Winters & Associates

04/15/2025

HAPPY TAX DAY!

We would like to thank all of our returning clients and welcome all our new clients, we greatly appreciate the trust you place in us to help navigate through tax time, this has been our best season to date! We appreciate the patience and consideration of our time during this busy season. We are closing the office at noon today for some much needed R&R, we will be in and out of the office over the next few days but will be back at it after Easter. If taxes slipped your mind this year fear not we automatically file extensions for any client who has not gotten us documents that we filed the previous year so if you still need taxes filed we are happy to get that done for you.

As we move out of tax season we would like to put an emphasis on tax planning as this is the best way to reduce your lifetime taxes. We plan to hold seminars in the coming months on ways you can best reduce your future tax bill so be on the lookout for that.

As always if there is anything we can assist with throughout the year please don't hesitate to reach out as we are always available.

02/03/2024

Its Tax Time!
Just a reminder to anyone who is not aware we will not be mailing out physical organizers this year unless you have otherwise requested one. We will default everyone to the organizer in Taxdome. If you would like a physical copy please let us know and we will mail you one out

07/18/2023

Help Needed: Administrative Assistant
Optional Summers off, Office help needed September 15th-May 15th. Part time in the off months is preferred.

Essential Duties:
- Process quarterly payroll reports and tax payments
- Process tax returns as needed
- Assist Lead accountant in managing tax client data base
- Scan Tax documents as needed
- Process and prepare mail
- Answer phone calls and make appointments as needed
- Light Bookkeeping on QuickBooks Online and Desktop

Required: Willing to learn and work in a small office setting; confidentiality is a must as is a background check.

Wanted but not required would be Microsoft office, QuickBooks online and/or light tax experience.

Please call JoAnn Winters at 816-509-0170 for more details

07/12/2023

Good Moring,

Recently Kyle had the opportunity to sit down and record an episode of the Retirement income hour with Mark Falter to discuss ways for retirees to save on taxes. That episode will be airing this weekend on the following stations at 9am CST.
KMBZ-AM 980 on Saturday and Sunday
KMBZ-FM 98.1 on Sunday
KCMO-AM 710 on Saturday and Sunday
KCMO-FM 103.7 on Saturday and Sunday

This past tax season we started working with Mark and his team at Mid American Wealth Advisors to help provide clients with a more holistic tax and financial planning experience. We helped about 150 of his clients with tax planning and preparation and hope to help out more this coming season. It was a pleasure to be able to sit down and record this episode with Mark and I will include a link to go back and listen to the show if you aren't able to catch it live this weekend.

We can help you manage your wealth and assets so you can pursue your goals. Schedule a meeting with one of our financial advisors, today.

06/27/2022

Hello and Happy Summer!

We are excited to introduce our new client portal. This portal is a safe and secure hub where clients can share important documents with us, stay up-to-date on deadlines, and ask questions in real-time, all in one spot. You will now be able to access your account details at any time. This will eventually replace the Secure File Pro Portal for those who have used it in the past.

You should have already received an automated email from TaxDome with a link to activate your account. From there you will be able to set up a password and your email will be your login. Please check all junk and spam folders to make sure it didn't get missed. We can always send you another invite if you have trouble finding it so just let us know if that is the case.

Please keep in mind that we are still working on getting all past documents uploaded to this portal so it will look a little different by the time next tax season rolls around but we wanted to give our clients access to their accounts as soon as possible so you could start to familiarize yourself with this new feature.

If you need additional information on the program, don’t hesitate to contact us or visit https://client-help.taxdome.com/.

There is a mobile app you can download most app stores. You will want the TaxDome Client portal.

When opening the mobile application, please enter your email and password to log in. You may also log on to your portal from any device by going to our page: https://wintersassociates.taxdome.com/

Step 1. View To-Dos

The first page you see is your dashboard with notifications about important updates, such as unpaid invoices, unseen messages, pending organizers, and unread documents. You’ll also find the contact info for our firm here.

Step 2. Explore the Main Menu in the Left Sidebar

From the sidebar, you’ll be able to go wherever you need to on your portal quickly.

Documents: is where you upload your documents, e-sign, and download whatever we’ve prepared for you.
Messages: is where you can ask us any questions or respond to any of our requests.
Organizers: is where you fill out any necessary questionnaires needed for us to prepare your documents.
Contracts: is where you e-sign custom engagement letters, used to define the scope of engagement between us.
Settings: is where you add additional users to your account if needed.

