Financial Accounting

Retirement Savings Contributions Credit

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Retirement Savings Contributions Credit

0:19 Contributions Credit – What’s New & Introduction
8:44 Contributions Credit – Can You Claim The Credit?

Publication 590-A Contributions to Individual Retirement Arrangements (IRAs)
https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/p590a.pdf

Can you claim the credit? If you make eligible contribu-tions to a qualified retirement plan, an eligible deferred compensation plan, or an IRA, you can claim the credit if all of the following apply.
1.
You were born before January 2, 2001.
2.
You aren’t a full-time student (explained later).
3.
No one else, such as your parent(s), claims an ex-emption for you on their tax return.
4.
Your adjusted gross income (defined below) isn’t more than:
a.
$63,000 if your filing status is married filing jointly;
b.
$47,250 if your filing status is head of household; or
c.
$31,500 if your filing status is single, married filing separately, or qualifying widow(er).
Full-time student. You are a full-time student if, dur-ing some part of each of 5 calendar months (not necessa-rily consecutive) during the calendar year, you are either:
•
A full-time student at a school that has a regular teaching staff, course of study, and regularly enrolled body of students in attendance; or
•
A student taking a full-time, on-farm training course given by either a school that has a regular teaching staff, course of study, and regularly enrolled body of students in attendance, or a state, county, or local government.
You are a full-time student if you are enrolled for the num-ber of hours or courses the school considers to be full time.
Adjusted gross income. This is generally the amount on line 7 of your 2018 Form 1040; or line 35 of your 2018 Form 1040NR. However, you must add to that amount any exclusion or deduction claimed for the year for:
•
Foreign earned income,
•
Foreign housing costs,
•
Income for bona fide residents of American Samoa, and
•
Income from Puerto Rico.
Eligible contributions. These include:
1.
Contributions to a traditional or Roth IRA;
2.
Salary reduction contributions (elective deferrals, in-cluding amounts designated as after-tax Roth contri-butions) to:
a.
A 401(k) plan (including a SIMPLE 401(k)),
b.
A section 403(b) annuity,
c.
An eligible deferred compensation plan of a state or local government (a governmental 457 plan),
d.
A SIMPLE IRA plan, or
e.
A salary reduction SEP; and
3.
Contributions to a section 501(c)(18) plan.They also include voluntary after-tax employee contribu-tions to a tax-qualified retiremen

