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Doctor told me to drink plenty of fluids..........Is the lemon deductible too?

Answer: Pay me monthly.

This happened to my wife, when she was Girl Scout Leader, calling mothers for help with the troop. My Wife, " Can you help with . . . . . . . Mother, " Gotta Go, Dog Fight" and she hangs up.

Raise your rates 20%. Your business will be better, you will have less stress, and you will make more money. I did that in 2014. It works.

I swear.....most of my time is spent explaining to clients why their tax results are not as good as their friend/hairdresser/neighbor's "but my friend does not have any kids and she filed head of household...so that's how I want to file" "Cindy got earned income credit and got a return of almost $3,000...why didn't I get that much?" "I'm sell Thirty-One, so I can claim all of my bags, clothes, and household expenses, so make sure you include that in my return". I could go on.....

The result is the caller will blame you for whatever the mess is, even if their fault. Just the way it works now-a-days. Kind of like mine who ask for a solution to "cannot" (without saying what they are trying, or what happens when they try (Carnac the Magnificent is not a real person!).

People like this are not willing to pay either you or me. It was just a quick question yanno.

Better answer: Hello? Hello? I'm sorry we have a bad connec... I don't need money enough to fool with that. It's like landing a plane with directions via walkie talkie. In Swahili. That guidance counselor is about as never mind.

Thank God this went to Voicemail: Hey, Rita, this is (cheerful high school guidance counselor) helping a student (who you don't know) fill out his FAFSA...

I don't mind the "quick questions" NEARLY so much as I mind the three-week required answers. Quick question: "How do I do payroll?" Answer: still talking, three weeks later...

Add image of signature to ATX forms: save your scanned signature on your computer go to "customize master forms" open form you want to add signature (1040, 1040A, 8879 etc.) from edit select "Insert Picture" click the area for preparer's signature find your scanned signature select it click the image to resize so that it fits into the block save custom form close custom form the image will cover your printed signature in the block. that way, you can keep the box checked to add your signature to forms and have this customized on your 1040 etc.. Not all forms will take it. Many states will not. For Virginia, I can do it on the 8879 but not on the regular form. I could not get it on the MD forms. I did not try other states. Now I have to remember how to insert the date on the 8879 by entering it one place ( I think on the 1040). Someone gave that tip previously.... Oh the challange of trying to remember things that you only do once a year....

quick answer: call Paychex.

The second trick is to know when to let them go. For me, it is the first instance of unprofessional behavior (such as a nasty-gram message), threats to leave, threats to sue, etc. As long as the person remains civil, I will not give up. The one I wrote about earlier involved more than 60 messages back and forth, but the last one was not civil, so it will be the last one, other than stock replies or excerpts from the program documentation.

The trick to keep from getting aggravated (at fixing the same bleeping problem time and again) is not to think of them as problem clients, but rather as walking annuities... lol.

Uh, yeah; sounds right.

Only if it is under the outside toilet facility...

The way I read it is that if that mortgage was used to buy or improve the rental the all is deductible unless you exceed the 25m cap. I don't think any of mine will anywhere's close to that.

The $10,000 cap is specific to Schedule A

I had to delete Sch A to efile a standard deduction return. I like to have Sch A in there to show the client how much less their itemized are than standard.

Then let them clean up their mess when they create it. No problem here. They will call back asking for help to straighten out their troubles. More premium fees. I do make a fair amount of money putting out fires that taxpayers create. My experience and knowledge did not come to me free, by any measure.

Delete the SS# and re-type EIN XX-XXXXX... the dash is what makes the differences.

Answer: Pay me!

I got complete documentation from the first client today. OTOH, almost all our payroll client W-2 and 1099 forms are done. Oops; wrong. One homeowner association has sent in everything, too - yesterday. That's it so far for us.

I believe that real estate investors, even those with more than $25m gross receipts, are exempt from the interest cap. Tax attorneys are still trying to figure out if rental property is a "trade or business." We'll just have to wait until IRS issues guidance and/or Congress makes technical corrections, hopefully in time for us do to some tax planning before the 2018 filing season. Isn't tax simplification fun!

