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I'm going to see if I can get some advertisers to pay for ads in all of that blank space.

In some ways, it always *does* - this is just going to suck in new and different ways.

Certainly no eco friendly! Which leads me to question how many of us still print returns for all of our clients and how many ask if they want a digital copy instead. I think I am pushing the digital!!

I was in a seminar where we went over all the new schedules. What the redesign has done is cram the totals onto two "postcard" size pages where the font on page 2 is so small it's difficult to read (should be illegal) and there is not enough room to write legibly--IRS will have a hard time deciphering those mail in returns and I don't know how small the font in our tax programs will go to cram all the digits into the 1/2 inch spaces allotted. Notice that all the pages on the new schedules have line numbers that correspond to the old 1040. Maybe even the IRS doesn't believe the new format will work and is keeping those line numbers so they don't have to re-re-write all the instructions? There are two schedules devoted to "tax," one of which has two whole lines and another to total them. A whole sheet of paper for three lines??? Oh, and if you want your tax preparer to be able to converse with the IRS, that's a whole schedule too (coupled with foreign address for some reason)--it used to be just a check box. As for increasing traffic, in our office we've already decided we don't want this traffic. People are going to DIY and be unhappy with their refund, not realizing that their withholding was lowered so they had much less taken out to get refunded, and even though tax rates went down they may have lost enough in exemptions and itemized deductions no longer allowed that it doesn't make up the shortfall. We will do what we always do--accept no cold calls from potential clients going through the phone listings and maybe take some referred by trusted existing clients. We are not inclined to meet new clients who really just want us to double check their Turbo Tax results!

In looking over the new form and attached schedules I can see how it may be more simple for some but more confusing for many. Subtracting figures in a line item arrangement wasn't all that bad was it ? Who knows maybe it will increase our traffic.

Clients lose any paper you give them. I charge $20 for replacement copies of tax returns. That seems to be the tipping point to motivate people to look...

I printed a test page. This will be my 37th year in 2019. In my wildest dreams I would never have thought the Service would sqush (this is the Southern form of squash you Yankees !) the Form 1040 on a half full page. Maybe as Abby suggests we can add some snappy add on the bottom.

In my test print 1040 page 1 half page,1040 page 2 half page, schedule 1, 3/4 page, schedule 4 almost 1/2 page, schedule 6, 1/4 page. I was hoping ATX would combine a bunch of this into 1 page. This is assuming that you are not duplexing. It would seem to me the keep pricing up where it needs to be the more pages a client sees the happier he is.

I was going to point that out Abby but Catherine beat me to it. And Taxman are you saying the 1040 is not going to fill a full sheet. Good grief. It sounds kinda naked.

I test printed a return yesterday. Half pages, third pages 6 schedules. What a waste of paper. My cohort said same amount of toner just more paper. Add in QBI worksheets and forms more pages. I agree no new ones this year. Just my 2 cents

Well, Abby, you may enjoy playing with fire - and you may be experienced enough to handle it. I've done it myself, on occasion. But I would NEVER advise someone who hasn't been down in the trenches to attempt it without a full registry backup plus restore point. A couple extra minutes before diving in, so that you can edit away without fear of permanently mucking up your machine, is very cheap insurance; doubly so for a registry-edit newbie.

ATX isn't putting multiple schedules on one page?! I was hoping they'd give an option to print both 1040 pages on one page. This is really going to suck, isn't it?

Page 1 does have the check box for Preparer as 3rd Party Designee in the bottom right corner of the Paid Preparer Use Only section at the bottom of page 1, right above the Self-employed check box. Schedule 6 has Third Party Designee info for a non-preparer, such as an adult child for an aging parent. All the schedules are designed to print 8.5 X 11. Of course, the two "postcards" will have to print 8.5 X 11 also!

