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We had a 67 Plymouth GTX and used to leave your roadrunners in the dust at the drag strip. We've been Jeep people for a couple of decades now and believe that all those other SUVs out there are just Jeep wannabes. I just so happen to be wearing my Jeep sweatshirt right now (not the kind with the printing upside down). I will reluctantly switch to Win10, even though 7 does everything I need it to do very well. Just like the old 1040 did what it was supposed to do in two pages instead of six.

It is actually one of our kid's Jeep, but he does not need it at present, so we store, use, and maintain it. Works great to tow behind our small motor home, and we rarely have the doors or top on. It was a lease return from PA (military person turned it in after posting out west). We got it with 36012 miles on it in 2005. Jeep aftermarket is so strong, you can buy repop parts and create your own from scratch if needed. The Jeep is the one vehicle I still feel I "drive", but as above, the new driver aid features are great too. For instance, I am pondering adding lane departure warning system to our motor home (beyond the one dog who always lets me know when I hit a rumble strip!). Maybe then I can get DW to drive it once in a while.

There are things an employer can do, such as asking for verification in early Dec. which has always been a good idea (SSN, W4, Address, etc.). Personally, I did not support masking on the W2, since it is the one time employees can see what the employer is using, but the fear mongers have convinced the masses that not masking is horrendous. Well, more work equals more pay...

And I have a 2013 Suzuki SX4 with all wheel drive and a 6-speed manual. I *love* my manual transmission, and am going to fight tooth and nail to stick with them! If only cars around here lasted like they do in states where the roads are not covered with salt spray half the year.

Hah! They won't. Then they'll expect us to "fix" the mismatch letters. And probably SSA reporting, too - 'cuz somehow it will be "our" fault. Example: my church gave employees six weeks' notice to double check their addresses (all seven of them). AND the church secretary reminded people at staff meetings at least THREE times. Of the two people who moved that year, ONE checked - and told the new address AFTER the deadline but at least before we mailed W2s. The other's was returned to the church office; forwarding time expired. You can't fix clueless.

Why do I hear Wayne Newton in my head? Hope I could get to sleep tonight.

Employee W2 SSN masking is coming soon... Employers and employees will now have to do verification work, since employees will no longer have a way of knowing what SSN their withholding was credited to. While having a SSN compromised is not fun, human error will cause more trouble.

Here in Mass, if we give a client something that, if they lose it, can expose their ssn's etc, *we* can get in trouble. Even if I mask ssn's on the returns, the pdf of the source docs (mostly) has ssn's all over the place. I kinds hate all the masking, frankly. One year we caught an erroneous W2 (ssn was wrong) only *because* we could see it. Couple other, similar, instances over the years. We'd never catch anything like those again, with all the ssn's masked on everything.

Update: Called ATX Support and Raymond got everything resolved in less than 15 minutes! Outstanding service and a great guy.

We bought custom printed CDs from Tenenz for about a buck each. We felt it was worth it for firm image. We looked at custom flash drives but never bought them due to price. I never password protected the PDFs, but I considered encrypting the CD or flash drive with a password, but I think I just ask each client if they want the PDF sent via our temporary portal at SendInc.com.

We have been giving CDs with password-protected pdf's for some years now. What we are finding is that newer computers, for the most part, no longer come with optical drives! So we are slowly weaning clients into paper copies in person (or by US Mail) with digital copies (still pw-protected) via our file portal. I'm too cheap to buy that many thumb drives. CDs are different - by standard ones, by the 25 or 50 pack, with paper sleeves, and it's only five or six cents per client.

This coming year, I will also give them a paper copy plus I will offer them a pdf copy on a DVD or a Thumb Drive. I will not email any clients or third parties pdf copies of their returns ,password protected or not ! Email over the internet is way too insecure !

I give everyone a physical return but the reality is through the year they want pdfs because the originals were lost and they want some sort of financing or tuition deal.

CPaperless has "Signature Flow" that does e-signatures. The only fee to you is per-signature, unlike many services that charge monthly. Since we only do ...maybe a dozen? e-sigs per year, a hefty monthly fee would be prohibitive for us.

I also did a streamlined filing for two clients (sisters). In their cases, they are dual citizens but had not lived in the US since they were young teens. All their adult lives were spent in Europe. We filed 6 years of FBARs and three of 1040's (all wages excluded under foreign earned income, "taxable" income of a couple bucks' worth of bank interest wiped out by std deduction). No penalties. Bank accounts and securities accounts, small balances, and an entire wage-earning history of being outside the US; where were they to have heard of requirements? And every year we do the 1040 and they do the FBAR. I think I only charge them enough so they don't feel like they are being given charity. Once I got my English-Czech "cheat sheet" so I can read their docs, it all takes me about twenty minutes each.

In my client's situation during the amnesty program we did the Streamlined filing and explained that the failure to file was non willful and by proving (with death certificate) that the taxpayer had passed away and he was the one in charge of family financial matters. Since he had years of cancer treatments he wasn't thinking straight. We filed the required 3 years of amended income tax returns and 6 years of FBARs but they did not charge any penalties. Also balances weren't large compared to some of the oligarchs out there. Balances were under 300K.

Portals are portals, to move information more securely than other options back and forth. To get verified signatures that the IRS accepts on forms such as 8879, you need something designed to the IRS specs for signatures. What all are you trying to do in one software? eSign will deliver verified signatures and it does deliver the tax returns to your clients. You can use it, at a lesser fee, to collect other signatures without verification, such as your engagement letter. But, it won't work for your clients to send their tax documents to you. FileShare will let you upload any documents to your clients, including signature pages. It will let your clients upload any documents to you. It does not verify signatures.

Hey, I still use snail mail when there isn't any time pressure

With a mess like this, and what I assume was a "self-prepared" return, he might be better off to try to explain the situation himself to whoever is conducting the correspondence audit and plead ignorance. Could he get a letter from a clergy person that knows of the relationships and the circumstances to write saying that the children were his grandchildren by marriage to their grandmother and that they lived with him over half of the year? Or school records showing his address as the address for the children? And put that with a letter in his own, non-technical words, explaining the situation and then hope for the best. And while he is waiting for a response to that, start saving up to repay some or all of the credits. Who knows, he might get lucky depending on whose desk this lands on.

SendSafe from CPaperless only works with Outlook - which itself has security flaws big enough to drive a truck through, sideways.

I had a client who voluntarily disclosed foreign accounts during the amnesty program and the IRS wanted six back years. (They asked questions about minutia and asked for supporting docs for well over a year before accepting them, so they really did review them with a fine tooth comb.) I had several IRS examiners as classmates in my MS program, and at the time they were being trained in the then new requirements. They told us that the agency was looking for "back door" disclosures, i.e., people suddenly filing with foreign accounts or amending returns to report them. These were to be flagged as violations of FATCA so are not a good way to resolve the delinquency. On the other hand, the IRS's goal is to collect money owed and not to put people in jail or the poor house. All of the good seminars I've attended on this subject were conducted by attorneys, and you might advise your client to consult one. The penalty for not filing is 50% of the highest balance of the account during EACH year. It could quickly drain the account. Even during the amnesty period, when penalties were greatly reduced, my client ended up paying far more than if he had just reported the income each year and paid the tax. Failure to file FBARs is a criminal violation, but during the voluntary compliance programs the IRS agreed not to pursue criminal charges. That is over, another reason why your client should consult an attorney.