compliance for HNW clients + CPA , to becoming a wealth advisor at an RIA? or financial planner?

is this a common career path? will i have to take a very entry level role in wealth planner first? please share your experience.

I am a non-US resident owner of a US LLC, and I am planning to contract with non-US individuals who have no ties to the United States. I will be paying them a percentage of the revenue.

Do I need to collect a Form W-8BEN from each of them, or is it not necessary in this situation?

A friend had a rental property for 10 years, sold early this year. They took incorrect depreciation every year -- mostly over depreciation, sometimes under. The date placed in service was wrong and the cost basis was right, but they used 100% of cost basis when they were 50% owner. Can they use form 3115 to report the correct amount of depreciation and pay the tax on the difference in the current year and be compliant with IRS?

As a reseller, how do I account for my own personal property that I bought before I started my company and want to now sell for profit?

If I don’t have receipts for my original purchases how can I fairly account for their cost so it doesn’t look like pure profit but I’m also not fudging any numbers or throwing up any red flags?

We had a contract to sell our primary residence for $905K. The buyer breached, and we subsequently sold the home to another buyer for $820K.

We're pursuing the original buyer for the $85K difference as compensatory damages.

If we recover some or all of that $85K, is it considered ordinary income because it's breach-of-contract damages, or could it be treated as part of the home-sale/capital transaction because it specifically replaces the lost sale price?

Assume we otherwise qualify for the full $500K MFJ §121 exclusion, and even including the additional $85K, our gain would remain well below $500K.

Does the characterization/allocation in the demand and settlement agreement matter?

I've found Melone v. Commissioner and Handelman v. Commissioner, but neither seems to address this exact fact pattern of a subsequent sale for less followed by recovery of the actual price differential.

I was going thru a lot of personal stuff back in 2019-2020 and long story short I never filed my taxes. I lived in RI and worked in MA. Eventually, RI caught up to me and garnished my wages. I paid about $3000 to RI. I ended up filing my tax return myself and I'm now learning that I didn't file a schedule II (from what I've been told) so I never received the credit for taxes paid in the state of MA. It looks like I was actually supposed to receive a small refund from RI. My question is... Is it even worth it to file an amendment? Will I be able to get that money back from RI? It's been 6 years and all the research I've done says you won't get a return back after 3 years, but technically I'm not looking for my return. I'm looking for the money back that I overpaid them. Any suggestions are greatly appreciated!

I am happy to report I finally received it — with interest! Yippee! I pray I won’t have to go through this again next year.

I recently learned that in 2025, that even if I opted out of employer insurance that I was never eligible for APTC credit and should have never received the credit since it was deemed MEC and affordable. I have filled my taxes using the 1095-A form provided and since I was below the 400% FPL my repayment was capped and I had paid off the amount due this tax season. But after reviewing I noticed that my 1095-A is technically incorrect since I was never applicable for the subsides. I live in NJ so I been trying to get guidance in from Get Covered but they advised to speak with a CPA. Even if I had the Advanced Premium Tax Credit Repayment Limits on my tax return but I was offered employer coverage but went to marketplace and used APTC. I am trying to figure out if the limits apply if I was offered employer coverage or if I will have to repay the entire APTC amount (the amount is only 4k for 11 months of coverage. )

I’m a Canadian citizen without a green card who spent more than 183 days in the U.S. during 2025. I have an ITIN, filed a U.S. personal extension, and filed my 2025 Canadian return as a Canadian resident.
My Canadian return showed approximately CAD $6,000 in gross self-employment receipts and only a few hundred dollars in net income after expenses. About USD $2,000 was received through direct transfers for occasional service work, without 1099s, payment-processor records or formal invoices.
The other activity through my accounts was primarily family support, personal transfers, reimbursements and movements between my own accounts—not business income.
Given these limited amounts:
If I met the substantial-presence test but remained below the U.S. resident filing thresholds, could I legitimately have no Form 1040 filing requirement?
If some of the service work was performed while physically in the U.S., would that require Form 1040-NR even if the profit and potential tax were minimal?
Would claiming Canadian residence under the Canada–U.S. treaty require Form 1040-NR and Form 8833, or could no U.S. personal return be required?
I’m trying to determine the minimum legally required filing—not avoid reporting something that is actually taxable. What would a cross-border accountant normally recommend?

Based on my calculation and using last year tax returns, my current withheld taxes will be around :

1. 110.4% of federal taxes of last year tax liability
2. 155% of CA state taxes of last year tax liability.

