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years ago I had a long time client that worked on my floor. About $200 fee since I was the cpa for the office he subletted from. well one year he came in on 4/10 and I told him no; to backed up and too many others ahead of him. Sch A, B, C, D and E. He wouldn't do an extension either. The next year he came back around February even brought his adult sons info. he had the prior year done by hrblock for over $400. I charged him $325 that following year. He was happy knowing I was still cheaper than hrb and convenient to him. I got a nice increase in fees and a compliant client. sometimes you just have to stand your ground. Just yesterday someone dropped off her stuff, I told her it was 1/3 higher this time of year and she agreed, apologized and prepaid before she left my office. Next year she will be timely or I will earn a great fee for 20 minutes of work.

KC - ERIC THESE AD HOMINUM AND JUST OBNOXIOUS POSTINGS HAVE GONE ON LONG ENOUGH, DON'T YOU THINK. 3-4 POSTERS ARE never going to agree on anything and there personal attacks are getting tiresome.

Yes I did. Maybe not to the degree that you did, but I did do a return with over 12 rentals and I really didn't see any lag. Early on I did but after one of the releases it took care of my problem so by the time I did that return I had not problem. Keep in mind I only have around 250 clients, most of which are very simple and only a few with multiple states and only a handful with k1's. I also am not set up on a network which really seems to be where a lot of the problems stemmed from. But honestly, ATX was not the only software with problems this year, it's just that it may have been the works and more vocalized. ATX has always been a great product, but unfortunately even in the past has had bad years. And no I don't work form them and I'm not a beta tester, just a user for around 15 years. Unless something between now and December happens I plan on staying with them. If your not happy or don't think you will be happy, now is the time to consider your other options. Deb!

Knock it off, children. Please. I don't want to ban either of you, so lets go back to behaving professionally.

I finally rolled my independent practice into a larger firm. My fees were still barely half of the rest of the office, but one client complained about the price increase. I replied: That’s a real good question! ,One of the reasons I brought my clients into XX’s office is that my own low rates were no longer sustainable. Although my office overhead was minimal, the cost of software and continuing professional education can not support a small practice any more. The Enron scandal, mortgage collapse, and other accounting industry problems over the last decade led to new standards for handling financial records and other IRS compliance issues. These are much better managed with supervision and a clerical staff, but that has to be paid for. Although your income numbers aren’t high, we must charge according to the complexity of the return. Your family has several tax matters that increase the cost of tax preparation. The most obvious is accounting for a small business. (About half your fee is deductible for that purpose.) You also have a partnership with a passive activity loss carryover. There was a technical sale of less than one share of XXX in a merger, but that generates a three-page form on your tax return. So that’s what’s going on. XX has allowed me to raise rates slowly. Standard pricing in this office for work listed on your invoice would be $xxx, although I would expect the actual price to be $xx dollars lower because you provide complete records and some of your items are relatively simple. We haven’t done any systematic market research recently, so I can’t say if that is high or low. It’s just what it costs for this office. You should take your invoice or the return to a few other accountants for comparison.

Catherine, I am not sure how many clients you have, or how complex the returns are. I am on this quest to prevent converting 3,000 returns from ATX to another software. The conversion is never complete and sometimes there are conversion glitches. To convert for 2013, then convert back for 2014 is far more headache than I want to consider.

I still see issues in 13 that were there in 12. I told the rep I could care less about the "3" assignments as those are childs play and can be worked around by using word. I mean come on who honestly cares if you can put a company logo on a letter or you need to show 50 returns only on a screen at one time. I told them if their customers care about this then they need to take up a different profession. My main concerns in 2012 were the slowness of the software opening return, moving from field to field inside a return, and integrity of the data none of these 3 areas were addressed in the preview release from what I could tell.