Announcer:
It’s time now on KROS for Financial Focus, brought to you by NelsonCorp Wealth Management. The opinions voiced in this show are for general information only and are not intended to provide specific advice or recommendations for any individual. Any indices mentioned are unmanaged and cannot be invested into directly. Registered representative securities offered through Cambridge Investment Research Incorporated, a broker dealer, member FINRA, SIPC, investment advisor representative, Cambridge Investment Research Advisors Incorporated. A registered investment advisor, Cambridge and NelsonCorp Wealth Management are not affiliated. Cambridge does not offer tax advice.
Now here’s today’s Financial Focus program.
Nate Kreinbrink:
Good morning and welcome to this week’s Financial Focus brought to you each and every Wednesday morning right here on KROS. Well, this is Nate Kreinbrink. I have Andy Ferguson joining me today. We are into September.
Andy Fergurson:
September is here.
Nate Kreinbrink:
September is definitely here. It is flying right by. There’s a lot going on.
Andy Fergurson:
It’s crazy to me. Once school starts it all goes really, really fast. Before we know it we’ll be at Halloween and then the holidays will be here and then tax season comes again.
Nate Kreinbrink:
Awesome. Your favorite time of the year.
Andy Fergurson:
I feel like it’s the whole year anyway.
Nate Kreinbrink:
It’s like you’re rushing through this, Andy, to get to your most enjoyable time of the year.
Andy Fergurson:
It feels that way. It feels like the time, the nine months between the end of tax season and the start of tax season take just about or feel like the same amount of time as the three months in tax season. They go by really fast.
Nate Kreinbrink:
They do go by really fast. And we’re slowly starting to see, I think, that transition into fall here now with, I guess you say be in September. Again, starting to see some more of that fall. Last week, I guess you would say we had summer temperatures.
Andy Fergurson:
Yeah, I’m done with that. I’m ready for the-
Nate Kreinbrink:
Hopefully this little rain will bring in some cool-
Andy Fergurson:
Cool weather.
Nate Kreinbrink:
… and just fall nights.
Andy Fergurson:
Yeah. I’ll take the cool, crisp nights, watching a football game in a sweatshirt instead of-
Nate Kreinbrink:
Sweating like …
Andy Fergurson:
… having to take your shirt off.
Nate Kreinbrink:
Yeah, it was definitely a hot one and it’ll be here soon enough and we’ll go from there. But again, getting into this time of the year also, it also brings some stuff on the tax calendar as you were kind of filling me in with on the way down here. And one of them is coming up here is the tax deadline for those that extended. So coming up quick.
Andy Fergurson:
Yeah. The extension deadline, that means we’re six months past the regular filing deadline. So for S Corps and partnerships, that filing extension deadline is September 15th. And then for regular corporations and individuals we got until October 15th. So just as a tax preparer, I’ll tell you, if you wait until this September 13th to bring your information in, you may not get it done in time to hit that filing deadline. And then you’ll get an additional penalty. That’s the failure to file penalty.
So right now if you owe tax and you haven’t filed, you’re going to be paying interest. But if you miss that second deadline, that extension deadline, you get another penalty on top of that, that failure of file in time penalty. So we want to make sure we hit those deadlines. If you’re one of those people that’s waiting-
Nate Kreinbrink:
Don’t wait.
Andy Fergurson:
… you’ve waited, it’s time to get your stuff together and get it in. And I’d say even if you’re an individual waiting for that 10/15 deadline, go now because everybody else who’s waiting is going to go later. And at least in our office, we’re first come, first serve. So if you get it in there, we’ll get it done. If you’re the last one in, you’re the last one done. So just get that stuff going so that you can make that second deadline. There’s no reason to pay an extra penalty.
Nate Kreinbrink:
No.
Andy Fergurson:
Don’t give the government extra. You pay them enough. Don’t pay them any extra just because it’s not convenient to get it done right now.
Nate Kreinbrink:
And again, this time of the year too, I know you always have this kind of week marked on your calendar every year. You just got back from a IRS conference.
Andy Fergurson:
Yeah. And those are just about as fun as they sound. We know how to party at those IRS conferences.
Nate Kreinbrink:
You get a bunch of accountants in one room.
Andy Fergurson:
I mean, yeah.
Nate Kreinbrink:
You’re crunching numbers like crazy.
Andy Fergurson:
You know what happens is people count how many people are in the room.
Nate Kreinbrink:
Yeah. Make sure you’re under code, right? But no, I think, again, I’m always kind of blown away by the information that you bring back from that. And again, you always come back with this big old binder or whatever. And then again, you always joke that like, “Hey, this isn’t the tax code. This is just the changes or amendments or updates to the existing tax code.”
Andy Fergurson:
Yeah. Absolutely.
Nate Kreinbrink:
And so again, for you staying on top of stuff like that, and again, as we’ve seen over the last few years, that tax code doesn’t stay the same. Once you feel like you’ve got a kind of a grasp on it or a handle on what is going on, they make changes or they tweaks or they take something away or they add it or they add another provision to it. So, it’s always changing.
Andy Fergurson:
That’s what we in the biz call job security. Yes. So they figure if they change it a little bit, everybody has to stay on their toes. Yeah, definitely there’s things changing this year. One of the things that came out of that IRS conference I would say is everybody who has a smartphone and who knows how to access their camera and/or their email on their smartphone should probably get an IRS online account. Go out to irs.gov and sign up for your IRS online account. Every question that you want answered by the IRS is going to be able to be answered on that online account. Not only that, once you have that online account, you can give your Tax Pro access and they can see a lot of the same things that you can see. And so it’s real secure.
