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#notmetoosucka. NON-VOTING POST

I had a client expertly....I mean, accidentally...brush his hand across my breast after the unwelcome hug that I tried to cringe away from. Then again, maybe my breast accidentally brushed against his hand. In any event, I added $1700 to his accounting fee and my breast is fine with that as long as my foot accidentally finds his a$$ if anything like that ever happens again. Which it won’t because I insisted on mailing the documents to him and he is accidentally fired two minutes after the check clears. Quality of life, my friends.

Here is my fortress of solitude, top floor loft (plenty of light) with my new VariDesk where I stand most of the day except when I go to the other side of the office and sit and do emails. Since I always have some quiet music in the background I've lost a few pounds from moving more. But when the Supremes or Martha and the Vandellas come on I have to stop working (I'm a sucker for Motown), I must be quite a sight.

This is going to lead to more regulation. The IRS will blame the tax preparer community for the vast amounts of refund fraud and make us all get certification that our systems meet their regulations. HRB security systems will be the model for the regulations. Cynical? YES! But it isn't paranoia if they really are after you...... is it? Tom Modesto, CA

Who needs light? I didn't have any lights on except that one over the single monitor. It was the middle of the afternoon and the office was plenty bright enough. I used the tablet instead of the camera. What can I say besides I'm too cheap about some things and don't care enough about other things to walk 5 feet to get the camera.

After the stylist worked his magic!

https://www.nbcnews.com/nightly-news/video/hackers-target-cpa-computer-network-1177412675583 This is why my office is not on wireless network.

Hey girls - this summer I can teach you some easy joint locking techniques if you'd like. NON-VOTING POST

I don't let clients use my internet. If they're able to connect their phones to their own carriers (not always possible out here in the boonies) then they can use their own devices on their own networks. I'll hand them my landline to make a necessary telephone call.

I’m doing OK with all of this after the shock of my dad’s passing resolved, but I’m making decisions from now on based on the effect on quality of life. Period. Starting with firing any and all PITA clients.

Hard wires here, too.

EVERYTHING in my office is on hard lines. No wireless anything.

When I set up my OIH, I had an electrician come in and install four recessed lights in the spare bedroom (173 sq. ft.) I was converting to an office. Due to some issues in the ceiling/beams/whatever, the placement wasn't great for clients sitting across the desk from me but great for me. I added two tourchiere floor lamps in the dark corners. And, really lit up my desk with a table lamp (I moved it from our bedroom dresser when the photographer was coming, because I needed something to fill in the space below a print hung really high on the wall from before I removed the hutch from my desk; but I liked it so much I kept it on my desk). I have windows on two sides, so get sun from morning until sunset. Brightness is not a problem for me. I am running out of space, though.

Way too many client stacks to photograph and maintain security! Pretty much the same except for open returns on my monitors, and a bowl of soap instead of that cheesy fritata thing in the picture.

Now you can see the entire workspace: Lion: That is cheating! What does your desk look like today! I have rolodex too, behind me. I also noticed some 3.5 Floppies on Catherine's desk! On the right monitor? My schedule....

We'll have lots of good hugs in June....

Abby, I would love to have LED lights. I have nasty tube lights above my desk in our lower level. I will have to ask my husband if there is any way to put recessed lights in the dropped ceiling in our basement.

Yes and I'm thrilled! My son just asked me a couple of days ago. I'm terrified to go on a flight that long, but London is tops on my bucket list. The plan is to leave after I get wrapped up with quarterly stuff with my son and his gf. It will be standby; hopefully on the direct flight out of Denver. He wants to try to get me over there and maybe even get business class. He has always managed to get business when he goes out of the country, but he is willing to fly all over to grab a seat and I just want the quickest way over there so I don't chicken out. It will just be for a few days, so I've got a bunch of travel books and Pinterest trying to find my most important tourist stops. He promised me that they will let me decide what to do, because this is his third time there and I think they only like to eat street food and drink.

Excellent response! We have to stand up for ourselves - no one else will if we don't. NON-VOTING POST

Hard wired totally here. All wireless devices have the wireless functions disabled. I have a separate router, on a separate line for client use in the office.

Hard to get them all in the shot.

I say this a lot as well^^^^ Rich

Or a third with the formula - (Column A - Column B); zeros are even easier to see.

I'm so sorry, Judy! I have lost several clients in the last few years and there will be more soon. I've had a lot of clients asking me how much longer I intend to work. I asked the last one if I looked really old or stressed and he just said that since he is in his late 70's and has known me for over 35 years that he was worried about finding someone new. I told him that I intend to work at least another 10 years until 70 as long as nothing else takes me out first or I win the lottery. I really hate to lose my older clients, because they have been so nice to me and really are like family. Replacing them with younger ones is just not the same.

You have a $50K gain. Insurance proceeds of $170K minus adjusted basis of $120K. If this is the personal residence, the gain can potentially be excluded using those rules if the taxpayers meet those requirements, and then there's no need to discuss gain deferral. If for some reason they can't exclude the gain under the personal residence rules, the gain may qualify for deferral under the involuntary conversion rules if the replacement is within the time allowed because the cost of the replacement property will exceed the insurance proceeds. Deferred gains reduce basis, because ultimately when that home is sold, the lower basis will result in that final gain being higher by the amount that is being deferred now.

