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While I know that many of my fellow tax professionals would argue that tax season never officially ended last year, were already gearing up for the new tax filing season. Heres what you need to know.

The IRS has announced that tax season will open Monday, January 24, 2022.

Some folks have suggested that a January start date is earlybut Im guessing they have a short memory. Its true that tax season opened a little later in 2021on February 12, 2021but thats an outlier due to the pandemic. The January 24, 2022, tax season open is on par with the open dates for the past few yearsJan. 27 in 2020, Jan. 28 in 2019, and Jan. 29 in 2018. In fact, other than last year, the agency has opened tax season in late January for more than a decade.

Free File opened for business January 14, 2022. The programwhich is what it sounds likeallows taxpayers with an Adjusted Gross Income (or AGI) of $73,000 or less in 2021 to file their taxes electronically for free using software provided by commercial tax filing companies.

You can find your AGI on line 11 on your Form 1040. The amount includes income, less adjustments, and is calculated before claiming the standard or itemized deductions. Statistically, most taxpayers are eligible for Free File.

You can do your taxes now if you use Free File, even though the filing season hasnt yet opened. Click over to IRS.gov/freefile to see the Free File options. The Free File provider you choose will submit your return once the IRS officially opens tax season and starts processing tax returns.

Not every Free File partner has the same eligibility criteriait can vary based on income, age, and state residency. Additionally, some but not all Free File partners offer free prep and filing for state returns. Check the fine print before you start your return since any state preparation or non-qualifying fees are required to be disclosed on the companys Free File landing page.

You can only file your current year tax returnthe 2021 tax yearusing IRS Free File. You cannot process a prior year return using IRS Free File.

Free File isnt the only service opening early. Many commercial tax preparation software companies and tax professionals also will accept and prepare tax returns before Jan. 24. They typically will submit the returns when the IRS systems open.

The filing deadline to submit 2021 tax returns is Monday, April 18, 2022, for most taxpayers. That feels confusing since April 15 is a Fridayno skips, right?

Dont forget about Emancipation Day. A public holiday in the District of Colombia since 2005, it marks the dateApril 16, 1862that President Abraham Lincoln signed the District of Columbia Compensated Emancipation Act, freeing nearly 3,000 enslaved people in the District months before the Emancipation Proclamation. By law, when April 16 falls during a weekend, Emancipation Day is celebrated on the nearest weekdaynot necessarily the following weekday. That means, in 2022, Emancipation Day will be observed Friday, April 15, so Tax Day gets pushed ahead to the next business day, which is Monday, April 18, 2022.

As if that isnt confusing enough, taxpayers in Maine or Massachusetts get an extra day. Taxpayers in those states have until April 19, 2022, to file due to the Patriots Day holiday in those states.

All taxpayers who timely request an extension will have until Monday, October 17, 2022, to file. Remember, however, that an extension gives you extra time to filebut not extra time to pay.

The IRS says it anticipates more than 160 million individual tax returns to be filed for the 2021 tax year, most coming before the April 18 deadline.

According to the National Taxpayer Advocate, the agency still was trying to catch up before the last tax season even started, carrying over approximately 11.7 million returns from 2020.

The IRS did not finish processing 2019 returns until midyearof 2021. Add paper returns, amended returns, and returns flagged for errors due to Recovery Rebate Credit (RRC) claims, and you had a recipe for disaster. This month, the advocate reported to Congress that manual reviews will take substantial time, preventing the IRS from digging out of that hole in the foreseeable future.

Even if your 2020 tax return has not yet been processedlike mineTax Day is still April 18, 2022. The IRS notes that taxpayers generally will not need to wait for their 2020 return to be processed to file their 2021 tax returns.

I knowyouve heard that before. But its true again this year.

We already know that the IRS isnt answering the phone. IRS Commissioner Chuck Rettig encourages taxpayers to check IRS.gov rather than calling, saying, We have invested in developing new online capacities to make this a quick and easy way for taxpayers to get the information they need.

Rettig is referring to online services at irs.gov, including:

The IRS also encourages taxpayers to file electronically with direct deposit and avoid filing paper returns wherever possible.

The IRS says it expects it will take around 21 days for most taxpayers who file electronically to see their refund, assuming there are no issues with their tax return. The agency stopped short this year of their often-repeated statistic that the IRS anticipates nine out of 10 taxpayers will receive their refund within 21 days of when they file electronically.

