DISCHARGING TAXES IN BANKRUPTCY -...

Editor: Dale Quelle, EA • • 714-899-2221 • 14340 Bolsa Chica Rd. #A • Westminster, CA 92683-4868The Tax Professionals

CHAPMAN AVE

BALL RD

KATELLA AVE

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Ball Rd to Phoenix Club Dr

Right on Sanderson Ave.

Volume 2012 - 2013 Issue 3 September 2012

with Rick Barnett

September 18th , 2012 1 Hr CPE Program

Dinner Menu•Caesar Salad

•Cucumber Salad with Dill sauce

•California mixed vegetables•Au gratin Potato

•Chicken Julia•Rouladen

•Black forest cake•Apple Strudel

Meetings are held at the Phoenix Club1340 S Sanderson Ave, Anaheim, CA 92806

Agenda September 18th 4:15 Board Meeting

5:30 Social Time6:00 Dinner Hour

7:00 1 Hr CPE Program $35/$40

$35 for Member pre-registration before midnight on the Thurs-day prior to the dinner meeting; $40 for late or on-site registra-tion and for non-members for meetings with 1 hour of CPE credit. Meetings with 2 hours of CPE credit are $45 and $50 respectively. To make a reservation go online to our web site www.eaoc.org and select the sign up button next to the event you would like to attend and follow the prompts. If you incur any difficulties signing up contact Bill Stewart at (949) 496-3458

The Vision of OCEA is to serve, to represent the best interests of Enrolled Agents in Or-ange County, and to emphasize and enlighten the general public that an Enrolled Agent is the premier tax professional.

The Mission of OCEA is to encourage professionalism, personal growth, and educational growth, while providing member benefits and enhancing the role of Enrolled Agents among the local governmental agen-cies, other professionals, and the general public.

OCEA is 405 Members strong and proud to be the largest Chapter of CSEA.

Welcome New Members

Corey Allen

Christine Davidson, EA

Robert Ferraro, EA, CFP

Rodney Gypin, EA

Tiff Warren, EA

Jenny Wei, Esq

DISCHARGING TAXES IN BANKRUPTCY

Rick Barnett, esq. will help us

better understand the discharge-

ability of numerous categories

of taxes and the considerations

involved in determining wheth-

er a chapter 7 filing is appropri-

ate. He will share the list of cri-

teria he uses when a client first

walks into his office. Rick will

allow ample time for answering

questions and will have one of

his litigation counsel with him

to discuss the litigation alterna-

tives.

Volume 2012 - 2013 Issue 3

The Tax Professionals

by Patricia Yeckel, EAPRESIDENT’S MESSAGE

President Patricia Yeckel, EA 22342 Avenida Empresa #280 Rancho Santa Margarita, CA 92688 (949) 888-2829, [email protected]

First Vice President Joe Guccione, EA 16654 Daisy Ave Fountain Valley, CA 92708 (714) 842-5285, [email protected]

Second Vice President Bill Stewart, EA 31726 Rancho Viejo Rd, #215 San Juan Capistrano, CA 92675 (949) 496-3458 [email protected]

Secretary Marilyn Ratliff, EA 17821 17th St #270 Tustin, CA 92780-2161 (714) 505-6700, [email protected]

Treasurer Robin Miller. EA PO Box 4424 Mission Viejo, CA 92690 (949) 347-8522, [email protected]

DirectorsHugh Cunningham, EA1577 S Harbor BlvdFullerton, CA 92832(714) 803-0300,[email protected] Patricia Patterson, EA3338 Punta Alta, #1ALaguna Hills, CA 92637(714) 514-4811, [email protected] David Shashoua, EA3773 McCray StRiverside, CA 92507(951) 328-0800, [email protected] Victor Silver, EA285 E Imperial Hwy, #201Fullerton, CA 92835(714) 879-1522 , [email protected]

Daniel Carlberg, EA 550 E Chapman Ave, #C Orange, CA 92866 (714) 774-8129, [email protected]

CSEA Director; John Kristianson, EA MBA 5030 Katella Blvd, #228 Los Alamitos, CA 90720-2819 (562) 438-6059, [email protected]

Immediate Past President; Patti Kappen, EA

31726 Rancho Viejo Rd #215San Juan Capistrano, CA 92675

(949) 496-1174, [email protected]

Cont. on page 3

By the time you receive this September News-letter it will be around Labor Day, which signals the end of summer, hopefully cooler weather, the students all back in school, more traffic, and all of us seriously working on our corporate and personal extensions for tax clients. The year has flown by and there are only four months left in the year. Hopefully you’ve taken some time for yourself and your family, gotten some rest and time off, maybe taken a vacation.

