Leaderboard

Dear Client, Why are you asking ME how you should designate your employees for workers comp classification? Try the truth. That seems to work in most cases. Dear Client, No, I am not doing anything else today. I will generate a letter saying that we are working on your IRS tax liens (that have been in place for a year) so you can buy a new truck. Wait, here is an idea. Pay the IRS.

I think the value should be based on a per-pound average. They could just weigh each bag when it's delivered and write that on the ticket. A good value would probablly be 82.83 cents per pound - easy to remember, and probably as accurate as any other method.

I've had that happen a couple of times too. I usually say, well do you think I should leave off your W-2 as well? Cause look - they held out taxes here.

Got an "Unexpected Error Program Needs to Close" but instead of clicking Ok I clicked on the 'x' to close the message and the program DID NOT CLOSE! I was able to save my work. I closed and restarted the program to be safe.

Computers here stay on 24/7. Each morning each workstation is rebooted. At lunch time, each workstation is rebooted. Late shift reboots at dinner break. This works around many of the system resource hogging problem of the tax program. Does not eliminate all, but has reduced major issues by 95%. If the program and computer are doing something very strange, FIRST step is to close all programs and reboot. This is a Windows problem that has existed since WIN95. This has been a public service announcement.

Dear Caller-Never-To-Be-A-Client-Maybe: Called yesterday, left VM: "I called a few days ago wanting to know if you could do my return. (strike #1-lies...or alzheimer's?) I need it done as soon as possible as I'm going away for a month. (strike #2-not my problem) I live [insert local address here]." Me: rolls eyes. He's never called before according to caller ID. Other than a couple of telemarketers, I've had no calls that I did not recognize. I didn't have time to call him back until after dinner, and I decided that after 8:30pm was too late to start calling anyone that wasn't an existing client. Called early this morning before I'm out of bed (strike #3-are you serious?!), another VM: "I see you tried to call me back yesterday and I couldn't get to the phone" (strike #4-must be a liar). Uh, not unless I'm sleep walking and returning calls in the middle of the night!

The ones I hate are where every dollar they take out of their IRA makes roughly a dollar more of Social Security taxable. Take out $4,000, taxable income goes up by $8,000.

I'm about to do laundry and take a shower. Yeah, it's 3am. Then I'll do some more returns. I mowed twice this season so far. One of my clients is going to give me a reel mower when they come to pick up; at least that ways I can keep the front yard tidy. The areas I did mow are about 8 inches tall again. Vacuum? I do have to sweep my hallway; can't have clients see all the cat hair. Why does shedding season coincide with tax season?

The other issue regarding the early withdrawal is they "forget" about having any State Tax Withheld. NYS loves to tax these unless you are over 59 1/2. The problem I had is a person who did this EVERY TIME she changed jobs. EVERY TIME she owed Mega bucks to NYS. EVERY TIME I explain about the 10 % Penalty and the 25% Tax Bracket Federal and the approx 6% NYS Tax, so that about 50% is going to taxes. Never Listens.. "I needed the money" Than whines about owing..

And hardship only means they allow you to take the money out early. It does not mean you don't have to pay taxes on the money that was never taxed going in or penalties if you're too young to get away with it.

REALLY hate it. I want to fire clients who make 17 trips to Goodwill every year. I get that the charities need the items, but I HATE this form.

And a fee increase!!

I know of what you speak. Except that this mom died. They had every single item itemized; so who am I to complain except had to tell them they couldn't go over $5000 without an appraisal.

I have my Autosave set to 15 minutes but I press Ctrl+S after every W2 and whenever I switch forms. It's a habit I developed working with spreadsheets and word processors decades ago. This is why I hate that annoying message so much! The one you get after efing the extension. GRRRRrrrrr.

Had a client the other day that insisted the 1099-R amount should not be included on her tax return because she already paid the tax on it and she would be paying the tax twice if I included it. After explaining it to her she still does not believe me and wants to talk to her financial adviser. Another one in the hold pile!

I've been clicking on that "x," too, cause dang it, I need to work more than the program needs to close.

