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Just venting. Got off the phone after an *hour* talking with (at?) a client. Why do people spend the first fifteen minutes of a call meandering their way from one half-formed thought to the next? And the next forty-five minutes asking the same questions a dozen times but never listening to your answer? Plus drag in all manner of unrelated, stupid, items into the middle of it all, for extra self-confusion? I had a cup of tea and a piece of chocolate, and put on some soothing classical instrumental music, so I am slowly calming down. But I really, really, really wanted to dope-slap this woman all the way down to Rita's and leave her there for hugs. I'll calm down the rest of the way before I bill for the time because right now I'm thinking that $1,000 for the torture of the past hour is too low a price.

I have a client that calls all year but she always adds $100 to my invoice because she knows she can be a pest. But this year or the last month is different, her college son has been day trading, big time and early on she has been telling me the kid is awesome, making tens of thousands of dollars. First thing I told her was to remind him to watch his wash sales. Didn’t listen and after 176M of sales and over 2M in wash sales he has 326K in gains. But only 50K in the account. She wants to strangle the kid and worst part she’s trying to hide it from the father. Can’t wait to see how this turns out on 10/15.

Down south, we say, "Hold my beer and watch THIS $h**!" I'm straight up stealing "DOG FIGHT" when I need to get off the phone! LOL

I've been telling people November. So far only one has raised a fuss. She sent me 30 pages for her bank statements to find her EIP1 and EIP2, not sending me any 2021 pages where EIP2 might be. And, her 1099-B is dozens of pages long; I hate to use summaries (prefer importing) but it'll be summaries if October. Is your back 40 getting crowded? I own a few acres in IL, so I could start my own land of former clients. Does it help increase the yield of corn and soy beans?

Got three emails today from one I hoped was gone. First one "No wonder I put this off. I didn't make anything! Oh, I did get a $17,000 PPP loan that was forgiven..." Second one: "Here are ten screenshots of my closing documents where I bought a house." Third one: Also, I think I get to claim Buffy for 2020. Yeah, no.

Prior to EIP3, you could go to irs.gov and look up your EIPs. Years back you could also look up special credits with an IRS tool. Wishful thinking here, but it would be great if IRS would make both payment amounts available online.

I remember years ago when my wife was a Girl Scout Leader ( we had 3 daughters ), she was calling a girl's mother to ask her to help with something. All of a sudden right in the middle of the phone call, the mother yells , "Dog Fight" and hangs up!

I started one last night that'd been angry that it wasn't completed yet. She's SE and artistic. But she usually gives me a stack of 1099s and a messy spreadsheet of expenses. This year, one 1099 for $500 and nothing else, not even car tax or a Goodwill receipt. I wrote her before I slept with a long list of her usual clients and expense categories from last year, and told her today or I prepare in November. She wrote this morning that she signed our engagement letter, but she didn't send it to me. Nothing else. She will rant for a month when I can't complete her returns. I'll brace myself. By the way, she sent me the one above (that one I charge a LOT). So, I'll probably lose both of them after spending time on both of them -- but next year will be more pleasant.

The difference is that before you could look up such information with only a minimal amount of identifying information. Now, you can still look it up but you have to do it through your IRS account and it requires a lot of shared information to be able to establish your identity OR you have to wait for something to be mailed to you to establish your access. So that makes it less accessible and useful to us, but more secure for the taxpayer. Life is just full of these little trade-offs.

So I am glad that you had the soothing remedies of chocolate, tea and music but, yeah, sometimes that isn't enough. Those adventures haven't happened to me often but they do try one's patience. When that happens, I do remember that I am billing time. One client this past spring was shocked! shocked! at my invoice but I pointed out the umpteen calls he made about so many things many of which he could have researched himself. This is a higher 6 figure IT person, too. I'm not sure he will be returning - don't care. My current thorn is waiting for the neurosurgeon (yes, that one) to deign to reply to my emails, calls or even the return to review in Verifyle. I can't make the horse drink the water. Oh well, maybe she won't come back either so less work for next season and inching ever closer to calling it in.

No, but wait till next year with ACTC and EIP3 and probable tax changes in December.

I've only got one more that I will try to complete by the due date (if she gets back to me with answers to my questions). Several others I've sent reminders from time to time. But even if they call today, I'm not even going to try by Oct 15.

These are always hilarious.

If it helps, I had one client that saved all the paperwork including one EIP that came on plastic. It seems very clear to me that it was from the U.S. government and what it was for. From some of what I blacked out though, I believe this client received this in June 2020, so maybe there was more awareness that payments were being made on plastic by then whereas recipients earlier on may not have realized that.