Business & farm

However I do disagree.

Just because I (and maybe you) had to remember friends' phone numbers, 

and patiently waited seconds between truly dialing the digits on the round dial on the phone...

does not mean at all that today any 23-year-old entrepreneur even knows their best friend's phone number.  

Or, is willing to wait seconds between entering digits of the rare memorized phone number ...

      If you are 23 now:  you know of no carry backs; don't know where you were on Sept 11, 2001

(hopefully safely napping in a crib) and you sure aren't going to wait even 1 second, let alone 3 or 4, 

between digits when dialing your girlfriend's phone number.  

In fact, a phone that doesn't at least memorize 100 phone numbers including your lover's, is trash,

and "outright totally not natural".  Ask your children and their friends!

At 23 in 2021:  You have never touched a paper 1040;  Haven't seen the form; Trust your program to have gotten it all correct, and hit 'send'.  Perhaps from your phone, not even your laptop.  

More later as right now I am figuring out how to fill out the 1045 cb.

Thank Goodness, I have ancient 1040s dating back to 2015 in this ancient 2017 laptop 

that would not pass muster in any young entrepreneur's eyes.

But oh, how handy now after this CARES act caveat.

No new - and young! - entrepreneur with big startup costs in 2019 with plans for business to open in 2020, 

would have those ancient 1040s laying around.  

Of when they were 15 or 18 years old?  And having had no reason to keep 'm?  

Especially, young entrepreneurs will do what it takes to keep their biz above water.

Accountants are not going to be high on the expense list.

That comes later, once you are solid.

I am sure in the beginning many a small biz owner,

stumbles through TurboTax and like programs, and a bunch of apps.

They are not going to bring out the hardcore accountant off the bat.

It doesn't work like that.

Maybe you don't know enough small biz owners, who put in lotsa hard, tiring, manual labor 

before they got themselves all solid, and neat and with employees, and a secy etc.

That takes some time.  You don't start like that unless you're born with a silver spoon in your mouth.

It's just not going to happen that startup businesses of 23-year-olds

with a lot of startup costs incurred in 2019

PLUS an operating loss in 2020 are going to incur even MORE expenses for accountants

when they know they already have a loss, when they think they can fill out TurboTax just fine like before.  

Young people in their 20s starting out who missed the Oct 15, 2021 deadline for TY 2020

are not going back all those years, and file 1045 or 1040X.  

They probably don't even know they have to do this now.

They will have it a lot tougher, filling out their usual programs, not understanding,

why their NOL of year terrible 2020 won't carry forward.

They are going to lose those NOLs normally naturally happily carrying forward.

How are they going to be accepted forward on, 

when the c/b wasn't waived?

The deadline to waive should have been extended.  

It is a punishment to lose your 2020 NOLs.   A complicated one, but still a punishment.  

For this particular group of (young) startups, I think 

ultimately, the supposed tax relief will cause only extra tax burden and cost

(losing NOLs that must per CARES act be applied retroactively, starting 5 years back).

That burden and perhaps cost if the NOLs are lost otherwise wouldn't be there.

I don't recall any NOLs carry back that 5 years back-far at all ever.  I remember 3 years.

Honestly, it gives problems.  I just noticed that apparently I filed an amended in 2015.  I have no recollection of that whatsoever.  But it's clearly in my computer.  Apparently, I got a small refund after that.  I have no recollection, and it would cost me huge effort to wrap my head around the back-then facts and what it is again what I was doing then, how I was thinking, how I filed, if it was all perfect, where the supporting docs are etc.  

If I had known that there was a 5-y carryback, I would have rather just filed my unfinished 1040 by October 15, 2021 ...  just to get the waive the carry back election in timely, filling out 0s everywhere, then amended that return later by entering all the correct data.

All and all a huge burden and a lot or work, worries, costs ... all energy that goes not to my business in which I have things to fix to keep customers happy, but I am not doing that because it turns out this CARES act complicated my otherwise fairly simple straightforward return.  

The Covid year was bad for business.  But .... it's overcome.

Stuck out.  Survived.  Moved on.  Happy that business is back.  

This one .... that CARES act endless tax complication.... 

Forcing one to dive back years in times long gone.

This is the one that's way more trouble.   

That dive will affect all of my upcoming years, keeps me hostage in waiting on the IRS to approve returns, so complex now and that complexity opening the door to all sorts of inadvertent errors which door was closed before. 

I can just see it coming, the endless communications to tediously clear matters up that make you just want to shut your business down.  

This deadline to waive carryback of 5 years should have been extended.   Especially or maybe only for the newbies. 
The new businesses owners for businesses coming up in 2019 and 2020 who had no accountants (yet, because they are new); who put all their money in their new business, first to start it, then to float it through no-income crises, now must deal with all these new CARES act complexities and 5 years retroactive calculations or lose their NOLs that no new business before ever had to deal with.  Just the Covid-year new businesses!  It just does not seem fair.

I am not the same as my friend who's had his business for 35 years and his current accountant for 10.  

He is happily oblivious to it all.  "A what?  Waive what?  Carry beer?".

No no beers for a while here!