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Oh Please!!!!! They contact me every year; as does Liberty Tax and, this year, Jackson Hewitt. IMO, you would have to be pretty insecure before you would hitch your wagon to their horse.

No more discounts. You ARE WORTH your fees!! Engagement letter telling that you must receive total payment before she gets the return. No e-file until total payment is made. You ARE WORTH your fees!!

Thankfully, we do not send software until paid. We tried invoices many years ago, and it was more headache than it was worth. If someone really does not have a charge card, they can obtain a prepaid card at any decent store. Those that prefer checks, mail them (although some actually try faxing them). If someone cannot bother with paying in advance, they are probably going to cause me other grief in the near future anyway. I am a big proponent of life is too short to deal with things which bother me. Considering the social aspect, I would "say" not worry about it other than not letting them get behind again. Maybe refer them to someone else, assuming you know someone else local who you would not be embarrassed to recommend. On the other hand, I don't like being taken advantage of, and would actually insist on proper payment, and if kept for the future, be paid retainer style in advance. If someone gets mad at me because of not wanting to pay what I charge, that is their issue, not mine, and I would hold me head up high. This is something I learned because of my umpiring avocation (and happily, my sons did as well). You do your best at any one moment, usng all available information, accept you may not be perfect, and move on Those that get upset are not worth the hassle of trying to please them. Have I lost friends? NO! If they were truly friends, they would not have ended the relationship over something so small as a ballgame.

As Catherine said, simple questions like that tend to be better at fooling automated "bots" which are are much more efficient at making a big mess than a real person.    You are right though, most people who are manually creating accounts and spamming forums are able to google most questions to find the answers.  This is where the new spam detection service comes in.  Our forum connects to the service for every single new user registration to check them against a database of reported spammers.  Every user who registers gets a score of 1-4... the higher up on the scale, the more likely they are a spammer.  Anyone with a score of 1 or 2 is allowed in (as long as they can answer the security question)   Any user who gets a score of 3 is held in a queue for me to decide if they are allowed in or not. Any user who gets a score of 4 is allowed to register, but then is automatically banned from the site.   If any spammers do get through and start spamming, I or the Mods will mark them as spammers, and that information is sent to the central database for the service.  As you can imagine, with tens or hundreds of thousands of forums constantly reporting spammers, the service becomes quite robust.

I would send her a past due letter for the $200. In addition, I would state that payment must be received by December 31st in order to continue our accountant / client relationship. If she pays you, then I would insist on a signed client engagement letter with a fee stated in advance $ 450 or ? for 2014 and if you want to get rid of her insist on 50 % of your fee in advance.

You might also consider including a suggestion that she accumulate all the necessary data and meet only one so that both of your time will be more wisely spent and not wasted on inefficiency. A pet peeve of mine is having to work on something piecemeal because it is very inefficient, wastes time and leads to possible mistakes when the preparer has to stop and start a job.

First, I would send her a pleasantly worded past due letter for the $200. That may end it all by itself. But regardless of the social connections, she is abusing the relationship. And you are unintentionally encouraging that by letting her get away with it. It is, you admit, 'draining', so whether you collect or not, I'd drop her for the resulting lowering of stress. A letter in Jan telling her you are cutting back some, and will no longer be able to do her return, would be my follow-up.

With my developer hat on: Cloud removes some very nasty headaches. No support for installation, maintenance, updates, backing up data, etc. Factoring in support for just these issues is a HUGE part of software cost. Like it or not, modern computer users are insulated from having to know how computers function, and expect software vendors to train them if needed. This is not a bad thing, as it means more can use the wonderful tool, it is just different. (Imagine if GM had to teach me how to drive, give directions, make repairs, fill the gas tank, etc., all for free, because I bought a GM vehicle.) Much more easily to handle proper licensing as one can monitor exact access and cut it off as needed. Costs go up as one has to charge enough to cover customers being online 24/7 and moving large amounts of data. But, those costs get passed on, and if the customer is not all that active, I might make more money. (I would not want to have to run a meter and bill for access.) Unless I am sloppy and do something incorrectly, I have zero liability for lost data, so no new risk there. The bad is all on the customer. Outages. Intuit has suffered them, as has Amazon. If these two, expecially Amazon, cannot keep up 100% of the time, then how can anyone else? Intuit's online payroll was unavailable for more than 24 HOURS not too long ago... Amazon is the back end for MANY cloud services, so it is safe to say they are the best, and yet they cannot be perfect. If data is lost, the customer has likely trusted they did not need an online backup and are in bad shape. Slower data entry is almost a given, and a bad thing for even a lousy keyboarder. For safe data, each entry must be stored and added, slowing down entry. Well, unless you live in a Google fiber area and your cloud service is in the same loop... (For example, I am writing this using a remote connection to my main computer, and even at slow typing, I have to "wait" a few ms for the remote software to send the keystrokes to the main computer, update the display, and send the restults back to me and update my display. This is a very fair comparison to cloud or even network based software speed.) So for now, we remain softare installed on the customer's computer and do not require internet access at all. We continue to consider a cloud offering, but nothing on the horizon.

Right! Some of mine don't open anything that says "contains important tax information" on them.

The spammers don't care what the topics are or sites' main interests. When I started looking into where these were generated and searched for some of them with whois, the IPs came up as spammers that were signed on to a wide variety of sites for the sole purpose of spamming, and some were reported to be associated with blacklisted sites. This forum's internal IP tools revealed that some of the members had multiple members all signing in from the same static IP address, and those might have been automated spam bots being set up once a human had solved the old security question. The new sign up features that Eric put in place on Monday assure that new members are real people and whose IP addresses are not associated with high levels of spam.