At our August Board of Directors meeting we had great attendance (several guests), lively participation, and lots of information sharing. We are very fortunate to have many very committed members who are spending much time behind the scenes making things happen for our chapter.

The Education Committee sponsored 2 great Vicki Mulak seminars before the meeting in August, they have another one planned November 3, and plans for more to follow. We did get some rather bad news that the IRS Practitioner Semi-nar we usually have in Irvine in January will likely be moved to somewhere in the Los Angeles area, and our chapter may or may not see a benefit from this event. This change is beyond our control, as the IRS wants to consolidate the seminars into one location as a result of travel restrictions they currently have. In prior years there were several held at various locations in southern California, which meant our members did not have to drive to distant locations to attend. You will be getting more details about that in the coming months.

Several of the Board members will be traveling to Sacramento for a State Tax Agencies Liaison meeting and CSEA meetings on September 21-22, and I’m sure at our next Board meeting more information will be shared from those events. One of our committees is the Disaster Committee, and we are looking for members to step forward to participate. The purpose of the Disaster Committee is to go the scene where a disaster occurs (such as a fire, earthquake, flood, etc) to assist victims with tax issues, helping to fill out paperwork for assistance, etc. If you have an interest in being part of this committee, please contact Sharon Kay Gordon at 714/974-3696. With our fire season upon us, we need people to be ready to help.

At our September meeting you will be hearing from Victor Silver, our PIA (public information awareness) Chairman, who will talk about EA shirts you can order as well as brochures that are available. The purpose will be to promote our practices but also the Enrolled Agent name and status in our communities.


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Advertise in the OCEA NewsletterCall Jack Lifshin(562) 596-4150

Please support our advertisers by using their services or prod-ucts. Clip their ad from this newsletter and use for reference.

Cont. from page 2

John Rydell (562) [email protected]

Real Estate Appraisals • Homes and 2-4 units for divorces, estates, refi’s and salesForensic Real Estate Appraisals • 1987 to current period for SFR’s and 2-4 units LA and OC

A PLUS APPRAISALS

• Fast turnaround• $350 and up.• State certified• Expert witness for court

Our August dinner meeting was quite successful, as we were fortunate to meet Raven Deerwater, our new CSEA President, and learn just how much we didn’t know about Earned Income Credit. Many of us were amazed at how tricky and interesting some of the possible scenarios could be. Enrolled Agents who excel in complicated cor-porate tax returns didn’t know many of the answers to the Earned Income Credit questions, which was disconcert-ing. If you weren’t able to attend, let me know if you are interested in having a handout from Raven’s presentation. Our Nominating Committee has been formed and the Chairman is Jack Lifshin. They are working already to come up with a slate of officers for the 2013-2014 year. If you have an interest in learning more about being on the board please contact Jack at 562/596-4150.

Our Membership Committee has many great ideas this year for finding and welcoming new members. One of the plans is to start an EA Buddy program, which will pair up students in our SEE classes with current OCEA

members. The members can be mentors and help these potential members feel more comfortable coming to our meetings. If you are interested in being an EA Buddy please contact Patti Kappen at 949\496-1174. Just a reminder that everyone needs to register for the dinner meeting (either through our website or calling Bill Stewart) by midnight on the Thursday before our meeting night. We had many more register “timely” last month and we appreciate your effort to do that for us. For those who did not, you have another chance this month to regis-ter timely and avoid an extra $5.00 charge.

Our Board meeting is held at 4:15 before the dinner meeting every month and we welcome guests who would like to attend. Please contact me with any feedback and ideas you have for our chapter. See you at our September 18 meet-ing!


