Accountant / tax gal / feller... with airline knowledge?

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How does one go about finding one of 'em?

My financial/tax situation is getting too complicated to wrap my head around, with all these various states and entities. How does one go about finding someone to help?

I live in the bay area, kinda. Also in Juneau, AK, also in Chicago, IL.

-Fox
 
Acrofox said:
My financial/tax situation is getting too complicated to wrap my head around, with all these various states and entities. How does one go about finding someone to help?
-Fox
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It seems to me you'd be better off finding a tax consultant who specializes in whatever is making your taxes complex. For example, it sounds like you might own businesses and/or income real estate. So, maybe probe your network for a trustworthy referral. The "flight crew" part of tax preparation really isn't all that complicated.

If you're concerned about the per diem deduction, Watson CPA has a nice calculator on their website that's free to use. Although, if your AGI is high you may very well be phased out of that deduction.
 
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watson is great if you are just looking to do airline taxes, anything else and not so much. almost went with them, thankful i didn't.
 
ian said:
watson is great if you are just looking to do airline taxes, anything else and not so much. almost went with them, thankful i didn't.
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For someone potentially doing more than "airline taxes" in the future, can you explain this further?
 
WAFlyBoy said:
It seems to me you'd be better off finding a tax consultant who specializes in whatever is making your taxes complex. For example, it sounds like you might own businesses and/or income real estate. So, maybe probe your network for a trustworthy referral. The "flight crew" part of tax preparation really isn't all that complicated.

If you're concerned about the per diem deduction, Watson CPA has a nice calculator on their website that's free to use. Although, if your AGI is high you may very well be phased out of that deduction.
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This ^^^^

The pilot expenses is a very easy thing to do and by just doing very minimal research you can do this on your own. In the end, I couldn't use any of my pilot expenses because the expenses didn't break the 2.5% AGI threshold to be able to count.

Now capital gains on investment property and section 1250 recapture and Calilfornia to boot, and an AGI that triggered AMT that blew my mind, - stuff I normally didn't worry about dealing with 50,000k regional FO pilot pay. so I went with a tax guy who dealt with real estate and rental properties. and I did my own pilot expenses (again only to find out that it was basically zero when my AGI came into play)

I ended up paying in federal taxes about 1.5x my annual regional FO pilot salary, but I got a tax refund that was half my pilot salary for the year because I had overestimated my tax liability and overpaid my taxes that year.
 
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I've never understood how a typical family on the first few years of Regional pay could even come close to breaking the standard deduction when filing. seems like a lot of work to find out its better not to use it haha
 
WaterRooster said:
I've never understood how a typical family on the first few years of Regional pay could even come close to breaking the standard deduction when filing. seems like a lot of work to find out its better not to use it haha
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Itemizing has always gotten me more in returns, even way back as a Culligan FO making 23/hr. Per diem and travel expenses and the luxury(?) of being a transportation worker results in a cubic assload of deductible expenses. YMMV, but my refund is usually 2-3xs what it would be if I just went the standard deduction route. I'll gladly take the extra several hours to figure out all my overnights and job related expenses to stack dat kinda chedda.
 
WaterRooster said:
I've never understood how a typical family on the first few years of Regional pay could even come close to breaking the standard deduction when filing. seems like a lot of work to find out its better not to use it haha
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Actually I've discovered the less you make the more you get back even if you haven't had any tax withheld from your pay

The first year I was a regional FO I thought I did my taxes wrong. Because I got back more than I paid in taxes. I only had something about $1000 taxes withheld from pay - I got that all back and more - my refund was around $4000.

Itemizing the pilot expenses, earned income credit, tax credits - the lower the AGI it seems like more money you got back. It just didn't seem right to me. But for a few years I was one of those 49%er who didn't pay any income tax and got back more than I paid in taxes.

But as AGI goes up the ability to utilize the pilot expenses goes down but itemizing really does help as I've found it almost has been double the standard deduction. Until you start making a lot more then the itemized deductions begin to get limited and you start encountering AMT. but even with AMT it's generally better to itemize when you can't use the itemized deductions because it lowers your AMT tax bill. - I.e problems encountered by people whose AGI is not primarily W-2 income or self employment income.
 
This year I got married which raised the minimum deduction up to 12k. If I had been single, no problem, but to itemize up that that amount I wasn't even close. I may have to have someone do my taxes next year to see if perhaps I was doing it wrong.
 
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