‘A Tough Situation Can Get Worse’ Says Milwaukee Accountant

Firstly, I’m here to offer you a friendly reminder: Sunday is Mother’s Day. Do with this reminder what you will .

And speaking of moms, if you’ve ever spoken with friends who have had to place their parents into a care facility, you know how difficult the process can be.

I was once asked to weigh in on how to make this decision, so I’ve done so, here. I did some digging, and I believe I’ve put together something helpful — and clear.

(And I know that this isn’t a “normal” topic for a Milwaukee Tax Preparation Business to go into — but I’m not interested in “just” sticking to the script.)

For far too many people, the “story” of their lives doesn’t end as well as they might have hoped. Care facilities (when they’re necessary) can be a blessing … and, well, they can be a nightmare. So, to help you make sure that your family (and your friends’ families) make the best decision possible, I’ve put together a two-part series on nursing home placement — and how to do it right.

Feel free to forward this along to anyone who may be affected by these issues. We’re always here to help!
Not Your Normal Milwaukee Tax Professional: Neal’s Long-Term Care Guide (Part 1)
It’s a fact: most nursing home admissions happen under extremely stressful circumstances.

It’s an overwhelming task to find the best nursing home placement for a loved one, perhaps because, well … where do you even begin?

Although this is a job that no one wants, it can be done with forethought and confidence that the best decision was made for everyone involved. It’s easier (and better for your loved one), if that first placement is well thought out. Yes–a nursing home resident can be moved from one facility to another, but this type of disruption is rarely in everyone’s best interest, as it can be disturbing on a variety of levels.

So it’s best to do it right–from the beginning.

Here’s a great place to start your search:

The Federal Center for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has a part of its Web site called “Nursing Home Compare”. Surprisingly (for a government service), it’s actually quite handy:

http://www.medicare.gov/NHCompare

This area of their site identifies facilities that have a history of poor performance–and ones which do well. In fact, the Nursing Home Compare site labels nursing homes it calls “Special Focus Facilities” — those that have repeatedly violated state and federal health and safety rules and that rank in the worst 5 to 10 percent of all inspected facilities in a given state.

You’ll want to cross those off your list from the very beginning.

Using this website, you can see detailed inspection information about each nursing facility that interests you, comparing various government-rated “quality measures” such as:

• Percent of High-Risk Residents Who Have Pressure Sores
• Percent of Residents Who Spend Most of Their Time in Bed or in a Chair
• Percent of Residents Who Have Moderate to Severe Pain
• Percent of Residents Who Were Physically Restrained
• Et cetera.

The site also rates the care and services that each facility provides to its residents, and allows you to view how each facility stacks up in staffing hours for each type of health care worker against the state and national averages.

And there’s other comparison tools available. For example, U.S. News and World Report has recently started providing rankings of America’s nursing homes.

http://health.usnews.com/senior-housing

These rankings rely on the data from the above government site–but they DO provide some advanced search engine capability. Nursing homes are presented in tiers within each star category, based on their total stars in all three of the major areas. The topmost tier, for example, consists only of five-star homes that got 15 stars. The next tier down is five-star homes with 14 total stars, and so on.

Within each tier, nursing homes are listed alphabetically. If you’re looking for a nursing home by location, and turn up too many, search terms can be combined in order to narrow the results.  For example, perhaps you want to search just for nursing homes that have a religious affiliation, or that accept Medicaid residents. Or you can launch a multi-pronged search, perhaps searching for non-profit four-star nursing homes that accept Medicaid and are located within 25 miles of a particular city.

However–here’s my big caveat when it comes to just looking at ratings: Nothing can substitute for visiting a nursing home in person. After all, every nursing home will have some deficiencies; working with extremely disabled and impaired persons is very difficult.

So, to find the best possible nursing home for your family’s situation, the first step is to determine what is most important for your family in looking for a facility. And I hope that you would agree that the potential resident’s needs and desires must be included in this evaluation. Consider variables such as location of the facility, whether a special care unit (such as for dementia) is available, and what types of payment sources are accepted.

The second step is to identify the facilities in your area which meet the criteria you have established.

In my next Note, I’ll give you some pointers on how to conduct an on-site tour properly–what to look for, questions to ask, etc.

Milwaukee Accountant Explains How To “Reclaim Control Over Your Taxes – Even Old Returns”

I like to remind myself that helping people with their taxes is only the means to a greater end: enabling my clients to live richer lives, without having to fret about the details.”

My relationship with you (and all of our clients in and outside of the Milwaukee area) is worth the time investment (and more).