The IRS uses a variety of technolo-gies to help you get the tax informa-tion you need. Here are six ways the IRS uses social media to share information on tax changes, initia-tives, products and services:

1. IRS2Go 2.0 IRS’s smartphone application allows you to check your refund status, get tax updates and follow the IRS via Twitter. IRS2Go 2.0 is available in the Apple App store for iPhone or iPod touch de-vices and in the GooglePlay store for Android devices.

2. YouTube IRSvideos YouTube Channel offers short, informative clips on various tax-related topics. The videos are available in English, American Sign Language and Span-ish.

3. Twitter IRS tweets include tax-related announcements, news for tax professionals and updates for job seekers. Follow us @IRSnews.

4. Facebook IRS has Facebook pages that post tax information for individuals, tax professionals, and for those needing help resolving long-standing tax issues with the IRS.

5. Audio files for Podcasts These short audio record-ings provide information on tax-related topics -- one per podcast. The audio files (along with transcripts) are available on iTunes or through the Multimedia Center on IRS.gov.

6. Widgets These tools, which can be placed on web-

sites, blogs or social media networks, direct people to visit IRS.gov for information. The widgets feature the latest tax initiatives and programs and can be found on Marketing Express, the marketing site that allows IRS partners and tax preparers to customize their IRS communications products.

As a reminder, the IRS uses these tools to share in-formation with you. Do not post any personal infor-mation on social media sites, especially your Social Security number or other confidential information. The IRS will not be able to answer personal tax or ac-count questions on any of these platforms.

For more about IRS’s social media tools, visit IRS.gov and click on “Social Media.”

IRS Summertime Tax Tip 2012-10

Six Social Media Tools to Help You Get Free Tax Information


So we are in the Dog Days of August. And from where I sit, August has been a pretty scorching month. I started out at the beginning of August in Las Vegas as a Discussion Leader for Level 2 at NTPI. The event was interesting, and I probably learned as much as many of the participants. I know that my evenings were often spent reviewing the next day’s materials so that I would appear at least somewhat competent to lead a discussion on the assigned topics. It was a great experience over all and I was very happy to have accepted the invitation to participate in this prestigious event. I also had an opportunity to attend the NAEA Annual Meet-ing on Monday night at the Mandalay Bay. Frank Degen, NAEA President challenged the EAs in the audience to show some “Swagger” in their practices. I had to shake my head in disbelief. Did the President of NAEA actually suggest that the street term “Swagger” and “EA” belong in the same sentence? He not only suggested it, but he challenged each of us to put that confidence forward as we met with clients and others. How do we show our swagger? Well we can start by cor recting (politely of course…the first time) our clients and business associates who refer to us as “CPAs”. We can also incorporate the NAEA / CSEA tag lines in our email corre-spondence and on our web sites. Lastly, we can show swagger by getting involved at the chapter, state and National levels. We ARE America’s Tax Professionals. After Frank’s initial welcome speech, was the awards ceremony. One EA, Mary McGuire, received an award from Frank for attending 35 annual meetings. Ms. McGuire is from New York City, and to have attended 35 meetings, to me, was an amazing feat of dedication to her profession and to the organization. I had to, at one point, wonder if I had that level of commitment. Other awards went to Kathy Rocha, President of the Big Val-ley Chapter, in California, for her work as chair person of the PIA committee at CSEA. Our own Vicki Mulak received the distinguished Bill Payne Advocacy Award for her commitment to advocacy on behalf of Enrolled Agents. Next time you see Vicki, please congratulate her on this very prestigious award.All in all, the meetings in Las Vegas went very well. With the temperatures of over 100 F outside, the weather prepared me for landing back in Long Beach and the heat wave that was gripping the Southland for the next three weeks. I would wake up in the morning looking skyward for the beloved Marine

Layer, our natural A/C unit, only to see blue sky meaning it would be another hot day. As August turns to September, and the children go back to school, there is a lot on tap for members of OCEA over the next two months. In four weeks, Vicki Mulak is chairing the State Agencies Liaison

