schedule M - 1040???

[duanecpa]

Good morning,

On the internet this morning, there was an article suggesting that to claim the 'Making Work Pay Credit' Schedule M must be paper filed - the article is dated Feb of 2012.

I went to the IRS website and there is not a Schedule M for 2011 - just 2010.

From the information that I have the article is incorrect for 2011 - is that your understanding as well relative to Schedule M?

[Koss]

Schedule M

Do you have a link to the article?

There is no Schedule M for 2011 returns.

BMK

[Koss]

Observation

The IRS website has an article dated January, 2011, that refers to Schedule M for 2010 tax returns.

Way down at the bottom of the page, it has a tag that says

Page Last Reviewed or Updated: February 03, 2012

So someone at the IRS reviewed the page last month to determine whether the information is still current and accurate. And they probably made no changes to the page. Because the information is still accurate. Whether the information is current is another matter. The first sentence of the article explicitly refers to 2010 federal tax returns. That's why the information is accurate. It's information about 2010 tax returns.

duanecpa wrote:

there was an article suggesting that to claim the 'Making Work Pay Credit' Schedule M must be paper filed

Ummm... that is correct information.

Anyone who is filing Schedule M must be filing a 2010 tax return, because the form doesn't exist for 2011 returns.

And a 2010 tax return must be filed by mail. So any schedule that is included in a 2010 tax return, such as Schedule M, must also be filed by mail.

Maybe some other website has butchered this information, and somehow implied that it is applicable to 2011 returns.

BMK

[BHoffman]

http://www.foxbusiness.com/personal-finance/2010/04/13/common-tax-filing-mistakes-avoid/?intcmp=fbfeatures

This article, dated March 14, 2012, warns taxpayers not to forget Schedules M and L. (?)

[Burke]

Oh, good grief. Just what we need, more phone calls from clients who think we forgot something.

[RitaB]

Awesome

http://www.foxbusiness.com/personal-...cmp=fbfeatures

This article, dated March 14, 2012, warns taxpayers not to forget Schedules M and L. (?)

Hope they don't say anything about a phone tax credit. Hello, my clients brought me articles about that up to $60 credit. They didn't care to find the basis for their $60,000 in stock trades, but they were on top of that phone credit.

[Koss]

Recycled Article

This is a case of a bonehead move by an editor at the Fox Business website.

The dateline on the article is March 14, 2012.

But the URL of the article contains a date of 2010/04/13. You can't see that in BHoffman's post, because the URL is abbreviated by the message board. But when you load the article in your browser, look at the entire address, and you'll see what I'm talking about.

Someone at Fox Business decided to re-publish this article on March 14, 2012.

I guess they figured that "common tax-filing mistakes" are going to be the same every year.

The editor probably didn't even bother to read the article before posting it with a new date.

BMK

[Koss]

Further Thoughts

Burke wrote:

Oh, good grief. Just what we need, more phone calls from clients who think we forgot something.

I certainly agree that it is annoying when clients challenge us, thinking that we did not do their return correctly.

But with this article, I think it is fairly clear what happened, based on the date in the URL (see my post above). Someone at Fox Business just assumed that the most common filing mistakes would be the same from year to year, and they recycled the article without reviewing any of the facts.

This article is actually a fantastic "teachable moment." It's a great example of why people need a tax professional, and why they shouldn't rely on DIY software, or advice from hairstylists and journalists.

BMK

[Burke]

So does that tell you anything about the editors at Fox Business News? I hope they get excoriated.

[Koss]

Fox

Well, their slogan is "Fair and Balanced."

It doesn't say anything about being current and accurate.

I encourage everyone on this board to print the article (or capture it into a PDF), in order to preserve a record of this embarrassing error.

I sent an e-mail to Fox Business and to the blogger who authored the original article.

The article may be updated or removed, if they decide to pay attention to my e-mail.

If you know how to use the settings in your browser, you can print the article, and the complete URL, with the original date in 2010, will be printed at the top of the page.

It's a great prop to show clients. Even outside the realm of taxation, it's a great example of how in the digital age, where everything moves at broadband speed, it is too easy for news organizations to make mistakes and publish inaccurate information.

It must be true. I saw it on the internet.

Even when something is published by a recognized, reputable source, we just can't rely on it anymore.

There IS a difference between print media and the web. This sort of mistake probably would not make it into a hardcopy print version of something like Forbes or Money. The fact-checking process is probably still a bit more rigorous.

This article got recycled with a new date with a just few clicks of a mouse. That shouldn't have happened. But the reason it happened is because it's too easy and too fast.

BMK

[JSLATER]

Fox from Bankrate.com

If you go to the site where this article came from you will find what Ms. Bell wrote is entirely different from what Fox posted.

http://www.bankrate.com/finance/taxes/10-common-tax-filing-mistakes-to-avoid-1.aspx

[Burke]

Probably because that is what she wrote THIS year. They published last year's.

[Koss]

Date of the original article

The date in the URL on the Fox website is 2010/04/13. It's almost two years old.

It is Fox, and not Bankrate, that is responsible for the error. The inaccurate article resides on a Fox website, not on a Bankrate website.

In my previous post, I suggested that Fox editors might have simply recycled the article, assuming that "common filing mistakes" are the same every year.

I was not aware that an updated version of the article had been published on Bankrate.com.

So maybe it's just a clerical error. It should still be corrected.

When one website licenses content from another, it can get sometimes be difficult to pin down exactly where the problem is. This is certainly an error that Fox "owns." But I won't be surprised if Fox turns around and says, "well, this isn't our content, so we have 'lifted it up' to Bankrate." And they'll wait until Bankrate gets back to them and says, "Dude--that article is two years old. Here's the current version."

BMK

[Koss]

Licensed Content

The editorial quality of some of the licensed content seems to be really low.

The current version of the "filing mistakes" article from Bankrate.com, written by Kay Bell, actually seems pretty good.

But I ran across another article on Fox Business, dated February 20, 2012, called Nine Tax Tasks to Do Before February 29. This article was taken from something called Businessnewsdaily.

http://smallbusiness.foxbusiness.com/finance-accounting/2012/02/20/nine-tax-tasks-to-do-before-february-2/

The last paragraph of the article says:

Check it twice: Every year, the IRS publishes a list of the most common tax filing mistakes, and every year forgetting to write in your SIN number at the top of the form tops the list, Simpson said. [emphasis supplied]

Okaaaay.

What the heck is a SIN number?

Turns out that it's a little bit more than a simple typo. The letter I is not very close to the letter S.

The guy they're quoting, Kirk Simpson, is the CEO of an outfit called Wave Accounting.

A review of their website reveals that Kirk and his company are located in...

Canada.

SIN = Social Insurance Number.

But they're talking about US tax returns, for pete's sake! Simpson is citing a list of common mistakes published by the IRS.

How did this get past the editors?

Editors? What's an editor?

Why do we need an editor? We have a guy from Canada who's an expert on US taxation... We don't need no stinking editors!



BMK

[FEDUKE404]

Next "breaking news" report

...will probably urge taxpayers to see if they can income average using Schedule G