• 4th quarter estimated payment due January 17, 2012
• W-2′s, 1099′s are not required to be mailed until January 31, 2012.
• Tax day this year falls on Tuesday April 17, 2012 as there is a holiday in Washington D.C.
• Make sure you have all your tax documents in hand, before seeing your tax preparer.

A couple items you should be aware when filing your tax return for 2011.

• Don’t forget to repay the first time home buyer credit.
• There is a new form 8939 to report capital gains and losses.
• As in 2010 income limits no longer apply to Roth conversions.

This is just a brief overview, consult your tax advisor for additional information.

• 55.5 centers per mile for business
• 23 cents per mile for medical or moving
• 14 cents per mile for charity

This means that the business standard mileage remains the same as it has been since July 1, 2011.  The medical and moving was actually reduced .5 cents per mile.

Remember to included the personal use of company vehicles on the employee’s W-2 if that is applicable to you.

For more information check out http://tinyurl.com/7av7xru

The new rates are as followed:

• Business 55.5 cents per mile
• Medical/Moving 23.5 cents per mile
• Charitable(same)  .14 cents per mile

This is of course not the first time that we have had to deal with two sets of mileage rates in a calendar year.  If you want to read the IRS article on the new mileage rate, please click the following link http://www.irs.gov/newsroom/article/0,,id=232017,00.html

Also don’t forgot to keep that mileage log or invest in one of the GPS mileage logs.  Just keep track of the easiest way possible as you can see the mileage can be a good deduction if you drive a fair amount of miles for business.  There are even apps for your Smart phone that will handle some of this.

Example if you drive 10,000, your deduction would be $5,550.

*Tax Credits
*Adoption Credit

They wanted the following info:
Part A-Verification of Adoption
If the adoption is final, provide one of the following:
Foreign adoption from a country tht is not part to the Hague Convention:
*Transalated decree of adoption from a foreign court or other document, issued by the competent authority establishing that a parent-child relationship has been created or
*IR 2 or IR-3 Visa
Please note we provided this information when we initially filed the return and also this just applies to foreign adoptions.  There are other requirements for domestic adoptions.

Part B:Verification of Qualified Expenses:
In order to verify your qualified adoption expenses, please provide a written statement describing each expense.  Also include copies of cancelled checks and receipts.  Qualified adoption expenses may include.
*Court Fees
*Attorney Fees
*Travel expenses, including meals and lodging while away from home
*Re-adoption expenses relating to the adoption of a foreign child.

For our youngest son Caleb our adoption agency gave us a printout that had most of the expenses to the maximum credit listed, so we just need to find the information for oldest son Joey.  On Monday May 9th my wife called the adoption agency and requested a printout on Joey and with the influx of calls about the credit they revised there letters in the database for all adoptions they have handles.  They emailed us a copy of both Joey and Caleb’s letter listing all expenses paid directly though CCAI which is our adoption agency.  These letters covered all, but between $500 and $1,000, so I had a little more research to do.

My first step was to round up all the receipts I had, and most receipts were actually on Joey for some reason.

It made it somewhat easy for me to track down the expenses as I keep our personal financial records on QuickBooks I knew the exact dates and how paid.  I used this as my itemized list.

My next step is I went to our bank online and printed off all canceled checks that we used for the adoptions, which that would cover everything.

I didn’t do anything with the credit card receipts as of yet, because we don’t need that much substantiation.

I put the packets together for each adoption in order and faxed the documentation over to the fax number on notice as I figured that was quicker than snail mail.

We will see what happens next, please stay tuned.

• We deliver most returns via electronic means through a portal on our website, clients can retrieve there past tax returns, W-2’s etc.  I would say we have about 90% electronic delivery rate for all clients.
• Almost all our business clients are on our QuickBooks Hosted service, which allow 24/7 access to their Quickbooks data as well as allowing us to access their file at the same time.  It also provides for automatic backups of their QuickBooks files.
• All of our internal software including tax software on a remote server and this year we have totally eliminated our server, so our clients and our firm data is backed up daily and we can log in from anywhere with internet access.

Using these technologies has allowed me to go home for dinner, coach the boys soccer teams and after they went to bed, do some more work from home.  Some mornings I even got up early when my wife went to workout and did some work before I went and did my workout.

If you have not embraced some of this technology, you can check it out at our website www.knollcpa.com and we will get you connected.

• Choose Edit, then Preferences.
• Choose Accounting, then Company Preferences.
• At the bottom of this window you will be able to see if a closing date has been set and as of what date.
• Click Set Date/Password.
• Enter Closing Date i.e. 12-31-2008.
• Enter Password.

Although setting a password is optional we STRONGLY recommend you set a password. This will create a prompt if you do try to change numbers prior to the closing date.

A common password we use for this to remind you to call your accountant with any questions is to make the password “ask” and your accountant’s name. i.e. asksarah.

We would recommend this be done once you have completed all your accounting tasks and all your W-2’s and 1099’s have been processed.