Meeting in Sacramento. For those of you who have not par-ticipated in this event, you should make the effort. There will be presentations from the EDD, FTB and SBOE on various tax topics. We are able to influence policy in a very open environ-ment of discussion with the agency representatives. This is in no small part due to Vicki’s efforts in putting on this annual event. One other benefit is that you often can get the business cards and contact information from a state agency person that will return your calls and / or may be able to help to resolve issues for your clients. And to top it all off, there is actually CPE involved for attending this great conference. As many of you heard from CSEA President Raven Deer-water at the August Dinner meeting, OCEA’s Patti Kappen and Devang Mehta are working on the five year strategic plan for the organization. I mentioned this in last month’s column. This is a departure from previous CSEA initiatives that offers a way to build a multi-year, focused plan to achieve CSEA’s long term goals and objectives. If you have ideas on how to improve CSEA please contact Patti or Devang. CSEA Past President Kim Kastl has asked me to be a member of the Growth Initiative Task Force. We are looking for ways to bolster the long term financial stability of CSEA. Please forward any ideas on ways to bolster the financial cof-fers of CSEA (or OCEA for that matter), to my attention. My web site is www.taxxmann.net all of my contact information is there. One last thought, when you look at CSEA or NAEA, often times you will see people from our chapter who are working diligently to grow our profession. First and foremost, you should be proud that OCEA is making the contribution that it does at the local, state and national levels. And after that feeling of pride dissipates, you should ask yourself, “What am I doing to advance the profession of ‘America’s Tax Profes-sionals’”. If you doubt the Power of many, please check out this You Tube Link. It shows what planning and perseverance can achieve. If you want to get the background information, please email me.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o83W0gj_CREThat covers it for now. This is John Kristianson, bidding you “adieu” from the Sacramento Beat.

Sacramento BeatJohn Kristianson, EA, CSEA Director

Sacramento BeatJohn Kristianson, EA, CSEA Director


The Orange County Enrolled Agent newsletter is very important to our chapter as a means of passing infor-mation to our members, as our most valuable marketing tool, and as a source of ad-vertising for our vendors. I look forward to receiving my Newsletter every month in the mail and I read it immediately when I receive it. Our News-letter has helped us to bring in new members and contributed to our growth as a chapter. Of the 19 chapters in California, OCEA is the largest chapter with over 400 members. We have welcomed 39 new members since January of this year, and I am thrilled at each of our dinner meetings to see many new people attending. For the last few years your Board of Directors has been discussing the cost of continuing to print and mail our Newsletter as we have done for so many years. As we face the prospect of less revenues from our educational courses to support our chapter’s activities in this chang-ing environment, we feel that it may be time to change how we deliver the Newsletter to our members. Of course, a secondary issue is the environmental as-pect of using less paper, which many people support.Our Board of Directors appointed a Newsletter ad hoc committee to analyze the costs associated with our News-letter and propose some options that would reduce these expenses. At our Board meeting in August the commit-tee presented its first report to the Board and there was a discussion. One of our options appears to be an “opt in/opt out” choice for our members to tell us whether they want to continue receiving the Newsletter by mail or to receive the Newsletter electronically.

With that option, we would print a much smaller quan-tity of paper Newsletters, saving money on paper and postage. With this option, we could still have Newslet-

ters on our sign-in table at our meetings for guests and new people, so its use as a marketing tool would be preserved. This option would also better serve our members who prefer having a paper copy of our Newsletter for a variety of reasons. I happen to be one of those members. Another option which has been presented is to discon-tinue printing the Newslet-ter as we currently do and only make the Newsletter

available to our members electronically, which of course saves the chapter the most money of our options.

For the past several months, you may have noticed that you are receiving the Newsletter both by mail and by email; it has been available to download from our website for quite some time. These have been attempts at “trial runs” to see how this might work if we were to choose an electronic option.

We have gotten some feedback from a few members asking why they are receiving the Newsletter both ways. Hopefully after reading this you will understand what we are doing and why. The committee is considering send-ing out a survey to members asking for your opinions, which are important to us.

The goal of our Board of Directors is to support our members in the best way we can, and to continue to help our chapter grow and welcome new members. We are very proud of our Newsletter and we don’t want to com-promise this valuable asset, which many members have spent countless hours creating, improving, and perfect-ing.

Please feel free to contact me by phone at 949/888-2829 or email to [email protected] to discuss your opinions on this subject.

