Posts by ruggedmaker2

Regarding the goods, we're looking at Section 41, Subsection 1, Paragraph (a)

I mean, I guess it all just boils down to what kind of service you're actually looking at.

jadenomad24 said:I’m trying to figure out what kind of paperwork I actually need to prove a service was "performed within the USA." When it comes to shipping goods around the States, I usually just stick a CMR in the file along with a statement confirming the cargo left California, but what about services? What’s the standard for proving they were actually rendered?

What kind of service are we talking about here?
When it comes to transport services, I’m using the exact same stuff as Drew Rogers6.

So, you set up a protected account through the IRS, and the whole point is that ONLY money that's legally shielded from garnishment can go into it.

The stuff that’s 100% untouchable (fully protected) includes:
child support payments, compensation for health issues or loss of work capacity, and payouts for lost support due to someone's death;
disability benefits under standard social security regulations;
any kind of social welfare assistance;
unemployment benefits;
child allowances;
scholarships and financial aid for students;
wages earned by inmates (though you can't use this to dodge child support or damages caused by criminal acts);
awards and official honors;
maternity and parental support payments, unless some specific law says otherwise;
and any other income specifically exempted by law (like certain sick leave pay or newborn grants from the government).

Now, wages and pensions? They’re only partially protected.

Everything else isn't covered, so don't even think about dumping it into the protected account.

granitetinker8 said:One more thing—can I go ahead and set up a protected account right now, or do I have to wait until the IRS actually hits my account with a seizure?

Look, you can totally set up a protected account before the seizure even happens. Just make sure your husband brings that enforcement office notice along when he heads down to the bank.
Since the legal notice is technically under his name, he’s the one who needs to walk in and open the protected account.

It all depends on when they actually get that paperwork over to the IRS.

Anyone else trying to push something through today? I’m getting absolutely nowhere. I’ve been staring at this damn "please wait" spinning wheel for twenty minutes now... 🙂 and I’m just sitting here, waiting and waiting...

At this recent seminar on the new safety regulations, they told us the official filing instructions wouldn't even be out yet since we still have plenty of time.
Basically, 2014 is just for getting our act together, and the whole thing actually kicks in during 2015.
Which means, if you believe me, we won’t see any actual guidance or deep-dive explanations until sometime mid-next year (because that’s just how things roll in this country 😁).
And honestly, if history is any indication 😁, expect them to drop a bunch of "updates" and "amendments" to the rules shortly after we start. They always realize too late that they forgot to define something, or that what they wrote is impossible to actually do in the real world, or that it somehow clashes with some other law or one of those million federal directives from the USA 😁

As for me, I’ve already printed everything out and handed the stack over to our safety officer to comb through. Since we deal with high-risk environments, we can't afford to play games with this stuff

I honestly don't think you'll be able to get that through the IRS website. I had to deal with this exact same thing back in 2011 with an ID filing. I sent everything in perfectly—I’ve even got the confirmation receipt and everything—but for some reason, the agent at the IRS office just couldn't get it to upload into their system. Nobody can tell me why, either. It was just one of those tech glitches that makes you want to scream.
I actually ended up having to drive all the way down to the local IRS branch just to hand it over so they could manually process it, since the online portal was being completely useless.
It wasn't a huge headache once I was actually there, though. They got it logged manually, and now everything is finally squared away and looking good.

Look, you're gonna have to take that form down to the IRS office yourself.

Thanks!

The folks over at NOAA are driving me absolutely insane. It’s a total joke—employers are drowning in paperwork, filing endless forms and reports left and right, yet NOAA still hasn't even properly processed the data from 2013.
What on earth are they actually doing over there all day?
People can talk all they want about change, but honestly, once the Democratic Party gets their hands on things, it’ll be more of the same. At this rate, I probably won't see my retirement benefits officially cleared in the system until the end of the decade.
That’s likely why they cooked up that whole MPP1 nonsense in the first place. 🙂

Is there any way to submit those MPP1 forms through the e-retirement portal if the retirement office starts breathing down my neck about an employee getting ready to retire?
I’m guessing the answer is a flat no, but I figured I’d ask before I lose my mind.

I guess this could actually fit under this thread, maybe back when we were all young, naive, and just starting out in the European Union 😁

Look, you really need to dig into the specific sales tax laws of the country you’re working for. Sure, the broad strokes of how VAT works are pretty much standardized across the European Union, but every single nation handles its own little legal nuances and fine print however they see fit.

Take construction services, for example. If an entrepreneur providing those services moves into another European Union country, it isn't a one-size-fits-all situation. Some countries will let you pass the tax liability along, while others will demand you register locally just to handle those specific jobs.