Have that same situation right now. I will pay the penalty and interest when *I* make the mistake, but *I* will deal with the IRS to resolve it. if *YOU* want to resolve it, then *YOU* get to pay the penalty when you blow it up with the IRS. And that is what *I* told the client yesterday, and why my engagement letter states "You will bring me all coorespondence from the IRS or other taxing authorities before trying to respond" or *I* am not responsible for the penalties. I have a 99% abatement rate. Please do not try to mess with that..... Rich

It's that thing with a hose that lives in the dark, dark corner of the closet and never comes out during tax season. Also, my husband is doing laundry tonight while I work (and dally on this board).

You keep on conveniently leaving out the things that I DO do - mow the five acres, shovel the walk, wash the windows (my office building has 30 windows (all over sized double hung) - thus, why I have my window open even now) and various other things that need done. And of course, I was just kidding, I do all those other things you mentioned. We all pitch in and do what needs to be done. None of us are above helping. The vacuuming usually falls on my shoulders, though, because there is such a big area to vacuum. And I would NEVER consider time on here as a waste of time. I always feel so much more enlightened than before I stopped by.

I am "Oh About" in my seventies and I have days like that. For instances; I have been searching two days for my extra office key which my assistant gave back to me. I put it somewhere so I would remember where it was. It is definitely "Oh about" somewhere.

Thank you jmdavidcpa! I have been looking for a startup tweaking program. I detest things running in the background; I am willing to wait the extra seconds when I want a program, as long as it doesn't choke my machine running in stealth mode.

There is a LOT of chemical energy in batteries. Discharging that energy all at once is *not* an easily controlled activity. This has been a public service announcement. Better living through chemistry!

Great ideas, but: As long as Americans use the tax refund as a savings plan and want their refunds immediately, the fraudsters will have free reign. Till the mindset of the American public changes and becomes more intelligent, the problem will always exist.

I work year 'round. Hired help (2x/week) in Sept and am grooming him to take over in 7-10 years. I am just *tired* of working 60 hours/week with one week off every summer. Bookkeeping, payroll (full for one client, tax forms for two others, one nanny payroll, now my own too), taxes, a tiny bit of representation work here and there. Yes, Lion is right - used to be slow after 10/15 (and in August, too) but not for the last half-dozen years.

Yes you can, it is in your ATX Preferences. Options, Preferences, Open Return, Auto-Save. Sorry my Chrome will not let me "Snip" and Paste the screen shot. Hope this helps!

I have a program that blocks installs from creating programs that start automatically. it pops up and asks whether I want to allow it. I rarely do. I also check the Startup programs using Windows Task Manager, CCleaner, a startup control panel item I installed, and one other program I can't recall at the moment. Auto-starting programs are a plague on computers. QuickBooks is one of the worst offenders. Grab these while you still can: https://web.archive.org/web/20131106030702/http://www.mlin.net/StartupCPL.shtml https://web.archive.org/web/20131105052937/http://www.mlin.net/StartupMonitor.shtml They still work fine in Win8.

I will double up on Jack's Message! For those of us in small or one person offices, especially, every time YOU take a break, REBOOT. It is amazing how much today's software keeps 'running in the background' with the aim of making changes back and forth faster. But they eat resources, and tax software, [ALL TAX SOFTWARE] requires a lot of resources. Rebooting closes all those lingering pieces of other activity, and the tax programs always run faster after a reboot. As Jack said, it is a Windows problem that has existed since WIN95.

All mine are dated 12/31/YY. Dates don't change taxable income.

I do like the way ATX revamped the form this year, though. Also, if someone has 5 Goodwill receipts, we just enter it all as one. If it doesn't change the tax, who cares.

History repeats itself. I have a client from Thailand, married to a man with a long Polish name. She uses her Thai name hyphenated to his Polish name. I remember way back when I had to get that to fit on the line and be accepted by e-file. NOTE: This is not a slur on Polish names as I am half Polish myself; and consider that my better half.

Cool video. But I don't believe that I will try this at home.

Only limited deduction based on age allowed. if you prepaid, you lost it.

I don't want to think about the number of returns remaining, although I do feel like I accomplished a lot in the last couple of days. I filed my returns today too! Yay, come on big money! *claps hands and dances like a silly Wheel of Fortune contestant* Just kidding. What is this vacuum thing you all speak of?

