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Catherine, After my wife passed away last September, I received a heartwarming letter from an Academy classmate of mine who also had been a member of our Wedding Party. I will quote part of his letter here, changing the names and gender. "It is hard to face the death of a loved one. And yet, it something we all must do, several time in our lifetime. It is part of the celebration of life. and every life must be celebrated. "Your job now is to take up Eric's ethics, his vision, his wisdom, his respectfulness, his energy and carry it forward as long as you can. It may seem that a library of knowledge and experience has been lost. Not true. Everyone who knew Eric carries that library forward. It is not lost. Memoria Semper / Always Remember" All of our hearts are with you, Catherine. Joel

I asked for an upgrade to Windows 95 for Christmas 1995, and my mom got it for me... And even though we had a CD-ROM drive, she got it on floppy. It came on 26 disks, I believe, and took FOREVER to install. Unfortunately for my mom and her Quickbooks files, I was never happy just to USE a computer, I had to tinker with it. So over the next few years, I did the DOS 6.22 installation (6 floppies) followed by the 26-disk upgrade to 95 roughly a dozen times after screwing up the system so bad I couldn't fix it without formatting the drive. I learned a lot from that tinkering, and my mom learned the importance of regular backups.

I took the SEE2 exam today. I've been studying for a couple months. It wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. I'm trying to decide which one to try next. Any recommendations?

I also took Part 2 first. I had a lot of personal tax experience and almost zero business experience so I wanted it out of the way. I took part 1 next and it was a breeze. Part 3 was not bad either as long as you know the basics of Circular 230. Good luck to you.

So excited to SEE this. I think you are now Queen of the SEE and it doesn't even matter. Woo hoo, good for you, Debbie! I'm taking SEE1 first because I lack the moxie to do what you did. Thanks for posting this - very glad for you.

I only did it because I was scared I would pass the others and never pass 2 so I made up my mind to tackle it first. Now the question is... Did I pass it? I won't know that until August... But onward anyway.

ok - I am piecing together info from her, and it sounds like JKLCPA you're right on the money. Apparently she was offered a rollover, and didn't know what that meant so just had them cut the check. thankfully, she had not cashed the check, and we might be able to send it back and have them do a direct. Sometimes half the job is the detective work...........

When I took the SEE you couldn't choose which part to take. It was a 2 day event, parts 1 and 2 one day, parts 3 and 4 the next. IRS gave you a pencil (no prometric in those days). After part 3, which I thought was unbelievably hard, I met one of the persons who took the same SEE prep course, he says to me "Joe, that wasn't a #2 pencil they gave us, it was a #2 dart!" Good luck to all of you taking the SEE.

Oh, I forgot! They don't tell us the results immediately if we take an exam before Aug 14. (Psssshhh, you passed.)

This is where a password manager like 1Password4 or LastPass or similar comes in handy.

My prayers are with you and your families. It will be 10 years since we lost our 27 year old son - drowning/fall. Be there to listen, let them talk of him, encourage them to bring up his name no matter how long of a time it has been. Find a group called The Compassionate Friends if you can near them - we started one and it has been an incredible help for us and others in the area - short term for some, longer for others. Even if they go on the website. Allan Wolfelt has good books on grief, find a good support grief. We asked ourselves and still do - " What would Jeremy want us to do? " Life does go on but it is a new normal... I am so sorry.

Your passing status is good for 2 years. If you have more than 5 years of experience and don't get stressed and overthink the questions, you will do just fine. The first time I took the tests was about 5 years ago. I took all 3 the same day. Passed 1 & 3 but flunked #2. Over the next 2 years I took #2 three more times to no avail. Then I put 1 entire year of intense study (Gleim) and a multitude of tax form classes to pass #2. This time I passed #2, then turned around and took the other 2. Glad it is behind me so I do not have to play the IRS's stupid games with "designations." I can help my clients with the IRS and anyone else that needs assistance now and the IRS must listen to me.

I occasionally go thru the backup folder and delete excess backups. Some clients have 10-20 backups. The companies and payers will have hundreds of backups I just keep the most recent 4. I've asked ATX for a preference to only keep the last x backups, but nothing so far.

That's great Jack. I hope I can pass it the first time and not have to back-track. I studied for 2 about 6 weeks. I'm going to try to spread 1 and 3 out about 4 weeks each. i purchased Passkey EA Review and really like it with the practice tests and the website practice exams.

I also passed part 2 first. Then 3 days later I took parts 1 & 3 the same day. I doubt you will have any trouble with either part. I would recommend that you print out and read (It is the most dull reading you will ever do) the newest version of Circular 230. There were some changes approx. 3-4 years ago. Just read through it, and go take the tests.