Financial Accounting

IRA-Individual Retirement Account Income Tax 2018

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Individual retirement account income tax treatment. See links below to jump to relevant parts of IRA video. 0:35 Introduction & What is Compensation? 11:25 What’s New & Remainders 23:31 Individual Retirement Annuity 27:38 Simple IRAs 30:12 Simple Employee Pension (SEP) 33:03 How Much Can Be Contributed? 34:40 General Limit 41:39 Kay Bailey Hutchison Spousal IRA Limit 44:37 How Can a Traditional IRA Be Opened? – Filing Status 49:23 How Can a Traditional IRA Be Opened? – Maximum Contributions 53:10 When Can Contributions be Made? 1:05:37 How Much Can You Deduct? 1:11:57 Are You Covered by An Employer Plan? 1:25:45 Limit if Covered by Employer Plan 1:43:33 Tax Software Limit if Covered by Employer Plan 1:50:10 Figure (Calculate) Reduced IRA Deduction & Reporting Deduction Contributions 1:54:12 Nondeductible Contributions 2:05:33 Example – Worksheet for Reduced IRA Deduction for 2018 2:13:29 What if You Inherit and IRA? 2:22:58 Can You Move Retirement Plan Assets? 2:25:28 Trustee to Trustee Transfer 2:28:00 Can You Move Retirement Plan Assets? Rollover 2:41:11 Time Limit for Making a Rollover Contribution 2:55:41 Rollover From One IRA Into Another 3:11:09 Rollover From Employer’s Plan Into an IRA 3:28:46 Rollover Chart 3:37:54 Transfers Incident to Divorce 3:44:39 Converting From Any Traditional IRA Into a Roth IRA 3:54:21 When Can Your Withdraw or Use Assets? 3:57:24 Contributions Returned Before Due Date of Return 4:03:15 Prohibited Transactions 4:07:09 Exempt Transactions 4:10:03 Investment in Collectibles 4:15:42 Excess Contributions 4:30:15 Reporting Additional Taxes Publication 334 – Tax Guide for Small Business https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/p334.pdf Publication 535 – Business Expenses https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/p535.pdf Are You Self-Employed? You are a self-employed person if you carry on a trade or business as a sole proprietor or an independent contractor. Trade or business. A trade or business generally is an activity carried on to make a profit. The facts and circumstances of each case determine whether or not an activity is a trade or business. You do not need to actually make a profit to be in a trade or business as long as you have a profit motive. You do need to make ongoing efforts to further the interests of your business. Limited liability company (LLC). A limited liability company (LLC) is an entity formed under state law by filing articles of organization. Generally, for income tax purposes, a single-member LLC is disregarded as an entity separate from its owner and reports its income and deductions on its owner’s federal income tax return. For example, if the single-member LLC is not engaged in farming and the owner is an individual, he or she may use Schedule C or C-EZ. Sole proprietor. A sole proprietor is someone who owns an unincorporated business by himself or herself. You also are a sole proprietor for income tax purposes if you are an individual and the sole member of a domestic limited liability company (LLC) unless you elect to have the LLC treated as a corporation. Independent contractor. People such as doctors, dentists, veterinarians, lawyers, accountants, contractors, subcontractors, public stenographers, or auctioneers who are in an independent trade, business, or profession in which they offer their services to the general public generally are independent contractors. However, whether they are independent contractors or employees depends on the facts in each case. The general rule is that an individual is an independent contractor if the person paying for the work has the right to control or to direct only the result of the work and not how it will be done. The earnings of a person who is working as an independent contractor are subject to self-employment tax. For more information on determining whether you are an employee or independent contractor, see Pub. 15-A, Employer’s Supplemental Tax Guide. Are You a Statutory Employee? A statutory employee has a checkmark in box 13 of his or her Form W-2, Wage and Tax Statement. Statutory employees use Schedule C or C-EZ to report their wages and expenses. How Do I Pay Income Tax? Federal income tax is a pay-as-you-go tax. You must pay it as you earn or receive income during the year. An employee usually has income tax withheld from his or her pay. If you do not pay your tax through withholding, or do not pay enough tax that way, you might have to pay estimated tax. Estimated tax payments. You generally have to make estimated tax payments if you expect to owe taxes, including self-employment tax (discussed later), of $1,000 or more when you file your return. Use Form 1040-ES, Estimated Tax for Individuals, to figure and pay the tax. If you do not have to make estimated tax payments, you can pay any tax due when you file your return. For more information on estimated tax, see Pub. 505. What are my options for paying estimated tax? You can pay your estimated tax electronically usin

Financial Accounting

Schedule C Sole Proprietorship Income Tax Examples 2018 2019

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A detailed explanation of sole proprietorship schedule C income taxes.
See links to jump to relevant points in the video below
1:10 Tax Forms & Line Items Involved
13:09 Schedule C Data Entry
30:18 Are You Self-Employed?
44:53 Business Owned and Operated by Spouses
50:26 What’s New for 2018
1:05:41 Self-Employment (SE) Tax
1:20:22 Which Forms Must I File?
1:27:31 Employment Taxes
1:35:43 Accounting Periods and Methods Introduction
1:44:09 Cash Method
2:00:45 Accrual Method
2:20:49 Combination Method
2:24:16 Accounting for Your Income
2:32:10 How to Figure Cost of Good Sold Introduction
2:36:13 Figuring Cost of Good Sold on Schedule C
2:44:30 Business Expenses Introduction
2:51:46 Car and Truck Expenses
3:06:43 Example – Cart and Truck Expenses
3:20:01 Depreciation Deduction
3:38:09 Example – Depreciation Deduction
3:50:44 Employees’ Pay Deduction
4:00:54 Example – Employees Pay Deduction
4:10:50 Insurance Deduction
4:20:59 Example – Insurance Deduction
4:29:59 Interest Deduction
4:36:49 Legal and Professional Fees Deduction
4:40:32 Pension Plans
4:52:40 Rent Expense Deduction
5:03:04 Taxes Deduction
5:18:45 Travel and Meals
5:24:36 Business Use of Your Home
5:40:36 Example – Business Use of Your Home

Publication 334
https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/p334.pdf