Excerpted from a long article in the CPA Journal : https://www.cpajournal.com/2018/12/06/icymi-the-equifax-data-breach/ Why Is This Breach Different? "Over the past decade, over 3 billion people’s personal information has been hacked from email providers like Yahoo or retailers like Target. The Equifax breach, however, is the first in which the “big four” personal security identifiers—name, address, birth date and Social Security number—were stolen from so many at once. These are the security authentication foundations for many commercial and other purposes (Robert Lemos, “Identity Verification Becomes Trickier in Wake of Equifax Breach,” eWeek, Sept. 11, 2017, http://bit.ly/2yMVLOu). Possession of these identifiers may increase two forms of identity theft: new account fraud and account takeover. In new account fraud, a criminal uses the identifiers and possibly other information to open new credit accounts in a person’s name; the target does not find out until his credit rating is wrecked after the bills go unpaid. The aggravation, costs, and time spent on the resulting credit repair can be significant. In account takeover, the criminal uses the four identifiers to impersonate someone for various purposes, including creating fraudulent transactions. To CPA firms, one of the more familiar frauds of this type is the filing of phony income tax returns to steal tax refunds. In some cases, local CPA firm computers have been breached, enabling thieves to successfully perpetrate this type of fraud. Recently, account takeover has been used to steal cell phone numbers, which can compromise multifactor authentication (MFA), an important cybersecurity best practice (Nathaniel Popper, “Identity Thieves Hijack Cellphone Accounts to Go After Virtual Currency,” New York Times, Aug. 21, 2017, http://nyti.ms/2jws7dq). MFA requires providing authenticating information in a manner different than the initial authentication; for example, some websites will, after the user has inputted her password, send a second verification code via text message that must also be inputted to log in. Another MFA method requires that the initiator make a call from a predetermined phone number; unfortunately, such a phone number can be imitated, and the security of the MFA rendered ineffective. Weak MFA approaches could lull CPAs into a false sense of security. Many accounting software programs rely on two-factor authentication for sign-in or to reset forgotten passwords, and an increasing number of these programs enable the electronic transfer of funds from bank and investment accounts. With this type of account takeover on the rise, it may be wise to revisit the use of cellphone text messages for MFA, as well as explore more secure approaches. In previous major breaches, the public attitude has generally been to accept the risk as the price of convenience. The Equifax breach, however, has taken public frustration over weak cyber-security to unprecedented levels (Ron Lieber, “Why the Equifax Breach Stings So Bad,” New York Times, Sept. 22, 2017, http://nyti.ms/2jvZvkT). The breach is beginning to instill general fear that the cybersecurity underpinning electronic commerce cannot be trusted." Recently, I talked to an Investment Adviser with Key Investment Services who was no longer allowed to email clients for any reason. Any emails sent to him had to go thru a security review process that significantly delayed his receipt of emails from clients. I have also read several articles where more than one highly regarded IT Security Expert said that he had stopped using email due to all the hacks and scams that are everywhere. Another article estimated that in a another year or two that in excess of 80 % of all emails worldwide will be generated by scammers & hackers. Be very careful out there, the world has changed. We will have to adjust.

In the first line, of the first post, it mentioned over 3 BILLION hacks.. The Equifax heist gave them all the keys. There will not be a system that can't be compromised.... It will just be a matter of time. This year, MFA. Next year.. MFB and the year after that, MFC, Etc. We should be lobbying Congress to change the rules to remove liability from folks that get hacked for less than, say, 10k records. If you have between 10k and 1 million, your liability is this, and above that, then your liability is TBD. I am not that worried about my practice being hacked, yes, I could be one of the unlucky ones, but, I think it is much more likely that ATX or CCH gets all our client records hacked... Rich

Have you sent this to CCH who is now requiring MFA?

Well, .

Five or six months ago I had my hard drive on my Win 7 Pro 64 Bit system replaced by an SSD, which was cloned with no issues.

Your guru must be older. We cloned all of our hard drives to SSDs with no problems. Well, a lot of programs like QuickBooks detected the hardware change and ask us to re-register, but that wasn't so bad. It used to be that windows got 'arthritis' and it was often better to start fresh and reinstall, but that hasn't been a problem for awhile.

Jim, thing change I'm from the 80's also and I don't like this new form either. This doesn't answer your question but we will master this new format in time. On the Proseries community they have a thread on how to work with this new 1040. What I do at this time of year is bring forward only my return and then work with it. I'm figuring out how to work the new 1040 so I'll be ready for the influx of client later. I don't know about ATX because I left in 2012 but I would think were all in the same boat this year.

My basic state return went from 2 pages to 5 and was mindbogglingly stupid the way they spread everything out. I simply don't understand how this is superior or eco friendly.