Dont forget that the law requires the IRS to hold refunds tied to the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) and the Additional Child Tax Credit (ACTC) until February 15. That extra time allows the IRS to match information from forms W-2 and 1099 with data reported on tax returns; in prior years, refunds could be issued before records were checked, increasing the likelihood of fraud. The hold, together with bank processing times and bank holidays, means that taxpayers should not count on seeing those tax refunds until the first week of March. The rule applies to the entire refundeven the portion not associated with the EITC and ACTC.

While there has been a lot of discussion online about a further filing date extension in 2022similar to those issued in 2020 and 2021so far, thats just talk. If that changes, Ill let you know.

This is a weekly column from Kelly Phillips Erb, the Taxgirl. Erb offers commentary on the latest in tax news, tax law, and tax policy. Look for Erbs column every week from Bloomberg Tax and follow her on Twitter at @taxgirl.

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Here's What You Need to Know About the Upcoming Tax Season - Bloomberg Tax

By this point in the pandemic, were all looking for something pleasant to distract us even momentarily from all the chaos, which may explain why the simple, no-frills game Wordle has become so popular. Its a web-based puzzle that requires players to guess a new five-letter word every day, in six tries or less, and everyone gets the same word. You may have seen people sharing the gray, green, and yellow square patterns on Twitter, which show how they performed on that days Wordle without giving away the solution (more on that in a sec).

According to a lovely New York Times profile of Wordle creator and software engineer Josh Wardle (get it?), he devised the game as a gift for his partner Palak Shah, who loves word games and crossword puzzles. The pair apparently got into the NYT Spelling Bee and daily crossword games in 2020, and Wardle wanted to create a new game that Shah would like. The perceived scarcity of the game only one puzzle per day leaves the player wanting more.

The game is web-based, so theres no official app to download (although its not for lack of trying by a few copycats). You can play using a mobile or desktop browser; just go to http://www.powerlanguage.co.uk/wordle/. You have until midnight, when the word resets and a new word is there for you to guess. I often start a game, leave the browser tab open, and come back later as I try to figure out the correct word.

Everyone has their own strategy for how they approach that first blank grid of squares. Choosing a word that has a lot of vowels as your first guess is a solid plan; once you rule out the various vowels, it narrows the word choices significantly (and no, I am not telling you my secret starting word). Type in your word and hit Enter.

Letters that are in the word and are in the correct spot will then turn green, letters that are in the word but in a different spot will be yellow, and letters not in the word of the day will be gray. Note that a green or yellow letter can appear in a word more than once for example, if you get one green a, there could be another a somewhere else in the word but you wont necessarily know that until you play the next word. And no fake words are allowed the game will throw you a Not in word list message if you try to enter AEIOU, for instance.

In the screenshot below, the keyboard shows letters youve guessed wrong (in other words, that are not in the word) in dark gray or black and the letters you havent guessed yet in light gray. Youll know youve won when all the letters turn green (and a compliment like Impressive appears).

Originally, Wardle didnt create a sharing component for the game, but after seeing users on Twitter sharing their results using green, yellow, and black square emojis, he added a share button that lets you copy your results once youve completed the game in a way that wont give away the days word to anyone who hasnt played it yet. So in the grid below, you can see I guessed completely wrong on the first entry, got two correct letters in the right spots on the second guess, and guessed the word correctly on the third try (not bad!).

Theres a high contrast color blind version and a dark mode available; you can toggle them on using the gear symbol in the upper right corner next to the word WORDLE. If youre really feeling lucky, you can also toggle on Hard Mode, which requires you to include any hints in the next word. For instance, in the first screenshot, in hard mode, I would have to include the R, the T, and the O in my third guess (so RADIO wouldnt have worked there).

Its worth noting that this display option can be difficult for those who use screen readers online, such as people who have low vision. Developer Cariad Eccleston, founder of antagonist.app, created a way to make your results accessible (h/t to Liam ODell for this tip). Paste the results you copied from the Wordle site into the translator at wa11y.co/, and youll get a text description of how you did. Heres todays description:

Of course, since were on the internet, Wordles grids have been meme-ified, repurposed for political messaging, and many brands have tried to get in on the games popularity. But Wardle told the BBC he has no plans to include ads on the game and isnt collecting or otherwise doing anything fishy with anyones data.