This is the "feature" that is inop since 2012 release. Trust it if you wish. It's not working has cost our office many hours of rework. Start a new return. Without clicking the save icon or closing it, work on it for an hour inputting information. Then unplug your tower or use task manager to close the program. Then see how much of your work remains. "Tech support" has checked our systems at least 3 different times and say there is nothing wrong and it should work. It does NOT. You all have been warned/informed.

My condolences, Catherine. Very sorry to hear of your loss and sending prayers to you and your family.

Dear ATX, Auto Save is not a random Jack issue - the lack of autosave on our system has been reported repeatedly and has not and still does not work - even with all your attempts at trying to fix it. I have not renewed yet, I have not been contacted to ask why - maybe because I emailed my salesperson that with all the ATX errors - ATX sucks (excuse my language but that has been my season! ). July 1st is our date to find a new program as apparently Northern WI is incompatible with ATX. Sincerely, WITAXLADY

I have had good luck with getting the penalties abated for first time delays in reporting with the exact same situations... just write and explain and ask for abatement first time and in compliance now. D

I will call "tech support" tomorrow and see what silly games they have me play. The autosave has never functioned since the rollout of 2012. I have 10 workstations, 3 different ages of machines and NONE of them have functioning autosave. Even with autosave enabled, anytime I close a return after making changes, I have the option to exit without saving or save and exit. When I get the unexpected error, it shows for 1.5 seconds and then closes the program down. I had trained myself to click the save icon regularly, but then a long stretch of no "unexpected errors" caused me to slack off. As a result, I lost 50 minutes of work on a new return in 2014. Hence my rampaging rant.... Rant over...

It might have been a requirement of the p/s plan to have the payout in the form of an annuity since this wasn't to a spouse. I agree with FDNY that it sounds like the annuity was already in place due to the father's retirement and your client chose to receive a lump sum. Client should check to see if the funds can be returns and if rollover is an option.

Check to make sure the EIN entered is correct. Did you roll this return forward or have to reenter that number for any reason? I would also look to make sure the S election date is entered in box A of the 1120S.

Assuming the wife gave her share of stock to her husband there's no taxable transactions and the stock basis transfers to the husband.

joanmcq is correct that some states REQUIRE that state wages match Box 1 federal wages. NY, and I presume other states, has a form where you can break out what was actually earned in NY so you are only taxed on that amount. The reason is that the RATE of tax is determined by your total income, not just what you earned in NY. Say your client earned $1k in NY and $99k in WV. Without the fancy footwork, the client's NY tax liability would be zero (below the filing threshold). The allocation form will determine that at $100k income you client is in , say, the 10% state bracket (just making that rate up). The result is that there will be $100 NY tax on the $1k NY income. Other states do exactly the same thing even when the state earnings reflect what was actually earned in the state. Working through these forms is a nightmare though. There is no credit for taxes paid to another state because that $1k was earned in NY and not taxed by another state. The only time you would get a credit is if you lived in one state and worked in another, and the other state taxed that income.

You still didn't give us, or don't have, enough information to answer the question. Were her shares in the S corp redeemed by the company? Was her ownership gifted or sold to husband or someone else? Exactly what happened to her ownership? Once you determine that, you should know how to record the transaction.

WHOA! Extinguish the torches and stop storming the castle! I just offered an alternative for those who want to take advantage of the free offer and still have Win 7 on their computer. It does not have to be an "either-or." With backups of all drives and data, there is very little risk in exploring the options if you take your time. Partitioning hard drives is much easier than, for instance, filling out a 3115 form and can be much more rewarding. I did not mean to offend, just to offer an alternative.

98% of Tax preparers have not idea what you are saying to do, much less how to deal with an issue that crops up. I, same as Abby, have no desire to play computer "Sherlock Holmes" to see if I can make it work by partitioning the Hard drive as you describe. I have a bigger issue at hand. The ATX program, since 2012 takes up MASSIVE amounts of HD space. Either on a server or a stand alone. Suddenly, my 500GB Hard drive is full and 80% us taken up with ATX files.. If you think I am going to try partitioning etc., you are sadly mistaken. I will NOT consider WIN10 till at least Dec. 31, 2018. I have advised many people to follow the same path. Those that did not take my advice are very distraught at the outcome of upgrading to WIN10. A word to the wise is sufficient.

And it was an argument between my partitioning software and the encryption software (required in MA) that cause the eight-day seize-up on March 22nd from which I still have not completely recovered.

Because I'm too busy working to play around with my computers all day long.

Using GWX and N10 has relieved me of all the work in tracking down these updates before updating. Abby Normal told us about one early on (I had it memorized but now don't need it) that I kept getting. Thanks for the extra free time.

That's a lot of hours popping out and inserting next disk. I think I'd go buy a DVD drive.

Don't you just LOVE the number of diskettes needed, though, @mcb39?