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I buy all my components from Newegg and have my IT guy assemble and load windows. I'm sure I pay more than a Dell but I really like MSI motherboards and choosing all my own specs for cards, ports, power supply, etc. and I know it won't come with any brand crapware on it. I've also always liked a partitioned drive... but I may rethink that on my next build and just use folders for data, old stuff, personal, etc.

If I'm going to do a clean install, I'm going to buy new hardware. It takes me several days to get all my software installed and configured, including windows configuration. It's a total pain.

I had a reject of form 7004 last Aug when I filed it for a 5/31 C corp that had used that fiscal year since its incorporation in 1946! When I called in to the practitioner priority line, the rep told me that the IRS had updated one of its systems and that most of the companies having this issue were older companies that were missing an entity code in the IRS' database and making the system want to default to calendar year filing. I paper-filed the extension, and I do not recall how the client and I decided it had been resolved. The rep took down all of the information that she passed on to the IRS entity division for correction and said that it might take 30 days or more to correct. By the time we filed the return in mid-Nov, the e-filed form 1120 was accepted without any troubles at all. Here's that post with more details and a couple of other members that had similar troubles:

Crank & Roberts are right, something is wrong with your computer. I have a Dell Win 7 Pro I5 with 6 Gig of Ram which boots in 3 to 4 minutes and still runs fairly well. However I am planning to have a SSD installed soon since I have 41 months on this hard drive. One thing that is problematic on your system is that you are running ATX and Quickbooks, both of which are known to make changes to your Windows Registry, which can gum up the works.

oohhh, I'm currently in a Google Adwords class action lawsuit. I'm retiring when I get the check!

Since 1998 our S-corp has been filing with a fiscal year ending 9\30. We just received a letter from IRS Entity Unpostables informing us that our last return can't be processed as they believe that we should be using a calendar year as they have no record of a Form 1128 being filed. We have never received any notices on this before now. When our current ownership took over, we simply continued the same year as had been used in the previous years. I got the feeling from talking to a representative in that office that they may not have been processing any of the returns that have been filed in the past. (Couldn't lock him down on that point.) This could be a major problem if it is true. I'm going to try to get us grandfathered in, but I'm not optimistic about the chances. It would have been nice to have received notice back in 1998 or 2009 when I started doing the returns, Anyone seen anything like this or have any suggestions on how to proceed? I have no files on the S-corp prior to 2009 as they are with the previous owners.

Thank God for sollitaire during wait times !

I just received a check for $12 from a Mcafee class action suit! It's better than nothing. I don't even want to know what the attorneys take was.

I actually received this email and decided to play along. I checked out the company and it passed the smell test. Email from a standard looking and registered domain name, functional website, no reported scams online from this company (besides this post) and no suspicious request for personal information or payment (until the end... read on). "Ms. Kiyoko" and I spent about a month working on details of our agreement. FYI, I never provided personal or bank account information. They provided invoices for companies that owed them money. I received a very legit looking check from a well-known U.S. company. The envelope looked like it came from the company headquarters. I went ahead and deposited the check with intention of following up with my bank in order to verify it. The funds cleared but I held it in a separate account while working with my bank. In the meantime, I received the expected email requesting a wire transfer. I told "Ms. Kiyoko" that large checks can take a while to clear. I was informed by my bank that the check was fraudulent and they withdrew the funds. No harm done. Just wasted time. Very elaborate scheme.

I did find that I had to CALL to resolve this one; repeated letters did absolutely nothing. Once I had someone on the phone, we resolved it (I hope!!!). It did take about an hour on the phone, but quite a bit of that was holding while the agent went to look up something or try to fix something. Think I played solitaire for a while, while waiting.

@Abby Normal thanks for the info on startup monitor and autoruns; I am going to look at both of them (tomorrow; today's already full).

That's a joke anyway. It gets ignored by ALL the robo-callers, and no one enforces it. So why do we even have it?