A nice thing on the internet? We deserve it.

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How to play Wordle - The Verge

Los Angeles-based sports training platform Mustard this week announced a $3.75 million round. Led by Lake Nona Sports & Health Tech Fund, this latest raise follows a $1.7 million round back in late-2020, bringing the firms funding-to-date up to $6 million.

New investors this time out are Mark Cuban, OneTeam Partners, Ronnie Lott, Justin Rose, the Major League Soccer Players Association and the United States Womens National (Soccer) Team Players Association, joining a list of existing investors that includes big name athletes like quarterback Drew Brees and pitching legend Nolan Ryan.

There are so many young athletes out there who could be future Olympians, MLB pitchers, or high school state champions in whatever sport theyre passionate about, Brees said in a statement offered up to TechCrunch. For me, that was football. Unfortunately, many young athletes lack access to the type of coaching I received. I believe Mustard truly levels the playing field, making elite training accessible and affordable for young, aspiring athletes, and Im proud to support their mission.

Image Credits: Mustard

The expanded roster of investors comes as the firm looks to expand its coaching offerings beyond baseball the root of itsquirky name (i.e. put a little mustard on a pitch). The list of additional sports includes golf, soccer and football. Golf seems like an easy enough jump from baseball, in terms of offering feedback to an athlete executing a move from a relatively stationary position. The company says part of the funding will go toward hiring additional team members to help them expand the offering.

Our new investors bring force-multiplying experience and connections across all major American sports, CEO Rocky Collis said in a release. As we expand our platform to include additional major sports beyond baseball, athletes everywhere will be able to learn their personal recipe for improvement, regardless of their resources.

Mustards sensor-free approach to data capture is what it hopes will set it apart from other offerings. The technology is a relatively low barrier of entry on this front, using a smartphone camera to collect mechanics of a given movement through a team that includes a number of former Major League Baseball Advanced Media (MLBAM) employees. From there, the app offers feedback, in the form of a report card.

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Mustard looks beyond baseball as it raises another $3.75M for sensor-free sports coaching - TechCrunch

Viewed realistically, smart phones and tablets are nothing more than small computers without real keyboards. As such, they need the same types of bad-guy protection that full-on computers need. Here are a few of the protections I would pay attention to:

(1) Do not download frivolous, random apps unless you know exactly where they are coming from and what they do. iPads and iPhones should download only from Apple. Android phones and tablets should download only from Google Play.

(2) Pay attention to the privacy and security settings when you install an app. Some apps make ridiculous demands, such as access to your location, contact list or camera. Be choosy. If an app asks too much, ditch it in favor of something better.

(3) Decide where you want your information to live. Do you really need to put everything in the cloud? Will you have backup copies if the cloud service crashes? Be aware that all of the major cloud services (Google, Apple, Amazon) have crashed at one point or another, causing millions of files to simply disappear. How safe and secure will your private pictures and information be? What if some of it leaked out for all the world to see (think photos of former OKC Thunder star Kevin Durant smoking, and other embarassing celebrity photos)? Disable sharing until you really need it.

(4) Stop trying to synchronize every possible device together to where they all have the same information, especially personal-to-work computers. Is it possible that other people may view or use any of these devices? Do you really want them to see a list of every website youve visited, or every photo youve seen? Sync only when needed, rather than having it mindlessly running in the background at all times.

(5) Set up screen locking to turn on automatically, and give it a strong passphrase. Thousands of phones, tablets and laptops are lost or stolen every week. Make it to where no one can get into your device without the key.

(6) Disable tracking, location and GPS services for all but the most necessary functions.

(7) Make sure your devices operating system (iOS or Android) is set to automatically update itself. Updates fix software problems that let the bad guys in. Make sure your mobile apps are being updated, too.

(8) Install some security software. Antivirus, antitheft, anti-whatever, security software can help cover for things we forget or dont know about. Good, free software for both Apple and Android devices is available at places like avast.com/mobile and lookout.com. You may not be worried about viruses, but you also dont want your device being used as a conduit to funnel problems to other people, either. Get some security software and use it.