Need More Help?
Not sure you fully understand how all of it works right off the bat? Check out these help options:

Visit the client help area that gives detailed instructions on how to Upload documents, sign documents, and so on.
View the TaxDome Client Academy videos on YouTube to get even more info on using the client portal.

Thank you, for being interested in our services!

Winters & Associates
Kyle Winters, EA, Tax Professional
Joann Winters, Owner, Tax Professional
Cody Winters, Accountant

12/09/2021

HOLD ON TO THESE FORMS!
Form1444-C (or letter 6457 for the 3rd stimulus amount)
Letter 6419 which is for the advanced child tax credit payments.
These might not look like typical tax documents but your preparer must have these to do your 2021 return.

10/05/2021

Message we received about delayed refunds at the IRS below.

Millions of individuals still await refunds
from timely filed 2020 tax returns. As of Sept. 18,
IRS had a backlog of 7.8 million individual returns that require manual processing.
Some need further review because of mistakes with refundable credits or math errors.
About 9 million math error notices were mailed to taxpayers from June 1
through July 15, compared with 628,997 for the same period last year.
Others are paper returns filed this year that need to be manually processed by IRS.
The good news is that IRS is making progress on processing returns.
As of June 25, there were 16.7 million 2019 and 2020 Forms 1040 waiting for action.
Amended-return filers also need lots of patience this filing season.
As of Sept. 18, IRS had more than 2.8 million Forms 1040-X yet to process.

06/28/2021

Find details about the advance Child Tax Credit payments, including how to get them or stop getting them.

06/28/2021

Today is the deadline to unenroll from the first advanced child tax credit payments!

According to recent legislation there will be changes to the child tax credit for tax year 2021. Starting on July 15th the IRS will begin sending out monthly checks to certain individuals and families with children based on age and income limits. Many tax professionals including myself are concerned that clients do not fully understand the implications of these advanced payments. These are similar to stimulus checks received in the past as they were both advanced payments for tax credits on your tax return. However one major difference is if you receive more CTC than you are supposed to, you will have to pay back the difference. This could easily occur because they are sending out payments based on your most recent filed tax return. If that is 2020 then your income might be considerably higher in 2021 because of the shutdowns in 2020.

My biggest concern is for any client who we made recommendations to about withholdings based on a projection for 2021. For example if you owed $1000 on your taxes last year and have 1 kid, I recommended you not make any changes because the increased amount of the CTC would cover that balance due. If that client accepts the advanced CTC payments, they will effectively have $500 less in credits available when it comes time to file, bringing this clients balance due to $1500. There are many different examples and situations that could come up with these payments, too many for me to cover in a post.

My general recommendations to clients has been as follows:
-If you typically owe at the end of the year and don't need the money now, then opt out.
-If you get large refunds every year, go ahead and accept the advance payments because refunds are going out very slow (still have some waiting on 2019 refund) and the last thing you want is the IRS owing you thousands.
-If you are someone who tries to get close to breaking even then I would also opt out and possibly lower your withholding for the rest of the year (consult with your tax professional before doing this).

If you have any questions of if you want me to look at your scenario specifically to make a more targeted recommendation just give us a call or shoot us a message and I would be happy to tell you the exact implications of this. I have provided the link the the IRS website about these payments.

Find details about the advance Child Tax Credit payments, including how to get them or stop getting them.

05/19/2021

Skip to 45 minutes from yesterday’s podcast to hear Kyle discussing the new child tax credit with Pete Mundo

Listen to KCMO Talk Radio weekdays from 6am-10am for the Pete Mundo Morning Show! Having hosted national shows on FOX News Radio and CBS Sports Radio Network to over 300 affiliates his well rounded knowledge will bring a fresh perspective to news, political, sports and local topics and that affect

05/18/2021

I texted in to a radio show this morning about the new advanced child tax credit and was asked to call in and talk about it for a minute. I am not sure how to clip it but it starts around the 45 minute mark from todays podcast. Take a listen this probably affects most of you.

Listen to KCMO Talk Radio weekdays from 6am-10am for the Pete Mundo Morning Show! Having hosted national shows on FOX News Radio and CBS Sports Radio Network to over 300 affiliates his well rounded knowledge will bring a fresh perspective to news, political, sports and local topics and that affect