What Can I Deduct?
To be deductible, a business expense must be both ordinary and necessary. An ordinary ex-pense is one that is common and accepted in your industry. A necessary expense is one that is helpful and appropriate for your trade or busi-ness. An expense does not have to be indis-pensable to be considered necessary.
Even though an expense may be ordinary and necessary, you may not be allowed to de-duct the expense in the year you paid orincurred it. In some cases, you may not be al-lowed to deduct the expense at all. Therefore, it is important to distinguish usual business ex-penses from expenses that include the follow-ing.
•
The expenses used to figure cost of goods sold.
•
Capital expenses.
•
Personal expenses.
Cost of Goods Sold
If your business manufactures products or pur-chases them for resale, you generally must value inventory at the beginning and end of each tax year to determine your cost of goods sold. Some of your business expenses may be included in figuring cost of goods sold. Cost of goods sold is deducted from your gross re-ceipts to figure your gross profit for the year. If you include an expense in the cost of goods sold, you cannot deduct it again as a business expense.
The following are types of expenses that go into figuring cost of goods sold.
•
The cost of products or raw materials, in-cluding freight.
•
Storage.
•
Direct labor (including contributions to pen-sion or annuity plans) for workers who pro-duce the products.
•
Factory overhead.
Under the uniform capitalization rules, you must capitalize the direct costs and part of the indirect costs for certain production or resale activities. Indirect costs include rent, interest, taxes, storage, purchasing, processing, repack-aging, handling, and administrative costs.
This rule does not apply to small business taxpayers. You qualify as a small business tax-payer if you (a) have average annual gross re-ceipts of $25 million or less for the 3 prior tax years, and (b) are not a tax shelter (as defined in section 448(d)(3)). If your business has not been in existence for all of the 3-tax-year period used in figuring average gross receipts, base your average on the period it has existed, and if your business has a predecessor entity, include the gross receipts of the predecessor entity from the 3-tax-year period when figuring aver-age gross receipts. If your business (or prede-cessor entity) had short taxable years for any of the 3-tax-year period, annualize your business’ gross receipts for the short tax years that are part of the 3-tax-year period. See Pub. 538 for more information.
For more information, see the following sources.
•
Cost of goods sold—chapter 6 of Pub. 334.
•
Inventories—Pub. 538.
•
Uniform capitalization rules—Pub. 538 and section 263A and the related regulations.
Capital Expenses
You must capitalize, rather than deduct, some costs. These costs are a part of your investment in your business and are called “capital expen-ses.” Capital expenses are considered assets in your business. In general, you capitalize
three types of costs.
• Business start-up costs (see Tip below).
• Business assets.
• Improvements.
You can elect to deduct or amortize
certain business start-up costs. See
chapters 7 and 8.
Cost recovery. Although you generally cannot
take a current deduction for a capital expense,
you may be able to recover the amount you
spend through depreciation, amortization, or
depletion. These recovery methods allow you to
deduct part of your cost each year. In this way,
you are able to recover your capital expense.
See Amortization (chapter 8) and Depletion
(chapter 9) in this publication