Here is mine. It's pretty clean, because I just got back from taking my Mom to the ER. They kept her overnight for observation. She has an infection again since she had another cancer scope and picked up a stomach bug. I use my calculator all of the time and I have a locked up Rolodex with tons of info, like stupid password changes. I do use a password manager, but you never know when something stupid will happen. One cat is on the desk and another is behind me on a file cabinet waiting for the printer or shredder to come alive.

Nah; cell phone cameras mainly don't have flashes, that's all. See all the windows behind desks? They ratchet down the f-stop to make the bright parts non-glarey.

I'm amazed at some of the small monitors and single monitors. I run out of room on 3 all day long. And, maybe it's just the camera, but some of these offices look poorly lit to me. Of course, being mostly paperless, I can keep the lights down low and be fine.

My very messy desk along with the primary cat (as in my avatar photo), calculator on the left (I trained myself to use the left hand so I wouldn't have to put down my pencil), little rolodex on the righ (shhh, all my logins and passwords).

Override the amortization for this year to take the entire amount left in 17. Delete the asset next year.

@NECPA in NEBRASKA you can put LED's in regular light fixtures, too. They even make dimmer-compatible LED's these days.

Oh you poor woman; I can't grasp how horrible that time must have been for you. Yes, we need to watch priorities. If you come to the summer bash at Rita B's, you'll get lots of hugs!

Me too.....son is graduating from Berkeley this year, we are going to London for his graduation gift. 10 days. My wife is going to find that site. Thanks for posting that picture. Tom Modesto, CA

Oh, my - so much loss. My heart goes out to you. Yes, rethinking priorities is also on my mind. BHoffman, be sure to take care of yourself.

Don't listen to her.

Someone's going to London.

I like to keep a link to a custom excel spreadsheet handy on the desktop. This one has long columns for addition & subtraction, plus a few for multiplication and division operations. They can be color coded for a quick visual reference. And if a tape backup is needed, I just hit the "print" button.

Puzzling that the new W4 has exemptions on it. The formula is wild--if you have a child eligible for the CTC you add 4 to the exemption line. With the old W4, if a single person w/ no children followed the math they ended up with two or three exemptions. I have a childless client who donates a lot to charity and thus deducts a sizeable amount on Sch A. Following the formula told him to claim 17 exemptions. I can't imagine what the result is on the new one. Now that everyone's withholding has been reduced, I have lots of clients sending me paystubs to calculate if their new withholding amounts will be enough. I don't have time for this, but I realize they need to know before it's too late to do something about it. There is no way to get a sense of it either. I have clients making $200k whose tax bill will go down by almost $5k, another with the same income will pay $2500 less; an older client with $16k taxable income will see her tax rise $300. Either the projection software or the law (or both) is just as confused as I am.

Apparently, the size limit is 9.7 MB and I ran out of space. I deleted all my larger pics that were at least a year old and now I'm down to 5% used. I'll just have to run my pics thru Irfanview to resize and save at 50% quality. That reduces several MB down to few hundred KB or less. The gif guy must have to be constantly deleting. Can you bump up the limit?

This struck me as funny, being as we're accountants and tax preparers here. I guess I just needed to find things to laugh about today.

This was NEVER typical. I stayed up all night to get it this clean. Then, a professional photographer had his stylist rearrange my office for a photo shoot for CCH's Partners quarterly magazine, so it looked even better! Never has since 2011.

Not current but typical. Three monitors. Middle is data entry and right is government forms, both portrait so I don't have to scroll to see a whole page. Left monitor has email on the right and Chrome tabs on the left, including ATX Community.

Green with envy over the 3 screens. I remember when you all were talking about two screens and I thought you all (or is that all y'all) were just spoiled. Now I can't wait to get 3rd monitor. Tom Modesto, CA

Hugs!

Here's part of my office. Like Abby, I work with my back to the desk and use it mostly for larger accounting projects, organizing records and meeting with clients. Not showing are the file cabinets that are off camera to the right, and the copy machine that is in the near left corner. Desk is mostly cleaned off because a client just left. I also still have a calculator on my desk that I rarely use any more, and (gasp) I still have a rolodex too. Do I win a prize for that?

Not my desk, my computer table. My desk is just a prop and a place to hide my snacks.

So, we should all take pictures of our desks, as they are, and post them here. Rich started; I'll go second.

My 'naughty' post was deleted. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I hired a part time reparer a couple of weeks ago. I had to leave earlier than her yesterday so I explained that the front door lock was just a button in the knob and she would be able to lock it and still leave and have it locked behind her. She thought I meant the door to my office not the main door to the whole office. She locked my door with the key safely tucked away in my desk. I have spent half the day trying to take the door off it's hinges so I could get back into my office.

Today's email from a client let me know my fax line was out of order, I called the fax and indeed the line went to a recording, 'the number you have dialed is unavailable , etc.'. I called ATT support and they answered. Within 40 minutes the fax line was working again. So, I let the client know and she went to Home Depot to send the fax (hers at home is broken). Second email stated the same as her first - the line is out of order. I called the fax number and the fax attempted to connect. I again let her know the line is working and confirmed the number. whereupon she said they tried several times without success. No idea what is going on but my guess is it's a combination of issues . Now I am home waiting for the landscaper to go over her plan for my gardens that died in the January freezes.