All Forum Posts by: Karen O.

Every govt agency sends me one, if they send me a single dollar (luckily, they send me more than that). The covid relief fund reported incorrectly, mingling my business and personal pmts, but no big deal for this or last year, as there is more than enough paid in cash to just make an accounting adj to correct what was paid (they put it all on the LLC). If we have to get some of it next year, tho (let's all cross fingers and hope not), it will be more of an issue and may require sending a note with returns to explain that our county is staffed by incompetents.

You can get a Tax ID to use instead of your SSN (I have one around here, somewhere, from an old sole proprietor business). No need to create a business entity, for those who are truly small (just be sure to beef up your insurance, if you don't have at least a properly run LLC, which will cost you a few hundred a year - the insurance is cheaper for those with one or two places and who own a house, cars, boats or have liquid assets other than IRA/401K -- which are somewhat protected).

They are probably worried about not having the info, if the smaller $600 level passes, as nearly everyone they process would go over. The old rules required 200 payments AND a $$ amount, so didn't apply to most small companies.

If they process pmts and don't have your tax info, they can get some hefty fines, for each missing tax id. Same reason companies verify ssn/name/bdate quickly for new hires (but there, they can just keep asking you for the info, until you quit or the year ends, and the fines are much smaller).

edit to add: for those who don't want to enter the info, just go back go cash or mailed in money orders that you take to a cash advance place to turn into cash. Don't put it into your bank acct (hmmm... legal issue here, the state REQUIRES a bank acct for security deposits ... so, maybe check with your attorney first).

Anyplace that processes pmts will have to report and every bank acct will do so, as well (two extra numbers on the 1099 you already get that shows interest/dividends).

Maybe you can get around with cash apps - of course, most of those forbid commercial pmts, such as rent (and Zelle doesn't work with my business acct at all, only with personal accts .... which gets back to the bank will report it anyway) -- if you get caught, expect to get dunned for business charges (my Paypal is business, so I don't worry about using it and have trained tenants on how to use it if they don't want fees added to their rent pmts).

ok, finally read their article, this is for 2022 changes. Not sure if those are finalized or just anticipated due to tax changes that Congress is working on. Again, no biggie - probably get it reported by the bank, too, as the inputs will be over 10K for the year (I think that was originally going to be $600, which may be where apartments.com got their info). So long as they don't add them together and try to make me pay tax on the same amount more than once, I'm good.

I'd ask them - I use them for payments, but don't do manual entry there. I do at another site, but it hasn't asked me for tax info (what I read is that it is ONLY for processed payments, and at that 10K level, so not sure what the 600 is about). At least apartments.com lets me set up an ID for each bank acct they deposit to (one reason I moved some of the payments off of another site, as it allows multiple bank accts, but wants to report it all under one tax ID, which is, well, exactly wrong).

I put in a listing in Craigslist just as a preventative - so those copying from Zillow get my listing too, when people look for an area. Add watermark with your phone number (I use google voice, so can turn off when rented) and company name  all your pictures, so that is in the stolen ads, too.

As for where I get people - facebook is a big one, but I don't place the ad there, just let it propagate from apartments.com and from tenantcloud (paid sub). Zillow I usually do direct, only if I don't get enough good leads in first week -- the last few I had several hundred by day 4 (3 after propagation), so did not feel the need for a paid zillow ad.

See my reply on the other thread - look up you actual return - include full legal name - but not "LLC" on the LLC, for me - full address with all lines needed - for example: name, suite, street for the agent address

Took me three guesses on my info to get it "match" (rd vs road, for example). I almost gave up on the LLC, had to find some filing info to get the agent's info in the correct order (with commas after each line of address, since it is three lines under the name, then another line with the city, state, zip).

Don't care if they send them, we report all income. Get these from S8 and some charity/covid relief programs. And we file if 600 or more for all vendors without a retail storefront.

Unless you are massively cheating on taxes, getting the forms is no biggie, they are always way under what we take in.

Isn't the entire reason to declare as a RE professional (not a realtor), the ability to change the income to Earned, which lets you also treat the loss differently? Otherwise, why would we not all just claim to be a REP? Keep from deferring all that passive loss, while keeping the benefit of no SE taxes. Not to mention a bit better write-off rules.

Without the income being considered earned, how would you be able to put any into an IRA or 401K? Or is that solely a function of most REPs running their rentals taxed as a corporation, rather than as a partnership, forcing the income into the W2 category other than owner shares paid?

Cause we all know that Pres. Trump claims to be a real estate professional in his spare time in the white house, thus the multi-millions in write-offs and the only "taxes" appear to be the fee he pays his accountant to prepare his personal return.

I think I saw one "safe" way to estimate is if you spend more than 1,000 hrs/year (half time job all year) if you are not doing other "real estate" work. License plus sales might be less hrs (esp. on top of a full time job). On the other hand, the downside of being a Real Estate Professional is that you get to pay FICA/Med taxes (double rate for self-employed), although you do get to then dump some pre-tax into a solo 401K. At his 200K job, the IRA path is probably closed, but income not high enough to escape the FICA tax issue. Again, getting with a CPA is best before picking the type of entity (including an LLC with only a single property - seems a bit overkill and you can pick up a 1M liability policy that should shield personal and rental properties).