It takes a little bit of doing to get it set up. It’s going to take you probably 10 minutes to go out there. You’re going to have to set up an account with ID.me so that they can verify your identity. But then once you set that up and once you verify who you are, you can see everything an IRS agent can see. You can look at your account balance, you can make offers in compromise, you can make estimated payments, you can check on a refund status, you can look at letters that have been sent to you. There’s a chat feature on there where you can get quick help online chat with an agent. All of that stuff, everything that you would think you would need to do, that you would need to call the IRS for, you’re going to be able to do on there.
And they’re doing that on purpose because they know that their customer service levels are terrible. I can’t tell you how many times I heard people at this conference, IRS people say nobody wants to wait for two hours on the phone to talk to an agent, and that’s what it is right now. And so if you can go out and set up your online individual account, you are going to have such a better experience with the IRS. And when you have questions, you’ll be able to find answers. You can retrieve your IP PIN, that’s an identity protection, personal identification number. There’s been a lot of people that have either signed up for that or have been forced into that because they’ve had identity theft issues and then they can’t find their pin when it comes tax time. Well, this online account, you could go in, click on it, boom, it pops right up for you because they’ve already verified you through this ID.me service.
And so the other thing you can do on there is some people are able to opt out of that IP PIN. So if you were somebody who chose to have it or didn’t necessarily have an identity theft issue, you may be able to go in there and say, “I don’t want an IP PIN anymore,” and turn it off and then you don’t have to worry about it anymore. You can look at transcripts, you can see, let’s say you’re missing a W-2 or a 1099, you might be able to see that information inside your online account. So that’s huge because those are the things that hang people up or that causes maybe 80% of the problems that we see as we try to file returns.
So anybody who has even a little bit of understanding of an iPhone should be able to do it. I did it a couple of years ago and it was a little bit more complicated a couple years ago, but everybody I’ve talked to since has said it’s gotten easier and easier to do. It’s probably not going to be something that’s easy for somebody who struggles to even turn on their camera on their phone. It’s going to be outside of their scope. So they may need a grandkid or something to help them do that. But everybody else, I mean, if you use a computer at work, you can probably do this.
Nate Kreinbrink:
Well, and I think too, it’s the way that not just the IRS, but everything is going to, bill pay-
Andy Fergurson:
Everything’s going online.
Nate Kreinbrink:
… your utility bills, your banking account, your investment accounts, just everything is going to setting up an online account and then handling all through that portal. So again, it’s another password. It’s another username you’ve got to remember. But again, once you have it set up, those benefits are tremendous as far as what you can use going forward.
Andy Fergurson:
Yeah. And the ID.me is a great thing too because the government has set it up to where once you get this ID.me certification and pass through, you then are going to be able to access all your government accounts. You’ll be able to access the IRS, the Social Security. If you have something through Medicare or the marketplace, all those things are going to use ID.me to log you in. And so once you set up that ID.me and get your identity verified, you can be confident that you are getting into a safe space. And then you can do things like when you get a letter that says, “Hey, we can’t send you this refund because we don’t have your bank account.”
Nate Kreinbrink:
You can just go in there.
Andy Fergurson:
You can go on there and put your bank account in knowing that it’s a protected environment. I heard the IRS say at this conference this week that all of the stuff that they use inside the IRS, they don’t use third party products. So they don’t buy a banking software to bolt onto their IRS website. Instead, they pay that bank to build them a software that is wholly contained inside their environment. And so you don’t really have to worry about data breaches and stuff like that. The IRS is nothing if not cautious. And so it’s a safe place. It’s safer than your cable company and your bank. Your information is safe there. So if you have any capacity at all on your smartphone, go get an IRS online account.
Nate Kreinbrink:
It’s the wave of the future, and I guess you can say the future is now.
Andy Fergurson:
Future is now.
Nate Kreinbrink:
The future is now. But again, get that taken care of. Again, we can get into a few more things. I know you had a few more bullet points. Hopefully we can steal you for next week as well.
Andy Fergurson:
Yeah, we got a couple months before the tax season starts.
Nate Kreinbrink:
[inaudible 00:11:47] comes in.
Got any questions, give him a call. He’d be happy to kind of help with you now. Don’t wait until March to have those same questions and we can get that done. But did want to mention real quick here before we run out of time that each month NelsonCorp Wealth Management is featuring a new charity of the month. For the month of September, the charity is the Hand in Hand out of Bettendorf. Again, this is Nate and Andy bringing you this week’s Financial Focus. Thanks again for tuning in and have a great rest of your week.
Announcer:
Financial Focus is a production of NelsonCorp Wealth Management in Clinton and Davenport. The opinions voiced in this show are for general information only and are not intended to provide specific advice or recommendations for any individual. Any indices mentioned are unmanaged and cannot be invested into directly. Registered representative securities offered through Cambridge Investment Research Incorporated, a broker dealer, member FINRA, SIPC. Investment advisor representative, Cambridge Investment Research Advisors Incorporated, a registered investment advisor. Cambridge and NelsonCorp Wealth Management are not affiliated. Cambridge does not offer tax advice. For more information, visit our website at www.nelsoncorp.com.