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Anything to "clearly" explain the QBI deduction? HA HA HA! "It seems rather complex." Understatement of the century. "Simplifying" it? You jest! Clear and simple are not adjectives that will ever explain the QBI, and complex doesn't do it justice. I took a 4-hour course on it, learned more in an update seminar, and read a lot. The one clear takeaway I can offer is that almost no one will get to deduct 20% of their net profit. There is a limitation that applies to everyone: You can deduct the LOWER of 20% of your net profit or 20% of your TAXABLE income (ignoring here the other limits imposed by AGI or type of business). For taxpayers whose business is pretty much their only income, their taxable income is certain to be less than their profit. For example, you are self-employed as a tax professional and have $100k profit. You adjust that by one-half of SE tax, self-employed health insurance, and maybe contributions to a retirement plan, and then subtract your standard deduction. Your taxable income is now $50k. Your QBI deduction is limited to .2 X $50k = $10k, not the 20% $20k you were dreaming of. The only people I can imagine that will get the full 20% of net profit are those who have W2 jobs and a little side business.

Both references are very good - written by the same person - the 2nd one summarizes the main points. Nice job, Jim.

Encrypt the hard drive with bitlocker which if it has Win10 Professional - is on your computer. If you don't have the PRO, a $15 program called Hasleo Bitlocker Anywhere does the exact same thing. (I also used the program to encrypt some USB drives and an SD Card where a store a bunch of stuff.) You'll need to enter a password for Windows to even boot so your entire hard drive is encrypted. If you don't log in remotely to your computer you may want to block remote access. System / Remote Settings / uncheck.

I learned a lot from this one https://www.forbes.com/sites/anthonynitti/2017/12/26/tax-geek-tuesday-making-sense-of-the-new-20-qualified-business-income-deduction/#17c84ccd44fd

Absolutely. And set up a SECOND admin account, in case login for the first ever gets corrupted. That dodge saved my bacon once, long ago, when my account *and* my admin acct logins both got corrupted on the same day -about two weeks before the close of the tax season! (I also took it as a warning that machine was getting flaky, and changed the machine itself right after the season closed that year.)

The one thing I've had bad luck with is optical drives (CD/DVD reader-burners). The one installed seems to die after a while (this has happened to three different machines). Fortunately, every time Dell has sent a new one and I've just popped it in. First time they sent a tech; when I saw how easy it was I just told them to send me the drive after. Two were machines bought at the same time, that had the exact same optical drive - so those might have just been a batch that was poorly made. Third one was a much older drive but I'd renewed my warranty so it was still covered. No other issues. I do detest their keyboards, so I found and bought one I liked and just use that on any new computer.

I replaced the computer I use at the office this year. The one I replaced had been used since 2009, and I never shut it down. I did have to replace the power supply on it after about 2 years, but I think it was because the power supply in it was bad from the beginning and just got worse until we could diagnose the problem. That computer was one my son built for me when he was in high school. My new one is just an off the shelf Dell.

Thanks for the advice and suggestions. I decided to take it over to a computer guy I've used a couple of times before when I needed work on my MacBook Pro. After we talked about the various possibilities, he offered to sell me a refurbished unit he had in his shop. It's a Lenovo Think Center Core i5, 16 GB Ram, 240 GBSSD, graphics card for 3 monitors, and Vipre Life Anti-Virus. He cloned my existing Hard drive over to the new one, plus he upgraded MS Office for me. So after a wait of about 4 hours or so, I brought the setup back to my office, plugged it in, and am back up & running. Total cost was $590. I still have the original Hard Drive and a SATA/IDE self-powered cable, so if it turns out anything is missing I can (hopefully) pull ot off the original HD. Glad to get this done before tax filing season rolls around.