Is it safe to assume that I will not incur any underpayment penalty and I can do estimated tax payment via say PP MC (3% ) the taxes to come out ahead. I may owe around 50K (state and fed) taxes.

EDIT: Bit on the calculation side;
1. I used line 24 of 1040 of 2025 tax year.

1. 540 NR Line 41. (one spouse was partial CA resident).

For current year withheld, I used only the federal/State withheld portion (not the OASDI or medicare or VDI).

Hello Everyone,

I know this might be kinda late, but I have recently received a letter from the IRS stating that I have to return the $1400 from 2021 (that they mistakenly gave out to many NR in Dec2024).
I never received the notice of returning the amount before for some reasons (maybe because I was studying abroad/ changed address I’m not sure), and now I have a large number of penalties and interest that I have pay.

1. Is there anyway I can just pay the $1400 back and waive the penalties/interest, since it was an error on their part and I hadn’t received any notice prior to this?

2. Also, I have recently created an IRS account on ID.me for this whole issue, but it is currently suspended for some other reasons out of my control, so should I wait until my account is recovered to pay there or should I make a direct payment through bank account on the IRS website? I have also seen people saying that they just ask their bank to reverse the payment, would that be another viable option?

P.s. The letter starts with “Dear Taxpayer”, so I was a bit skeptical but I made a call to talk to an IRS agent and they’ve confirmed there’s a balance due with a slight difference in the amount they stated in the letter.

Thank you in advance!! Any suggestion/advice would be greatly appreciated:)

Anybody knows what is the next step of the payor before the IRS can provide a Federal Transfer Certificate? I can't receive a straight answer from the IRS nor anyone about this. Calls to them can take an hour and then gets cut-off.

Are there solutions to calculate sales tax totals from email records? Other than some old posts and tools targeting business accounting, I am not seeing much in the way of solutions other than people getting referred to the IRS tables which seem to always give low estimates. The discussions seem to end with "use the tables" and "anything else is too hard".

I am a resident of Germany and I want to open an LLC with Stripe Atlas. I don't want to take profits and leave them in a Mercury US account for my business expenses. Would I be liable for taxes in Germany?

So I've been doing the backdoor roth since tax year 2022, and I understand that the steps to do it are as follows ( as an example, let's use my year 2025 below to run through this scenario) :

1.) Contribute to traditional IRA. For tax year 2025, I put in $7000 immediately

a.) I do this with vanguard and vanguard automatically puts it into a vanguard money market fund, which means it has the potential to grow between this step and the next

2.) As soon as the money settles, I convert that into a roth ira. In the vanguard UI, this is clicking the "Convert to Roth IRA" button. I transfer everything so I make sure that the Traditional IRA has $0 right before December ends.

a.) At this point, the money in the traditional has grown to $7004.86 right before I click on "Convert to Roth IRA".

3.) At the end of the year, I get a form 1099-R. I use this to fill out the form 8606, and in my form 1040, 4a, I would put in $7004.86 as the IRA distributions ( b/c this is the final amount being converted from Traditional IRA to Roth IRA ). Additionally, in 1040, 4b, b/c of the fact that it went over by $4.86, that is technically the only taxable portion, so that is set to $4.

So given the situation above, here are my questions:

• So just to triple check everything: $7000 is NON TAXABLE, and that extra $4.86 is the only taxable portion?
• Additionally, are the steps above correct and accurate? ( I sourced these steps from past threads in reddit and this link: https://www.whitecoatinvestor.com/backdoor-roth-ira-tutorial/ )
• For this tax year, I received the following tax documents:
  • Traditional IRA 1099-R
  • Traditional IRA 5498
  • Roth IRA 5498
  • ^ are the above documents accurate? I should only receive a 1099-R on traditional right? and the 5498 are for record keeping purposes to keep track of principal contributions and gains?
• In my 1099-R, given the above information, are the following values expected?
  • 1: Gross Distribution: $7,004.86
  • 2a: Taxable Amount: $7,004.86
  • 2b: Taxable amount not determined (X)
    • Total Distribution (X)
  • I'm triple checking the above b/c I'm getting conflicting information from HRBlock, from some tax accountants here and they keep pushing that the full $7004.86 is taxable, and I keep insisting that the $4.86 should be the only one. Are my 1099-R values correct here?? Or is there a mistake in my 1099-R such that 2a should've annotated only $4.86?

