Investors & landlords
#1.
These are the reasons that you have to have a Schedule (from the IRS website):
Use Schedule B (Form 1040) if any of the following applies:
- You had over $1,500 of taxable interest or ordinary dividends.
- You received interest from a seller-financed mortgage and the buyer used the property as a personal residence.
- You have accrued interest from a bond.
- You are reporting original issue discount (OID) in an amount less than the amount shown on Form 1099-OID.
- You are reducing your interest income on a bond by the amount of amortizable bond premium.
- You are claiming the exclusion of interest from series EE or I U.S. savings bonds issued after 1989.
- You received interest or ordinary dividends as a nominee.
- You had a financial interest in, or signature authority over, a financial account in a foreign country or you received a distribution from, or were a grantor of, or transferor to, a foreign trust. Part III of the schedule has questions about foreign accounts and trusts.
May I assume that none of these apply to your dependents?
#2
The question about a Foreign Trust does not appear in the 1099-INT or -DIV interviews. (Note: this is in the desktop software - no guarantee that the Online product works the same way); instead it appears when you run Smart Check.
The screen that pops up in Smart Check (desktop version) looks like this:
Smart Check is asking for a Yes or No for line 8. Note that The square for 8 (NO) is pink, which means that it is a required field. Here is the tentative output:
Note that Schedule B has been added to the forms list (Again, this is in the desktop product, not Online), and that both boxes on line 8 to the right are pink (meaning that this is an error, not being filled in).
Think about the prior returns - is it possible that someone saw the first screen and skipped passed it, or (if this is possible) even skipped Smart Check in order to file?