I was going to make a comment, but the current state of big time politics is simply too disgusting, no matter which side of the aisle you sit on.

I do not think it is possible. IRS does not allow users to make structural changes to the return, as we were able to do pre-2012. I don't believe we can even change the font. Locked down, per IRS mandates.

I looked at ATX descriptions on how to do this and it is clear as mud.

What a s _ _ _hole question this is. I couldn't resist...sorry.

"But it has always worked before" "But X did theirs that way" "Really? To download and install, I need to click the 'Download & Install' button? Your instructions should be more clear!" -- Although I do somewhat understand. As I get older, I notice the things I "always" have done before, such as leave my keys in a certain spot, do not always happen. Can't explain it to myself as it must have been one of the kids, since they have moved out, moved in, moved out, moved in, moved out (current status). For those that "suffered" through this far in my message, today started off with an upset employer/customer. They have "employees" who are having trouble with a certain self prep tax program, as it is not accepting their one digit W2 control number. The employer is telling me the employees say the tax program requires a two digit control number... I used to be amused at being asked to provide free support for the software of others, but sometimes it is too much! (Sent the employer a snip from the IRS W2 instructions, pointing out the W2 is correct. Any issue with the tax prep software is something the employee needs to take up with that software vendor.)

Other than the printer and display, file manipulation is the slowest part of computing... Many prefer to pretend their software is faster appearing by handling some file manipulation when the software is not opening or closing.

I feel your pain. They won't believe you, the tax professional, but they will believe their neighbor....

I don't dread the 'quick question' anymore, because one led me to being able to sell my house to their son without a broker, thereby saving a 6% sales commission.

My corporate and personal tax returns are done - just waiting to efile.

Hmmm, are you sure the IRS has accepted the returns or have they only been accepted by your software company? Official IRS filing starts 1-29 just wondering.

I refused to click ok when that message came up a few times last season. It was my way of refusing to cooperate: "No, I paid good money for you to work, I'm not ok with this. Shut up."

The only mailing I received from an individual tax client is a wedding invitation for her son....for March 24th on Staten Island, 232 miles away from me. They're just going to have to change that date!

oh my goodness, I have almost 60 returns in this year with businesses,,, and I went to file and Sch A is not approved.. so I cannot even file anything! Still waiting on 2 W-2's and a whole lot of 1099's and of those 60, many only have paycheck stubs... so they are not inputted but we are off and running!!

Major faux pas. This means the program itself is not handling the error, leaving it up to Windows, and 99.9999% of the time, Windows has to close the program. The usual suspect is an array bounds issue (if there are ten items, trying to access something other than 1 through 10), a memory corruption (but these days, most programs do not need to directly rear and write to specific memory locations), or an overflow (for example, a numerical value of a byte, and trying to set it beyond the range of a byte (say to 257). But, for a zip code, assuming it is a zip code field causing the issue, zip codes are usually stored as strings (text) not numbers, since even in the US, we have the dash in the plus 4. Thus, if it is a string (text) field actually causing the issue, there is more likely a memory corruption, which may be causing as yet unseen data issues elsewhere. So be careful... For me, this would be a 100% stop and focus only on this issue, should I ever get this reported. (Good therapy for me to write this out, as it reminds me of what I have to be wary of as well.) What is very puzzling is the program actually staying open after the Windows message. The windows message is usually only shown when the program does not handle an error (just before the program is terminated by Windows, unless there is some sort of "we really don't have a clue as to what the error is, but we will let you keep going anyway" error handling, which does not show a custom message and shows the windows message instead. Normal practice is to never rely on the Windows message/termination, sine it gives the programmer no clue as to what has happened.

There was a pro on FB (yeah, I know) that had an visit from IRS, and she didn't have the necessary documentation for the returns IRS chose to check at her office and got nailed pretty good, over $20,000 in penalties, if I recall. Of course, she was diligent, just in her mind, not on paper. /s IRS says they pick preparers and audit at least 25 returns based upon them preparing [a relatively large number] of returns with a "high chance of error." https://www.eitc.irs.gov/tax-preparer-toolkit/compliance/auditing/auditing-for-due-diligence-compliance (Regarding "high chance of error," most DIY returns I've seen fit that bill.)