And speaking of investments, I know that a fair number of our clients were graciously invited to send their final “investment” to the IRS (and their state) this week.

And some of our clients also received (or will be receiving) a payment from the Treasury, as a sort of “thanks for letting us have your money for a year!” gesture. No interest paid out, of course.

Both of these circumstances are problematic in their own way.

In the following weeks, I’ll be sharing with you how you can fix that — but one of the first (and often overlooked) methods is … well, allow me to elaborate.

Milwaukee’s Most Trusted Tax Professional Explains The First Step To Reclaiming Control Over Your Taxes
Our clients who filed with us this year already feel the peace-of-mind that you were able to claim every possible deduction which is legally allowed in the tax code for 2011. After all, we put each return through an extensive review process to ensure you keep as much of your hard-earned income as the IRS allows.

But what about your friends, both here in Milwaukee and beyond? And what about your previous years?

Well, since the filing deadline has already passed, they (and you) might think that the proverbial “fat lady” has sung on 2011 returns (and 2010 and 2009). Not so.

Because according to the most recent report on the matter, issued by the General Accounting Office, taxpayers overpay the IRS almost $1 billion every year due to incorrect itemization and preparation.

What’s worse is that those who prepared their own taxes (with a software, or on their own) are the most vulnerable, according to the report. But did you also know that taxpayers who used one of the “big chain” preparers are almost as bad off?

An excerpt from an additional report from the GAO: In a Limited Study, Chain Preparers Made Serious Errors

In GAO (United States Government Accountability Office) visits to chain preparers, paid preparers often prepared returns that were incorrect, with tax consequences that were sometimes significant. Some of the most serious problems involved these preparers…

1.  Not reporting business income in 10 of 19 cases;
2.  Failing to take the most advantageous post-secondary education tax benefit in 3 out of the 9 applicable cases; and
3. Failing to itemize deductions at all or failing to claim all available deductions in 7 out of the 9 applicable cases.

More clippings from the report:
* The 19 paid preparers we visited arrived at the correct refund amount only twice. On 5 returns, all for the plumber, they understated our refund amount by a total of $3,465.
* All 19 of our visits to tax return preparers affiliated with chains showed problems. Nearly all of the returns prepared for us were incorrect to some degree, and several of the preparers gave us very bad tax advice, particularly when it came to reporting non-W-2 business income. Only 2 of 19 tax returns showed the correct refund amount, and in both of those visits the paid preparer made mistakes that did not affect the final refund amount.

So what can your friends do about this? And what could YOU do about it, if you didn’t have us handle your taxes in prior years? Simple: file an “Amended” Return.

Many tax businesses don’t provide this service, but even though we’ve completed our clients’ returns, we WILL review any of your friends’ returns–at no charge.

Sending you our affection, through a haze of tax forms…

Milwaukee Accountant Discusses “Freedom From Taxes”

It’s the final week of tax season, and our office here in Milwaukee is hopping!

Which isn’t to say that I don’t have the time to step away for a moment and write to you, my friend.

This is often our busiest week of the year (so please be understanding), but it’s also the week when we receive, with clockwork regularity, many questions about extensions.

So, I’ll be clearing that up this week, but before I do so, a few quick unrelated points:

1) Next Tuesday, April 17th is the filing deadline, but it’s ALSO (by actual coincidence) “Tax Freedom Day”. This is the date pegged by the Tax Foundation as the date when you’ve finally worked to pay off your taxes. The rest of the year is “take home” pay.

2) Don’t forget that April 17th is also the deadline to contribute to IRA’s and HSA’s in order to have them count on this year’s (2011) taxes.

And, onto this week’s Note on Extensions…

Your Milwaukee Tax Professional Tells The Truth About Extensions

Let’s clear some things up with some facts about getting an “extension”.

As you know, Tuesday April 17th is the filing deadline for a federal tax return.  If you need more time to get your paperwork complete, you need to file (or have us file on your behalf) Form 4868 (Automatic Extension of Time to File) with the IRS by the end of the day on the 17th.  This gives you an automatic six-month (until October 17, 2012) extension of time to file.

Here’s the deal: An “Extension of Time to File” is not an “Extension of Time to Pay”, unfortunately — except for certain cases (more in a moment). In normal circumstances, the Extension simply gives you an automatic six months of additional time to get your paperwork together and file that return.  But, if you owe more than what you paid with your estimate, you’ll be accumulating penalties and interest on the difference–so PLEASE don’t take the entire six months to do this!

The exception to this rule is for:
1) Wage earners who have been unemployed at least thirty consecutive days during 2011 or in 2012 up to this year’s April 17 tax deadline; or
2) Self-employed individuals who experienced a 25 percent or greater reduction in business income in 2011 due to the economy.