That's what must have happened to MY client! C-corp in existence since before I was born has *always* filed a fiscal year return. We got letters demanding calendar year tax returns because they "had never been filed" for like the last three years (all the letters within a week of each other), plus problems with application of estimated tax payments for the corporation. Took a LONG time on the phone to get it straight, and the IRS agent was never really able to articulate why it got messed up in the first place. We'll see for sure in October, when I file the extension request for 2016 fye 9/30/17. Thanks, Judy!

Me, too - but more and more programs are insisting that they *must* live on the C drive. So no more partition for tax software, partition for acctg software, partition for client data, etc. Next machine I'll dump the partitions and just use folders. Ah, well.

Almost every computer I've ever seen has tons of autorun crap bogging down the start up and operation. Intuit is famous for this crap. Autoruns is the best tool to clean that crap up, but I have a utility called StartupMonitor that runs in the background and pops up whenever any program tries to make something autorun, and let's you decide whether to allow it or not. It was written back before XP but still runs fine on 8.1 and, I would think, 10.

I will never buy another hard drive. It's not just boot speed, it's operating speed. I popped an SSD into a 3 year old computer and it was like getting a new computer. Even a year and a half later now, it's still faster than the original machine with a new HD.

It all depends how the lease was structured. From Pub 544 "Some agreements that seem to be leases may really be conditional sales contracts. The intention of the parties to the agreement can help you distinguish between a sale and a lease. There is no test or group of tests to prove what the parties intended when they made the agreement. You should consider each agreement based on its own facts and circumstances." You will have to read the lease agreement. When the lease was signed, was there a high probability that the option to buy would be exercised.If the client was gaining equity in the house, it strengthens that argument. In other words, were part, or all of the lease payments being counted as acquiring equity.

This is the correct answer.

Sorry, Roberts, but you are wrong. You don't have to pay taxes to the foreign country to get the exclusion. You are thinking of the foreign tax credit. Your clients would get the exclusion on the first $103,000 (depending on the year), and then could take the credit for taxes paid if their pay was more than the exclusion amount. You don't need to meet the bona-fide residency test, you just have to be overseas for 330 days in a 12 month period that may or may not correspond with the calendar year. I have a client that works for the UN overseas. The US is the ONLY country that taxes UN income, so she pays no taxes where she works, but does pay US tax on the amount over the exclusion. another client is a bona-fide resident of the UK. He pays UK tax, takes the exclusion and gets the FTC for the dividends he is also paid. Your Australian couple now has a foreign trust. Have you been filing the 3520 & 3520-A? For the question above; it is a SCAM!! I wonder if the 'poster' is in the break room or something - put up by an employee, not the company.

Deb IMO your computer is fine but it's likely either: a) bogged down with a bunch of junk (MSCONFIG - start up). Things like Quickbooks, your tax software, spreadsheet programs, Adobe programs - you've probably got 30+ programs starting and bad registries and other junk - it accumulates. b - your hard drive is dying - I'd do a full backup of everything you need ASAP. or c) you have a bunch of malware or a few virsus' on your computer. If you decide to go with a new computer - skip a regular hard drive and go with an SSD (Solid State Drive). They last a REALLY long time (no moving parts) and you'll be shocked how quickly software boots. My computer boots in <15 seconds and Quickbooks is up and running in <5 seconds. If you have 8 GB of ram and an i5 processor - you have enough of a computer to run what you need.

I may do that eventually on the new computer. But the one I currently am using is 5+ years old and is showing signs of wear. I don't want to have to stop during the tax season and get one in a hurry. This way I can get it set up and get use to it before the rush.

Have you considered just installing an SSD drive? I did that to a brand new computer, however I still get low memory for ATX and Quick books once in a while.

Video graphic card is NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 750Ti with 2GB GDDR5 Graphics Memory. As to Windows 10, I'm leaning that route mainly because I plan to keep this computer at least 5 years. If I need to upgrade to 10 I prefer a new install instead of a upgrade.

Maybe none of you will have this trouble, and it's a first for me. This is a company that's been in existence for a long time before computerized databases existed at the IRS. They'll celebrate their 100 year anniversary next year, my client purchased it and formed the C corp in 1946, and I've been their accountant for close to 35 years. Ok, that might be longer than the age of some of our members, and now I feel really old.