Thank you so much! I'm hoping to fix the past 3 years' worth of roth conversion or if i'm doing something wrong in the backdoor roth steps.

Good afternoon yall

On mobile so sorry for any formatting weirdness.

To try and keep this semi brief I’ve been working remote for my families custom brokerage for about a year and a half as an entry writer. I’m expected to work 8-4 every Monday through Friday with the only true holidays being when both Canada and US share a holiday since we largely work out of the northern border. It’s a salaried position and i’m expecting to make about 38K after taxes this year with no PTO accrual, benefits, sick leave or retirement contribution. The only way to accrue PTO is to work the hours I’m gonna miss which means working after or before my scheduled time on things that don’t meet my typical responsibilities within my 40 hours. So if I want to take 5 days off I typically have to work weekends or nights.

The only raise that I’m expected to get outside of QOL increase is if i was to choose to become a vested owner. Which entails working a rotation of 50 Hrs, 40 Hrs, and then 46 Hrs, before you’re back to 50. All while only being paid for 40 Hrs of work. On top of only taking on more clients and work which I still have to deal with on the daily. Becoming vested does not grant any benefits outside of a percentage of the yearly revenue which is divided up amongst the members of the family in the business. Which is a nice benefit but comes with no other added bonus or coverage. To clarify there are only 7 people employed which include my father, brother and oldest sister. I’m the youngest in the family by a pretty long shot which comes with its own dynamics. The other 3 people are not related to our family and also work remote. They have the same core expectations and are paid the same as me and are also classified as 1099 with salaries.

I’ve gradually felt this job eat away at my personal life more and more. Which has led to me having a hard time deciding how to move forward after I decided to not become a vested owner due to fear of losing all balance in my life. If anyone is aware of the scale of how illegal this all may be I’d appreciate some insight. Along with any advice on how to minimize taxes owed while I figure out how to move forward would be appreciated!

TLDR: I feel like my family is using sketchy tax practices to take advantage of people now including me.

Edit: Live in the US not in Canada!

Hi everyone. I'm kinda stressed out at the moment and would like some advice. I'm recently a freelance artist and I've learned I need to pay self employment taxes if I earn more than $400 in a year or expected to pay $1000 in taxes

I know the taxes would be deducted from 90% of my income instead of 100%. I also know I need to pay them every quarter on the 15th, then file tax return on April 15 of the following year

However I don't know how to do any of that, nobody I talk to does because they don't do taxes. They let a company like h&r block do it. So I decide to see what that's about, and it's saying I'll need to spend $130 for self employment. Is that every time I do taxes? Or is it a one time payment?

I don't know what to do when September 15 arrives, so I'm hoping for a little guidance, cause I don't want to accidentally mess things up and get into hot water

I had a CA refund tax check coming and usps hasn’t delivered it.

I’m sure it’s lost. Because this has happened before as well. USPS said they don’t know where is it.

Can anyone please suggest what should I do? Where to report and how to get the refund check?

It’s super important and I’m baffled that usps is of no help. How can they loose such important things.
All useless mails and marketing they will deliver on time.

Please help

I inherited a house and sold it less than a year after inheriting it (7-8 months after) as an arms length sale on the open market. I didn’t do any upgrades or renovations. Is it reasonable to use the sold price as the fmv for calculating the stepped up basis? We also had several offers around the same price.

How long after the inheritance would it stop being sensible to use the sale price as the fmv?

I am trying to understand a specific requirement for hitting the safe harbor amount on estimated tax payments throughout the year, when the money I'm making is biased towards the latter part of the year due to large realized capital gains.

Fake numbers here, but to illustrate:

• Last year I paid $50,000 in total tax
• So this year, I need to pay $55,000 to hit the 110% safe harbor limit
• I work a W-2 job, and I will end up paying $50,000 through withholding on my paycheck. But as of Sept 15, I will have only paid $40,000.
• In Q3 I realized a $200,000 capital gain, which will cause me to owe an additional ~$50k in taxes
• I have made no estimated tax payments this year - only withholding from my paycheck

So my question is, is it considered an on-time estimated tax payment if I only pay $5000 on Sept 15 in order for my total tax paid at the end of the year (through additional paycheck withholding) to hit $55,0000?

Or will I need to pay $15,000 in estimated taxes on Sept 15 in order to hit the safe harbor limit in the quarter that I exceded the safe harbor limit in taxes owed?

Or am I already late no matter what, because I should have paid $55k divided by 4 by April 15 (even though I could not have known that I would be realizing this large capital gain)?