About our Newsletterby Patricia Yeckel, EA, OCEA President

CLASSIFIEDSVolume 2012 - 2013 Issue 3

EMPLOYMENT OPPORTUNITY FOR TAX PRO-FESSIONAL. High volume Income Tax & Book-keeping practice in Fullerton is seeking motivated EA/CPA to prepare individual income tax returns for the upcoming filing season. Please e-mail resume to Mac Burke at [email protected]. 09/12

ENROLLED AGENT/FINANCIAL PLANNER SEEKING TO PURCHASE a small to medium size practice in southern Orange County or north San Diego County. Prefer practice with mixed clients in taxes and financial services (not a must). Call Edward Daoud, EA PhD MBA at (949) 310-3261 (cell) or (949) 630-2298 (office). 06/12

TAX PRACTICE WANTED: Looking to purchase a small to medium tax book of business. Currently prac-tice in Tustin serving individual, corporate, partnership and trust clients. Please contact John Rumbold, EA, CFP® at 714-425-7202 or [email protected] 03/12

EA POSITION AVAILABLE IN LA MIRADA. Seek-ing an Enrolled Agent that has extensive experience with preparing multi-state individual tax returns, partnership tax returns, trust tax returns, and corporate tax returns. Applicant must possess exceptional organizational and customer service skills. Please contact Sonya Scott at Philip L.Liberatore CPA (714) 522-3337. 03/12

IMMEDIATE PART TIME JOB OPPORTUNITY for EA or CPA to prepare tax returns for financial office in Irvine during tax season. Please email resume to Brad Fries at [email protected]. 01/12

LARGE CORNER OFFICE AVAILABLE. $800 per month includes shared reception area, conference room, file room, kitchen and parking. Culver & Bar-ranca in Irvine. Large corner office 16x13 ft with view in a private suite. Large enough for several worksta-tions. Call Kevin Winter or e-mail for additional in-formation. Available now. (949) 551-9566 or email [email protected] 01/12

Oct 2007

2012 Edition (For preparing 2011 tax returns) $99 plus sales tax and shipping

• All meat, no filler — we concentrate on California law, not federal.Other so-called “California handbooks” are almost half federal! • Examples, flowcharts, worksheets, and contact information that the other handbooks don’t give you! And the A&E is easy to understand and extensively cited!• Written by California tax professionals for California tax professionals.

Order online: www.caltax.com Order by phone: (714) 776-7850 Order by fax: (714) 776-9906

®Spidell’s Analysis & Explanation of California Taxes

Nov 2007

ARE YOU LICENSED AS A SECURITIES BROKER and are you interested in changing Broker-Dealers? Call Bill Williams, EA to discuss this opportunity at (714) 828-8387. 08/12

EA SEEKING YEAR-ROUND POSITION. Experienced in audit representation and tax preparation. Accounting and computer degrees. Knowledgeable and personable. For resume call Hugh Cunningham, EA at (714) 803-0300 or email [email protected] 08/12

Classifieds available for OCEA Members & associates to advertise items for sale or rent, want ads & employment opportunities. Ads run for 2 consecutive months free of charge (longer based on space available. Let us know when your ad is no longer needed). Email to [email protected]. Include your name & phone number or email.

ADDRESS SERVICE REQUESTED

uPCoMING PRoGRAMS & events

OCEA Newsletter EditorDale Quelle, EA

14340 Bolsa Chica Rd. #A Westminster, CA 92683-4868

The Tax Professionals

Visit our Web site

www.eaoc.org

DATE PRogRAM / EVEnT CPE SUbjECT LoCATIon

September 18, 2012 Meeting 1 Bankruptcy fundamentals Phoenix Club

october 16, 2012 Meeting tbd Phoenix Club

November 3, 2012 Seminar 6 Form 1120S & 1099 Reporting South Coast College

November 20, 2012 Meeting tbd Phoenix Club

December 18, 2012 Meeting tbd Phoenix Club

January 15, 2013 Meeting 2 Quickfinder Tutorial Phoenix Club

Presenter: Vicki Mulak, EA, CFPWhen: Saturday, Nov 3, 2012 - 9 am to 4:00 pmLocation: South Coast College

Continuing Professional Education Program

Register On-Line at EAOC.orgFor Additional information, contact:Patti Kappen at [email protected] , 949/496-1174or Devang Mehta at [email protected], 909/861-8100

Form 1120S Primer & 1099 Reporting

DISCHARGING TAXES IN BANKRUPTCY -...

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