Frequently Asked Questions

What kind of questions can I ask here?

Tax questions, of course! Please make your question(s) detailed and specific, and write clearly and simply.

You may also ask questions about how to use the site such as, "How do I log in with an OpenID?"

When you ask a question, this site will automatically show you a list of possible similar questions. Please take a moment to look and see if your question has already been asked (and maybe even answered!) before you ask. If you end up asking a question that has been asked before that is OK but other users (hopefully) will edit it to include links to related questions/answers so that future visitors to the site will quickly find the answer.

It's also okay to ask and answer your own question but we recommend not answering your own question immediately since leaving the question "open" encourages other people to respond to it. You never know when someone else might have a better answer or one a different angle.

What kind of questions should I not ask here?

Please avoid asking questions that are subjective, argumentative, or require extended discussion. This is not a discussion board, this is a place for questions that can be answered!

Try to make sure your question is of interest to at least one other accountant, tax professional, or business professional. There are no hard and fast rules about who may post here but the intended audience is tax professionals, accountants, business owners, any anyone else who may have an interesting tax question they need an answer to.

Be nice.

Treat others with the same respect you would expect from someone else. We are all here to learn together. Be tolerant of others who may not know everything you know.

"The hardest thing in the world to understand is the income tax." — Albert Einstein, physicist

Bring your sense of humor and keep things respectful and friendly, ESPECIALLY if you disagree.

Be honest.

Above all, be honest. If you see misinformation, vote it down. Insert comments indicating what, specifically, is wrong. Even better — edit and improve the information! Provide stronger, faster, superior answers of your own!

Do I have to log in or create an account?

Nope. You can answer and ask questions to your heart's content as an anonymous user, much like Wikipedia. However, there are some things you won't be able to do on the site without registering. If you are a tax professional we STRONGLY encourage you to register and edit your profile to include your website. We feel that this website will become a valuable resource to tax professionals and allow business owners to discover tax professionals who have the answers they need to efficiently run their businesses. In today's economy more client's and more business can't be a bad thing, can it?

Part of the reason this site was developed was because I myself had some difficult tax questions. I went to THREE different tax professionals over the years before I finally found ONE that CORRECTLY identified and fixed my situation. That was a lot of time and money lost on the other two! If only a site like this had existed back then...

It's easy to register if you want to. All you need is an OpenID account.

How do I get/use an OpenID?

If you already have a Google or Yahoo account, then you already have an OpenID. Just click the login link at the top of the page and click the Google (or Yahoo) button. You'll be asked for your Google (or Yahoo) username and password (this information is never sent to TaxQueries.com) and will then be returned to the TaxQueries website.

If you don't have a Google or Yahoo account (or don't want to use it), you can sign up for an OpenID with myOpenID. After you sign up, you can enter your OpenID at the login screen (your OpenID will look something like http://username.myopenid.com)

More detailed information can be found at this question:

"How do I log in with an OpenID?"

What is reputation?

Once registered, reputation is "earned" through the normal use of TaxQueries.com

Remember, TaxQueries.com is run by you! If you want to help us run the site, you'll need reputation first. Reputation is a rough measurement of how much the TaxQueries community trusts you. Reputation is never given, it is earned by convincing other users that you know what you're talking about.

Here's how it works: if you post a good question or helpful answer, it will be voted up by your peers: you gain 10 reputation points. If you post something that's off topic or incorrect, it will be voted down: you lose 2 reputation points. You can earn up to 200 reputation per day, but no more. (Note that votes for any posts marked "community wiki" do not generate reputation.)

As you gain more and more reputation on TaxQueries.com you will notice that more and more abilities become available to you. Here is a list of reputation milestones and the new abilities you will earn:

15Vote up
15Flag offensive
15Post more than one link
15Post images
50Leave comments
100Vote down (costs 1 rep)
100Edit community wiki posts
100Post more than one question per 20 minutes
100Post more than one answer per 2 minutes
200Reduced advertising (by a factor of 2)
250Vote to close or reopen your questions
250Create new tags
500Retag questions
2000Edit other people's posts
3000Vote to close or reopen any questions
10000Delete closed questions
10000Access to moderation tools

As you've probably noticed, once you reach the high end of the reputation spectrum there is little difference between users with high reputation and moderators. That is very much intentional. We don't run TaxQueries.com... The community does.

What if I don't get a good answer?

In order to get good answers, you have to put some effort into the question. Edit your question to provide status and progress updates. Document your own continued efforts to answer your question. This will naturally "bump" your question and get more people interested in it.

If, after two days, you still don't have an answer you like, you can offer a bounty. Slice off a bit of your own hard-earned reputation -- anywhere from 50 to 500 -- and attach it to the question as a bounty. We'll even throw in 50 reputation to sweeten the deal. The bountied question will appear with a special icon in all question lists, and it will also be visible on the home page Featured tab.

Once initiated, the bounty period lasts seven days. If you mark an accepted answer, your bounty is awarded to the answerer (do note that accepted bounty answers are permanent and cannot be changed). If you do not accept an answer in seven days, the top voted answer will automatically become the accepted answer, and HALF of your bounty will be awarded to that answer. You will always give up the amount of reputation specified in the bounty, so if you start a bounty, be sure to follow up and accept the best answer!

Of course, bounty awards, like all accepted answers, are immune to the daily reputation cap and community wiki mode.

Other people can edit my stuff?!

Like Wikipedia, this site is collaboratively edited. If you are not comfortable with the idea of your questions and answers being edited by other trusted users, this may not be the site for you.