That might be exactly what's happening with you. That country might have their own weird way of regulating your specific type of work. Either look it up yourself or just corner someone at that firm and ask them to walk you through it.

The bottom line for you is making sure everything lines up perfectly with our own IRS. They'll tell you exactly what's required, because the data from your aggregate filings has to match up—on a European Commission level—with whatever data that company is submitting in their acquisition reports.
See, the info we send to the tax authorities via our consolidated and acquisition filings gets passed right up to the European Union. Somewhere in that massive, tangled web of European bureaucracy, those numbers have to match perfectly.

If I can offer one more bit of advice 😁. Just draft up a formal inquiry or a letter to the central office of the Department of the Treasury in Washington, D.C., , and ask for an official ruling.
It might take a minute—sometimes it feels like forever—but they will get back to you.
The more precise you are with your question, the better the answer will be, and you'll finally have something in writing telling you exactly what to do.
An official opinion like that is binding, and if you ever get audited, the auditors have to respect it.

I've requested official rulings a few times myself, and I always got them (though, yeah, usually after a month or two of waiting).
Maybe I was just waiting too long because I wasn't being clear enough about who I was addressing; I used to send stuff to "VAT advisors" or "collections specialists" and things like that 😁 but I always got an answer eventually. And whenever someone tries to tell me I'm wrong, I just shove those official responses right in their face. 🤣

Lisa Newman34, if you want to handle Sales Tax properly, you should probably register with the IRS specifically for those services you're providing to clients outside of DC.
Basically, you become what they call an atypical taxpayer—meaning you're only on the hook for Sales Tax regarding those international services, while everything else you do here in the States stays under your standard flat-tax setup.
Just a heads-up though: keep an eye on the local sales tax thresholds in whatever state or country you're dealing with. If you cross their limit, you’ll have to go through the headache of registering there too.

From what I gather, a client can't really use the reverse charge mechanism if you haven't registered locally.
Honestly, this is the kind of nuance a specialized Sales Tax consultant should be able to walk you through. When you call the IRS, don't waste your breath talking to the front-desk clerks; ask to be put through to a specialist who actually handles these specific cases. That's how you get the real answers.

Edit: I think we touched on this back in that other thread about European Union Sales Tax—some links were posted there, so maybe dig through that a bit.

Look, we’ve hauled plenty of goods back from Germany and Austria ourselves over the years, and honestly? It was always smooth sailing with the tax side of things. Zero issues.
Mind you, we're in industrial manufacturing, so we aren't out grabbing trinkets. We buy raw materials from long-term suppliers who—for the most part—don't even deal with retail customers. They have all our paperwork on file, everything from our business filings to our tax IDs. Like I said, we've never had a single headache; everything moves through without the sales tax.

When we have shipments going within the USA, our own drivers handle the transport. Usually, we set up deals so that those same drivers pick up new supplies on their way back. And it works perfectly every single time.
🤷

As for using those VAT refund services to claw back money, I wouldn't know. We don't bother chasing pennies when the amounts are small.
But from what they've told us at the seminars, every state handles its own rules for those kinds of refunds. The requirements aren't the same everywhere.

You just book the whole thing as an expense—VAT included—and then, once you get that tax refund back, you log it as income.

Look, you can't just toss Austrian or Canadian or Canadian tax info into our US sales tax forms. That’s not how it works.
The hotel stay happened in Austria, so that’s where the tax hit stays. Period.
And yeah, you could have dodged that Austrian tax at IKEA, but only if you showed up as an American tax registrant and proved the goods were heading straight back to the States.
But hey, if you're really dead set on getting those taxes back, you could probably try clawing it all back through one of those VAT refund services.
There's a whole other thread dedicated to the mess that is sales tax if you want to dive deeper.

Look, if the invoice already includes and covers the Austrian VAT, you don't have an acquisition tax obligation because there's nothing left for you to calculate. The Austrian company already handled it.
The Austrian just rolls it straight into their own VAT filings.
If you're looking to claw back any of that paid VAT, you’d have to go through a service like this:

Bottom line? Your VAT and VAT-S filings should only include invoices where you actually bear the tax burden and have the right to claim input tax credits at the same time.

If the shipment hasn't actually landed, there's no point in sending over the invoice.

Your question is a little fuzzy, but look, speaking generally, you can dodge an enforcement order if
you just sit down with the creditor and hammer out a deal—and then actually stick to it.
Try to negotiate a plan where you can chip away at the debt with at least a small payment every single month.