Oh, thank God, and I forgot vacuuming and wasting time on here. Thank God.

OMG, I thought you worked with other people and/or employees. You have 145 in the pile and you're the one chit-chatting, answering the phone, doing the dishes, doing the monthly bookkeeping, cleaning the toilet, running the copies, eating the Cadbury mini eggs, buying yourself the flowers? I feel like such a failure right now. OMG.

Is it possible for me to manually set my autosave to every 5 minutes? I know I did last year. I think Jack told me how, but I can't seem to figure it out this year.

I seriously doubt that anyone looks at the signature but I also don't think it appropriate to knowingly have an incompetent person sign something they are incapable of understanding. In the case I presented, the EO insurer finally called back and supported my decision to not prepare the return as son stated he would have his incompetent mother sign it. I offered son other options and have not received a reply. I may never. We will meet on March 28 at father's memorial service so it could get awkward.

You are welcome! Happy computing!

Yes. But hopefully they took pictures, etc, Ups the odds of an audit, but if you believe them, and they understand that fact, you should take it.

If more than a week or two had passed since the client submitted the response, I would wait until the AUR unit replied. Once the case has been assigned, a 2nd submission could create confusion and delay, both of which are hallmarks of the IRS.

At the expense of all of the other returns that are coming in. The pile has grown to 150 as of this morning. I shudder to think of the number of individual extensions we will have. I have every reason to believe that the "pile" will grow to at least 200 before the tide changes. Yesterday was the slowest in-take day this week with only 6 coming in. And I still have about 20 year-ends to finalize to get their returns in the queue. Are we having fun yet?

Jack, in some of the IRS resources on identity theft it states that taxpayers should attach the 14039 to the front of their paper filed return if it rejected because the SS number had already been used. That's what I've done this season--attach the 14039, then the 8948 (explaining why the return wasn't efiled with the reject code entered), then the paper return. If you learn about the other return filed with your SS from the IRS before you even try to file, then you file the 14039 where they instruct you to do so. Perhaps the agency is learning on its feet and decided it made sense to get the 14039 upfront to avoid all the back and forth correspondence we had to do last year. Something has got to change to make it harder for identity thieves to steal from the gov't and create huge headaches for taxpayer victims.

On the Education Expenses input sheet for the 1098-T, uncheck the box that says "add this to education credits" and things will correct themselves. That checkbox adds the scholarships and grants to the amount paid.

Vacuum?!

I hate it when the TP tries to take the bull by it's horn, and then doesn't want to pay to get them out of the mess they caused.

Dear Client- Last year, as you walked out of my apt....you said you were not coming back to me "this year" because I raised your fee for an itemized return/estimated vouchers to $125. Your income was about $100,000...and you are 85 and single. You live in an SRO. You have no expenses. This is NYC you know....nobody but an idiot would let you sit here for an hour...and charge you so little. So...I decided to drop you. Anyway...you just called me. Before you could say another word...I told you "I retired. I'm not doing tax returns". Then you told me about a company (it's H&R) that will do your return for half the price of last year. Were you going to ask me to do your return for half of $125? I'm glad I don't have to find out.

Dear Client, it is not necessary to continue to ring the office doorbell every 10 seconds. I actually heard it, because it is very loud and rings on both floors of my house. I am sorry it I don't hurdle my huge desk, hang up the phone or get out of the bathroom in enough time to get to the door immediately. The closer it gets to April 15, the more little things tick me off.

Life is too short for PITA clients. I would not quote a price. I would tell them they are not a good fit for my business and they should find another preparer.

  Sometimes you feel like the money will be worth the headache.  In my experience though, it hasn't been.

When I get price shoppers I just *love* it when they ask if my fees are negotiable. I tell them, "Yes, they are - UPWARDS only." They RUN. Tee hee. (There is an old Rita Rudner comic routine where she talks about getting rid of boyfriends you can't stand and who won't commit. She said to tell them "I love you, I never want to be apart from you, I want to have your babies." then she said, "Sometimes they leave skid marks." I want those price shopping PITA folks to leave skid marks.)