I survived

Yeah, I know I say every tax season is the worst yet. But this was truly the worst.

I’m convinced more than ever that it’s time to make some serious changes to the timing of tax returns. Give the brokerage firms until February 28 to issue their statements, and we’ll avoid all the corrected statements that come out right up to the filing deadline. I can’t even begin to count the number of corrected statements that clients received this year.

And while I think reporting basis is a great idea, the implementation is lousy. And whomever thought up the 8949 ought to have their head examined.

Right along with the ones who came up with publicly traded partnerships. Seems every broker discovered these this year, and clients were in and out of so many of them that I was swimming in K-1s.

And then there’s the required minimum distributions. You know, if the government truly wants to do something, force folks to put these on automatic distributions. Because I spent way too much time getting these straight for clients who had missed them.

Finally – just move the personal tax return deadline back to June 15. Yes, there will still be procrastinators. But by leaving the partnership deadline at 4/15 (and perhaps moving the S Corp deadline to the same date), at least we won’t be waiting around for stuff to come at the last minute.

Oh – and all the states need to tie their due dates to the federal. As I have clients all over the country, I had to figure out which of them were honoring the April 17th deadline and which weren’t. (Most did – but Virginia didn’t.)

Another tax season is over. Thank goodness!