So, if that’s you — let us know! We’ll get you payment relief.

For the rest of you, when filing your “Extension of Time to File”, you’ll need to estimate what you think you owe to the IRS.  This should not be pulling numbers out of thin air (or other various body parts)!  You’ll still need to go through your receipts and tax documents and get them “somewhat” organized.

From here, you can estimate both your income and your expenses, and then approximate what you owe Uncle Sam.  Keep in mind that this is an ESTIMATE.  And, you’ll have to pay what you estimate you owe at the time we file for the extension.

You can do this all electronically through our office, you can mail in the form WITH estimated payment (must be postmarked by the 17th), or you can call a specialized provider and pay by credit card.
To more of your money in your wallet!

‘Why Put Off Tomorrow What You Can Put Off Today?’ Asks Milwaukee Accountant

On Friday, I remember thinking to myself: Jon, I’ve never seen it this busy before! By that, I mean a RUSH of new clients, referrals and longtime clients streaming through our doors these first couple weeks of April.

And then, I remember thinking the very same thing last year.

That said, the good news for folks here in the Milwaukee area (and, beyond, I suppose!) is that we’ve been preparing for this season all year, and our capacity is still not at the breaking point (though truly busier than we have ever been).

Even at this late hour, we will gladly receive friends of our existing clients — we make a special point to accommodate clients’ friends, because we’ve found that our great clients have very good taste in friends!

So, send this blogpost to five of your friends right now and make sure they let us know you sent them. They can also call: 414-325-2040 and we’ll be their last-minute lifeline!

And, a few words for the possibly-panicked procrastinators in our midst this week…
Oh, but before I go there, two important tax items of note:
1) First off, the actual tax deadline is Tuesday, April 17th this year (due to a DC holiday). OUR deadline is Friday, April 13th!! We will be glad to extend any returns that are not complete by then!

2) April 17th is also the day which is the LAST day that you can make an IRA contribution which will count for 2011. Don’t miss that chance, because you may even be able to deduct some or all of those contributions for THIS tax year.

Now, I started writing a new Note for you today … and I turned to my Note from last year for inspiration. And, well, I’m not sure that I can even improve on it, and the busyness-induced temptation to offer it to you once more was simply too great . But it’s just as timely as ever…

Milwaukee’s Most Trusted Tax Professional Reveals: When Procrastination Is Really Smart
Right now, there are an infinite number of things you could be doing, especially around here in Milwaukee. No matter what you work on, you’re not working on everything else. So the question is not how to avoid procrastination, but how to procrastinate well.

In my view, there are three kinds of procrastination. Depending on what you do instead of working on something, you could work on:
(a) nothing,
(b) something less important, or
(c) something more important.

That last type, I’d say, is good procrastination.

This is the “absent-minded professor” who forgets to shave, or eat, or even perhaps look where he’s going while he’s thinking about some interesting question. His mind is absent from the everyday world because it’s hard at work in another.

That’s the sense in which the most impressive people I know are all procrastinators. They’re type-C procrastinators: they put off working on small stuff to work on big stuff.

What’s “small stuff?” Roughly, work that has zero chance of being mentioned in your obituary. It’s hard to say at the time what will turn out to be your best work (will it be your thesis for your PhD, or that detective thriller you worked on at night?), but there’s a whole class of tasks you can safely rule out: shaving, doing your laundry, cleaning the house, writing thank-you notes—anything that might be called an errand.

Good procrastination is avoiding errands to do real work.

Good in a sense, at least. The people who want you to do the errands won’t think it’s good. But you probably have to annoy them if you want to get any real work done. The mildest seeming people, if they want to do real work, all have a certain degree of ruthlessness when it comes to avoiding errands.

Some errands, like replying to emails, go away if you ignore them (perhaps taking friends with them). Others, like mowing the lawn, or filing your tax returns, only get worse if you put them off. In principle, it shouldn’t work to put off the second kind of errand. You’re going to have to do whatever it is eventually. Why not (as past-due notices are always saying) do it now?

The reason it pays to put off even those errands is that real work needs two things errands don’t: big chunks of time, and the right mood. If you get inspired by some project, it can be a net win to blow off everything you were supposed to do for the next few days to work on it. Yes, those errands may cost you more time when you finally get around to them. But if you get a lot done during those few days, you will be net more productive.

So here’s where we come in.

Consider us “The Ultimate Procrastination Solution”.

Allow us to take the pain away from these second-level tasks (like getting your return filed) — and you go back to writing that killer novel.

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