Welcome to Porterville's oldest accounting firm, with roots in the community going back to 1933. Beginning with Mark DeWitt and progressing through Stan Shiplett, Gordon Sorey and Bill McKinley in various partnerships, we have been highly involved in the growth and success of the community and the lives of our clients and their businesses.
While Bill McKinley is still involved with the firm, he has retired from equity participation. However, he still works for us and you on a less structured basis.
Lynda and Dick Scearcy continue as the active partners of McKinley Scearcy with the same commitment to your success and well-being in mind.
Please visit our "Services" page for a description of services we offer. Also, feel free to use the financial calculators offered on our web site, as well as our timely newsletters.
Thank you for dropping by and please return often. If we can assist you in any way, please let us know.
Another Late Start for Tax Filing Season
January 10, 2013
As has been their practice for the past couple of years, the Congress and White House waited until the last minute to pass final tax legislation affecting our 2012 income tax returns. The problem with the late resolution of the “fiscal cliff” problem, which they have all known about for the past couple of years, is that late passage of laws means the IRS will not have final form designs until sometime later this month. And, that means that the software companies (we use Lacerte) can’t begin modifying their programs until after IRS gets through.
The bottom line is that we’re going to get a late start on tax return filing. IRS says they won’t accept individual income tax returns until January 30. However, that doesn’t apply to all individual filers. Some forms require much more extensive modification and they may not be ready until late February or even early March. Some of the forms are not expected to apply to very many taxpayers, including those claiming the American Samoa Economic Development Credit or the Qualified Railroad Track Maintenance Credit.
But, other forms will be used by many more taxpayers. If you will claim a credit for federal fuel tax paid on off-highway equipment, or will claim the General Business Credit or will claim depreciation or amortization, among many others, your return cannot be completed until those forms are completed by IRS and programming rewritten by our software vendors.
This does not mean that you can come in late in February or early in March and expect your return to be completed and filed by April 15. We ask that you bring in your information as early as you can. We will prepare as much of the return as possible and wait for the rest of your forms to be completed. At that time, we will finalize your return.
We admit this is not the most efficient way to prepare tax returns. We would much rather be able to complete the return in one pass, with a few questions for you prior to finalizing. However, if everyone waits until later to bring in information, that might put us in a real bottleneck, which won’t be good for any of us.
If you don’t have a business (and don’t do business in Guam), you can probably file your return in late January. That’s normal timing, since most W-2s and 1099s aren’t issued until late January anyway, with some limited exceptions.
So, please bring your information in as early as possible. We’ll get started on it and, if you’re one of the unlucky ones who needs forms that haven’t been designed yet, we’ll let you know and complete the return just as soon as the forms are available