Financial Accounting

Education Credits-American Opportunity Credit & Lifetime Learning Credit 2018

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Education Credit including the American Opportunity Credit & Lifetime learning credit. 2:48 American Opportunity Credit Reminders 10:38 American Opportunity Credit – Introduction 22:23 American Opportunity Credit – Table – Overview of Credit 34:16 American Opportunity Credit 50:56 Who Can’t Claim The Credit? 56:10 What Expenses Qualify? 1:01:43 American Opportunity Credit – Can You Claim the Credit? 1:09:02 American Opportunity Credit – Table – Can You Claim the Credit? 1:16:21 American Opportunity Credit – Qualified Education Expenses 1:25:50 American Opportunity Credit – No Double Benefit Allowed 1:29:43 American Opportunity Credit – Adjustments to Qualified Education Expenses 1:43:54 American Opportunity Credit Examples – Adjustments to Qualified Education Expenses 2:14:01 American Opportunity Credit – Expenses That Don’t Qualify 2:18:57 American Opportunity Credit – Who is an Eligible Student? 2:29:20 American Opportunity Credit – Who Can Claim a Dependent’s Expenses? 2:39:32 American Opportunity Credit – Figuring the Credit 2:54:23 American Opportunity Credit – Effect of the Amount of Your Income on the Amount of Your Credit 3:05:42 American Opportunity Credit – Refundable Part of Credit 3:15:44 Lifetime Learning Credit – Introduction 3:25:58 Lifetime Learning Credit –Can You Claim the Credit? 3:35:14 Lifetime Learning Credit – Who Can’t Claim the Credit? 3:38:46 Lifetime Learning Credit – What Expenses Qualify? 3:43:42 Lifetime Learning Credit – Qualified Education Expenses 3:51:05 Lifetime Learning Credit – No Double Benefit Allowed 3:55:57 Lifetime Learning Credit – Adjustments to Qualified Education Expenses 4:18:07 Lifetime Learning Credit – Coordination with Pell Grants and other scholarships 4:23:57 Lifetime Learning Credit – Examples – To Include or Exclude Scholarship in Income? 4:38:10 Lifetime Learning Credit – Expenses That Don’t Qualify 4:43:53 Lifetime Learning Credit – Who Can Claim a Dependent’s Expenses? 4:53:47 Lifetime Learning Credit – Figuring the Credit 5:06:54 Lifetime Learning Credit – Effect of the Amount of Your Income on the Amount of Your Credit Publication 970 https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/p970.pdf Form 8863 Instructions (American Opportunity & Lifetime Learning Credits) https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/i8863… Form 8863 Education Credits (American Opportunity and Lifetime Learning Credits) https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/f8863… For 2018, there are two tax credits available to help you offset the costs of higher education by reducing the amount of your income tax. They are the American oppor-tunity credit (this chapter) and the lifetime learning credit (chapter 3). This chapter explains: • Who can claim the American opportunity credit, • What expenses qualify for the credit, • Who is an eligible student, • Who can claim a dependent’s expenses, • How to figure the credit, • How to claim the credit, and • When the credit must be repaid. What is the tax benefit of the American opportunity credit? For 2018, you may be able to claim a credit of up to $2,500 for adjusted qualified education expenses paid for each student who qualifies for the American opportu-nity credit. A tax credit reduces the amount of income tax you may have to pay. Unlike a deduction, which reduces the amount of income subject to tax, a credit directly reduces the tax itself. Forty percent of the American opportunity credit may be refundable. This means that if the refunda-ble portion of your credit is more than your tax, the excess will be refunded to you. For 2018, there are two tax credits available to help you offset the costs of higher education by reducing the amount of your income tax. They are the American oppor-tunity credit (this chapter) and the lifetime learning credit (chapter 3). This chapter explains: • Who can claim the American opportunity credit, • What expenses qualify for the credit, • Who is an eligible student, • Who can claim a dependent’s expenses, • How to figure the credit, • How to claim the credit, and • When the credit must be repaid. What is the tax benefit of the American opportunity credit? For 2018, you may be able to claim a credit of up to $2,500 for adjusted qualified education expenses paid for each student who qualifies for the American opportu-nity credit. A tax credit reduces the amount of income tax you may have to pay. Unlike a deduction, which reduces the amount of income subject to tax, a credit directly reduces the tax itself. Forty percent of the American opportunity credit may be refundable. This means that if the refunda-ble portion of your credit is more than your tax, the excess will be refunded to you. tax return, you can’t use that same dependent’s qualified education expenses to figure the lifetime learning credit for 2018. If you pay qualified education expenses for more than one student in the same year, you can choose

Financial Accounting

Stop Getting “Because I Said So!!!” Answers

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Because I Said So answers do not generally come from the accounting instructors; they do often come from the accounting material.
A “because I said so” answer is an answer that has no explanation. We have all experienced and given a “because I said so” answer from time to time, and they are useful from time to time, often when we have limited time to act, but they are not generally helpful in education because the point of education is to learn the why.
In other words, the point of education is not to get the answers but to understand the right questions and an approach to solving them.
The most traditional educational resource is an instructor and some degree of one on one communication, a dialog.
As class sizes grow, however, institutions are moving away from a traditional instructor as the center of their educational model, relying more heavily on electronic resources.
Books are the classic supplement for an instructor and books are great, but they have their limitations due to the format of the book. Only so much information can fit on a page. The book cannot respond back to questions in the same way an instructor can.
Most book questions are formatted in multiple choice or short answer format because this is the format the lends itself best to a book.
Many institutions are moving away from a physical textbook into an online database. The online textbook has many of the same pros and cons as a physical book, but the database has other advantages such as automatic grading options and a way to sort questions quickly.
A database program and sort and grade multiple choice questions and short answer question very quickly but is still limited in the type of response it will give. For example, we may learn that the answer to a multiple choice question is C. The answer could also provide a short explanation but the explanation is seldom sufficient to understand a new concept in accounting because the questions we new learners will have are related to how this small piece of information fits into the big picture; what is the point, the reason for learning this piece of information.
The format of questions most institutions assign is driven by the technology they use to distribute rather than the format best for facilitating learning. The database program is great at giving multiple choice and short answer questions, but these are not the questions best for learning.
A good strategy for learning new accounting concepts is to look for more comprehensive problems that show the big picture, working them multiple times until we understand the new concept, and then going to the database program to practice those tricky multiple-choice questions. This method will stop us from merely memorizing for a short term and move us to understanding and memorizing for the long term.