(9) Stay on your carriers network (AT&T, T-mobile, Sprint, Verizon, etc.) as much as possible. Those networks are as safe as youre going to get, and your communications (email, text, voice) will be protected. However, if you must get on local wifi networks, be aware that the potential exists for everyone else on that network to see what you are doing, whether its at work, the coffee shop, school or your hotel. In these cases, use a VPN (Virtual Private Network) tunneling service to protect your communications. Check out the free services at tunnelbear.com/download-devices.

(10) Similar to the LoJack Stolen Vehicle Recovery System for cars, software exists that allows you to track and possibly recover your lost or stolen tablet or phone. You can also remotely erase these devices, too, protecting your information from prying eyes. Some devices have remote tracking and erasing software already installed. If yours doesnt, check the offerings from Avast Free Mobile Security and Lookout.

Dave Moore, CISSP, has been fixing computers in Oklahoma since 1984. Founder of the non-profit Internet Safety Group Ltd., he also teaches Internet safety community training workshops. He can be reached at 405-919-9901 or internetsafetygroup.org.

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Being safe with tablet computers and smart phones - Norman Transcript

It seems like every year there is another commission, task force or board that studies the defense acquisition system. Fiscal 2022 continues the pattern with the rather bureaucratic-sounding Commission on Planning, Programming, Budgeting, and Execution reform. This time, however, there is good reason to sit up and take notice. While defense innovation initiatives over the past three administrations have made progress, the Department of Defense cannot gain ground on strategic competitors until the rigid and linear PPBE process is addressed. This commission presents a golden opportunity for the DoD to break out of its industrial-age shackles.

Congress and the DoD have worked hand in hand in recent years to spur innovation. From the establishment of the Defense Innovation Unit and organizations such as Army Futures Command and AFWERX as well as contracting innovations such as the expanded use of other transactions, commercial solutions openings and Small Business Innovation Research programs, there has been a steady stream of initiatives for increasing how the DoD attracts new entrants into the defense-industrial base.

These efforts have struggled to gain scale because they do not fit how the DoD builds its budget via the program objective memorandum. This central component of the PPBE system is like an old, comfortable shirt to most stakeholders. Generations of planners, programmers, analysts, congressional staff members and lobbyists are intimately familiar with the current system. Clear processes, oversight mechanisms, levers, etc. guide this deliberate process that Secretary Robert McNamara brought to the Pentagon from Ford Motor Co. in the 1960s.

This top-down process relies heavily on advance planning and detailed cost estimates of projects and technologies spanning years into the future. Commercial industry, meanwhile, long ago moved on from centralized planning and instead focuses on portfolio management, which enables the flexibility to meet todays challenges.

This comfortable PPBE shirt does not fit many of todays national security challenges. Getting from demonstrations and other transaction prototypes to production when there is no program of record in the pipeline, for example, has been a continuing problem. The DoD has established a series of acquisition pathways, including a pilot appropriation for software, but none address the timeliness of funding or the ability to make trade-offs. Programs execute to plans devised many years before without sufficient ability to adapt to changing technologies, threats and operating concepts.

Todays challenges, such as Joint All-Domain Command and Control, need a budgeting process that supports modularity, iteration and speed. Chris ODonnell, the acting assistant secretary of defense for acquisition, noted late last year that the DoD needs to rethink the Big A acquisition process in the department. Its not just what we are doing in the acquisition system, [its] how do we reform the requirements process and the PPBE. Until the three of those are lined up, well, we cant pull things through the system quickly.

Interestingly, there is strong recognition across the defense community of the challenges of the current framework. Leaders such as Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Jack Reed, former Deputy Secretary Bob Work and even former Google Chairman Eric Schmidt have publicly called for PPBE reform.

PPBE commissioners can build off the success of the recent National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence and the Cyberspace Solarium Commission which have been well received and quite impactful by taking a three-pronged approach:

The United States simply cannot meet the national security challenges it faces over the next decade if the resource allocation process is not brought into the 21st century. The commission on PPBE reform can help bring adaptability and flexibility to how the DoD delivers capabilities to that multifaceted battlefield. It should look for models of success, focus on what matters and move quickly to pilot efforts.

Jerry McGinn is the executive director of the Center for Government Contracting in George Mason Universitys School of Business. He is a former senior U.S. Defense Department acquisition official. Eric Lofgren is a senior fellow at the Center for Government Contracting. He has written extensively on PPBE reform for the center and his Acquisition Talk blog.

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Three steps to help defense innovation break free from its shackles - DefenseNews.com