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I've always been charged upon renewing, which is normally during the month of May.

I have never experienced the renew now, pay later, scenario. ATX has always charged my credit card upon renewal. Lynn

One of the more popular desktop tax programs stores the "encrypted" login passwords in a file with the clever name of "password.yy" They must be using a very sophisticated encryption algorithm - a blank password is stored as all zeros. Now if one had a hex editor ...

I have found it good practice to make this assumption about durned near everything (present forum excepted!!). That way I get happily surprised. At least occasionally.

Nope! Have had a few telephone conversations and the result is pretty much "Take It or leave it!" I took it. It is a good product and I am not going to bite off my nose. In my one and one/half person office, I have to save wherever I can.

Thanks, KC, for this timely update. Some clients are contemplating an LLC with mother and daughter to buy foreclosures, rehab and sell or rent if a down market. Daughter's spouse is in real estate so will serve as agent and handy man. I need to revisit the relationship issue and lots more but this raises more issues. It seems to me the spouse will likely be spending more time on this than either the daughter (university professor) or mother (out of state). And how this matters whether an LLC or just individuals. My brain already hurts...

Rich, When I was in the Coast Guard, I had the honor of performing at a couple of the ceremonies for veterans as a member the the Ceremonial Honor Guard. It is a very moving experience, especially folding the flag and delivering it to the loved ones. I always felt so inadaquet when I handed over the flag. Still gets me choked up. Tom Hollister, CA

No, you did not sell it, you contributed it in exchange for stock, at book.

Is that a crime or was he performing a public service?

Thanks for all the suggestions. We will not be driving. We will get the metro pass for the week. I have been warned about driving in DC and we have decided to use the metro and walk. Good Excercise. Never thought about the Ford Theater. Will add that one to our list. Mount Vernon is a possibility, but we are trying to stay near to locations that are on the metro lines. We are staying in Alexandria, about a half mile from a metro station. We got a hotel room with a kitchenette so we would not have to spend so much on restaurants. Plan to only eat out a couple of times on the trip. Mostly packing sack lunches to take with us on our day trips. Love the suggestion about the Udvar-Hazy Annex. Do you know if you can get there on the metro? My kids are both engineering students and they want to work in Aerospace. I think they would did that annex. Thanks Tom Hollister, CA

The "anti-churn" rules do NOT allow you to create a new/higher tax basis from a sale of assets to a related entity. You must have been doing it wrong for 10 years if you have been depreciating a new basis (other than a carryover tax basis). Also a "sale" would mean you have to recognize a tax on gain at FMV as the transaction would not qualify as a tax free exchange for stock.

"Cryptographic hash" is technically correct, but it's also nerd speak. "Encrypted" gets the point across, which is probably more important than technical accuracy when you're sending out that email to hundreds of thousands of users with different levels of technical knowledge. Same here. I got that email from eBay, and I'm still curious about how they're storing passwords. That's a bigger *if* than you might think. It's not uncommon for an application to do a simple MD5 cryptographic hash on a password and store the hash. If that's the case, it's possible to break a pretty good number of passwords using rainbow tables. The *correct* way to do this is to "salt" the hash before storing it... and now I'm hungry. If eBay had been doing it right, there shouldn't be anything to worry about, but it's usually best to assume that everyone is incompetent and act accordingly.