Financial Accounting

Savior From Mr. Old Pen & Paper Accounting Instructor

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Mr. or Ms. Old Pen and Paper is an instructor that is completely dependent on pen and paper to explain accounting concepts. Note, we have nothing against Mr. Old Pen and Paper, we have learned much from Mr. Old Pen and Paper instructors, and have a bit of Mr. Old Pen and Paper tendencies and characteristics ourselves. Although we are working on improving the pen and paper dependency, the old component of Old Pen and Paper is likely only to get worse as time passes, but that is OK. It is what it is. Anyways. . . Teaching accounting using a pen and paper does have some valid advantages over using a magical database program because it allows us to see connections between data more clearly than a magical database problem, but the connections take a long to formulate and are not as clear as an electronic spreadsheet program like Excel. One problem with the use of a pen and paper to teach is that a comprehensive problem can take entire day instead of an hour with Excel. We also must erase any errors, and when we make mistakes, we will need to reformate our entire problem for every area the error effects. We will also need to think about how to format the problem on a piece of paper. Mr. Old Pen and Paper has worked problems with pen and paper so long that he does it perfectly, with no mistakes, and no need to erase. However, when learning accounting we do a lot of erasing and tinkering with the data. Excel is much better to test data scientifically because we can test many different assumptions much more quickly and transparently. Teaching and learning with a pen and paper also involve handwriting issues. In other words, we need to be able to read the handwriting of our instructor and ourselves. Many Old Pen and Paper instructors are very good a writing legibly, and the skill of handwriting was highly valued in the field of accounting for a long time, but it is much less appreciated now because we will not be presenting information in a handwritten format. http://accountinginstruction.info/

Financial Accounting

Avoid Floating Journal Entries

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Avoid Floating Journal Entries.
Question.
If you had to take a multiple-choice question test on the game of chess, without the benefit of a chess board during the test, would you remove the chess board while studying, or would studying with the chess board be a better use of your time? ? ?
What are floating journal entries and why avoid them?
Floating journal entries are journal entries that are not connected to anything, not connected to a general ledger, a trial balance, financial statements, the accounting equation, or some other format of the double entry accounting system.
Don’t get us wrong, floating journal entries have their place, and should be used when necessary, but they are used way too often during study time when we could be applying much more efficient methods of study.
Floating journal entries are often the result of limited space, limited resources, or limited information in book problems. When faced with these challenges we must use floating journal entries, but we should look for ways to study in a better format.
Explaining an accounting transaction with a floating journal entry is like explaining a chess move by holding up one chess piece without the chess board and describing how the chess piece moves on the board. If we can visualize the board, we can comprehend the move and the explanation, but nobody learns chess by imagining the board. We learn chess by doing, by moving the peace’s, and by observing the results on the entire system. Even if we were to be tested on chess with a multiple-choice test that has no board, we would not study for the test by eliminating the board. Instead, we would work with the chess board so much that it becomes something we can visualize. We do this through doing.
A floating journal entry is similar to explaining accounting without using the board. When learning chess, we do not assume that we learned the chess board in chapter one and we can now move onto other things because all things related to chess have to do with the board. The same is true of accounting. The board we use will be a trial balance.
We should look for problems that use the trial balance because this will maximize our study time by allowing us to fully engage with a problem and see how it works, rather then memorizing journal entries without fulling understanding their purpose or effect on the financial statements.
For more accounting information see accounting website.
http://accountinginstruction.info/