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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.

You are welcome! Happy computing!

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.

I dutifully enter them individually because of the 'date of contribution' varying. Maybe I'm making it harder than it is. I really hate this form.

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?

Thank you Jack. A little check mark did the magic.

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.

Vacuum?!

Dear Client, I understand that your mom and other friends/family members are very eager to get the partnership K-1's from the unholy mess you call "spreadsheets" from your LLC, that you only gave me last Friday. Emailing me six times in eight hours will NOT get them done any faster, especially when NONE of those responses answered the questions I asked. NO, you should NOT prepare K-1's from TurboTax for them. Unless you want to do this return yourself - and right about now, I'm thinking maybe you SHOULD. Don't push me any more today, or you WILL be doing them yourself.

O.K. Let's forget about the Daughter receiving her half as the 50% beneficiary designated on the IRA. That leaves us with the other 50%. Now, one cannot "assume" anything. You need to look at the IRA statement to determine on what date was the IRA proceeds paid. And, to whom. That said, let's say that your assumption is correct and it was paid to the Dad's estate. In your first post, you said there was a will leaving the IRA proceeds 50/50 to Daughter and Son. If none of this money was disbursed during the Estate's tax year, by the end of the Estate's tax year, or within 65 days of the end of the Estate's tax year, then it would be taxed to the Dad's Estate. Has a tax year been chosen yet? A tax year is chosen when the first 1041 is filed. Ideally, you would want to chose a tax year in order to minimize the Estate taxes. In other words, match the taxable income coming into the Estate to expenses and distributions going out. And, without knowing more details, I can't comment on what the tax year could/should be. With more details as to what taxable income came into the Estate and what expenses were paid out along with the dates for those respective items, one could offer some suggestions. Perhaps you could start a NEW post when you have more of the facts. Let me use a hypothetical to illustrate. Let's say we are working with the following fiscal year: 12/01/2013 - 11/30/2014 and the IRA monies were paid to the Dad's Estate during that fiscal year. If none of those monies were paid out on or before 11/30/2014. Then it's taxable to the Estate. If on the other hand, the "65 day election" were made then you would have had 65 days from the end of the Estates fiscal year, 11/30/2014 in this case, to make the distributions to the beneficiaries under the will and the beneficiaries would be taxed on the monies. Now the issues with this example are (1) The 65 day window has already passed (expired 2/3/15) and (2) the 1041 is due 3/15/2015, unless extended. This example also illustrates the importance of choosing Estates tax year carefully. Grace

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.

Well, I suppose you already know that I do. All of that other "stuff" keeps those animals fed the rest of the year. My "off-season" is shaping up to be as busy, at least in the near term" as tax season is being. I am hiring someone in May to take some of the burden off of me because I am planning on working no more than 3 days per week this summer - and if I can work it out, no more than four during tax seasons from here on out.

They get away with it because somewhere in the paperwork they give them is a disclaimer that actually tells the participant to "consult his or her tax adviser." But do they ever do that? Once in a very long while.... My brother-in-law complained yesterday because I told him how to set up his withholding FIVE years ago, and two jobs ago, and did not tell him that he should change it until this year he owes on federal. Not that he ever consulted me when he changed jobs and completed new W4s; I should have just told him every year... My back hurts.

Oh, my, Tom. Yeah, as I get older, my clients get older. Do your best. BUT, if you have to dig or wait while someone digs or suspect there's a better outcome out there, put him on extension. Have him pay in with the extension and pay his first ES payment, but put him on extension. The kids may get involved someday and think someone's cheating their father. Document, document, document.

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.

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.)