Makes me think of a sign I saw at every workstation many years ago when visiting a local payroll processing service (probably back in the DOS days). "ALWAYS obtain a supervisor's permission before pressing the 'Delete' key. Otherwise, the payroll record you eliminate will be your own."

Many of our clients don't even open the envelope...

One of the lines in my "welcome to tax season" letter - for those few to whom it applies - is something like "all prior balances MUST be paid before any new work begins" - in bold face, with a statement of past charges. Either they pay up, pronto, usually with apologies -- or I never hear from them again. Either way, I win. If it is part of the standard letter, folks don't feel like they are being singled out. Good luck! Just had to tell an accounting client (a neighbor) to pay up or no more work. I did it nicely, included a copy of the engagement letter he signed, highlighting the sections applicable, and gave him a specific time limit and three payment options. If he doesn't cough up, the last thing I do is send his employee a W-2. But it's never easy. We don't get into this business because we hate people and want to make their lives difficult!

Congress does not care one iota about taxpayers.

My immediate reaction to seeing this article on the ATX/CCH site was that the title should have read Get Ready For “The Worst Tax Season Since 2012”

I posted the materials for my class on the ACA on my website http://www.afsb.net/joancpa/newsletter.php?nid=17126 If you don't like to click links, just go to www.joancpa.com and click on Newsletters.

And, what happens to access to MY clients' data if I move to another service in future? NO THANK YOU! The only thing I'd want on the cloud or internet-based is tax and accounting research. Unless I want hard copy print of a book or manual, I see no need to install that type of software on my computer or deal with receiving updates via download or disk, but that is totally different than actual prep and data storage.

I choose NOT to send my client information to be stored on any server except the one in my office. I have total control. This also comes with total responsibility which is part of the game. However, if I allow my client information to be stored on a "cloud" company or service, I have no control over security but still have total responsibility for the security of said information. NO CLOUD for me.

From a programmer's point of view, a Catch-22. Asked often. Allow me to edit anything, but do not make me responsible for bad edits... or do not allow me to edit anything, and figure out what I really meant to do/keep. Over 30 years, I have learned the user will defeat (on purpose or accidentally) any code to warn or attempt to prevent making a bad decision. (Proves I am human and can be out smarted.) Thus, the only practcal method is to clearly make the user responsible for what happens or does not happen at their keyboard, with the reverse of allowing to fix whatever happened with correct keyboarding. Had this issue a few moments ago. Someone said we printed an incorrect DE9, as the ETT pct was 0. Printed again later with a correct ETT. Person wanted us to pay the penalty amount. The issue was user based. We do not and cannot set ETT as not all employers have to pay ETT. The user did not have ETT setup at all. On the first report, they would have had to confirm they were not subject to ETT via a Y/N message. (We do ask if we di not find ETT setup properly.) On the second, the person probably answered no, they were not exempt, so despite not setting up ETT, we insert the proper limit and rate for the user. Probably lost a customer over this as there was no way the person was willing to accept that they messed up, despite seeing the results right in front of them, including exactly how it happens. So the message is if not paper, then create PDF's, multiple sets, and keep them safely in your control in at least two separate locations. Backup, backup, backup. And after that, test the backups on a clean machine from a completely separate location. Can you reinstall your applications? Can you restore or access your data? How long does it take?

I worry about just my self making an accidental change in my sole proprietorship with no employees at all. I save all client returns as a .pdf file and can use that for most of the questions I have in following years without risk of changing anything. When I do have to open an already filed return in the tax prep program (maybe to see where I entered something), I am always worried about just what you say. If I know I'm going to spend much time in the return, I duplicate it and work within the duplicate (just like I do when I want to run some what-if scenarios). If you're having a big problem, can you lock all returns and then duplicate a return one at a time as needed for your employees to examine a prior year's return preparation? (Don't use ATX any longer, so don't know the logistics or possibility of that.)

Hi PurpleTaxLady, and welcome to the group. I think Jack is correct about it being a design flaw in the program that CCHSFS can't or won't fix, and there are other problems at CCHSFS also, one being lack of adequately trained technical support staff. I think his statements from another topic summarize this very well:

I would go with option 1 since option 2 leaves an aroma.

On the NSA daily feed this morning it was stated that Drake will issue their Form 3115 for the 1040 by the end of Jan. I would think that ProSeries would do the same. I just think it's early to worry.

The damage would be the cost of a legal battle, both past and future. Non-taxable.

Lion, thanks for the tip. Presbyterian Church USA is pretty main stream. I will be in the church office Friday so will have access to the contract and call the national office. Thanks again to all!

Yes to both your questions. Looking for sense in tax regs is a waste of time.

As preparers, we should all be happy. This tax season is going to be difficult enough without having to wait to see if the extenders are enacted or not. I feel so stupid when I have to answer a client with "I don't know!".

I know one person (me) who is very happy to see this bill passed. I have a VA loan on my home and I get to deduct the VA funding fee now. Thank you Congress. Tom Newark, CA

I disagree. Problems installing 2014 at the firm. I have not called tech support yet. Monday morning will be my day to see if there are any qualified and empowered technicians on duty. Corporate reluctance to take ownership of the 2012 debacle and admitting how it hurt ATX users' 2013 return. A general lack of understanding of customer service.