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yesterday Catherine White EA was the presenter for Tax Practice Pro, a c.e. provider. Her presentation was a case study of what happens when a client changes tax professional, and issues with prior years are discovered by the new tax pro. Kudos to Catherine on a well developed and perfectly presented class.

After reading all that, for one of my biz clients similar to my example, from what I've seen of them in action, I'd say the H&W are but the kids are not. In another one of my biz clients, I'd say all four are. In both cases, I think the one with the ownership interest would disagree with me (for different reasons in each case). So, I really don't want to be involved in these filings. Less and less the more I read. I'm sticking to tax!

I like to say, "I have easier ways to hurt myself!" and Eric has (or had?) a GIF for us on that exact topic.

As long as they are in a Workspace thread with both people, you set up the two signers. It goes to #1, automatically to #2, then back to you once signed.

What is substantial control? For example, husband owns 80%, wife 20%, adult son 0% but VP of marketing, and high school daughter 0% but VP of finance. Both H & W are the producers of the local TV shows as well as being the on-air talent. Does only husband report? Or, some combination of 2, 3, or all 4? Would it matter if the responsibilities stayed the same, but the "kids" didn't have VP titles? Is there a difference between the kid that's over 18 and the kid that under 18? I guess I have to go read the details at the website! Thanx, Lynn, for your post. That's what I'll send my clients, with the website in large font, bolded, and highlighted.

I'm not Lynn EA but can answer. I upload the client copy of the returns, pdf. I then upload what I call the signature pages, beginning with 8879. The signer(s) are part of the portal with their email address originally entered as a client. The software prompts me to determine if I want to add signatures. For the client copies, no, but I click Yes for the signature pages. All is then uploaded for client access and I am prompted to indicate which signer is to sign first, i.e., taxpayer. I scroll to the signature line and highlight it. Then highlight the date line. I also highlight for initials the bank information and selection for payment or refund. At the end, I am prompted for the next signer, if there is another. Repeat the process, review if desired, send. The clients receive an email (each one) and are directed to the highlighted spaces to accept/enter. When the first signer is finished, an email is sent to the next one. I am notified at every step. A few of the folks were reluctant until I or someone explained it's similar to the now ubiquitous signing pads everywhere. I think you can try it out.

I have one couple who share an email, and I send to them twice - once for him, and once for her. I suppose in theory one could sign in both spots, but for that you'd have to know the clients, I guess. I had emails in the workspace sent by each of them (signed by name; different 'voices'), and so knew both were on board and spoke with each other about the returns regularly. If it was a couple where I had contact, mostly, with only one of them, I might be chary of using a single email address.

Both good points. Even in a situation where the site is cached for logged out users, the TTL would be set to a low value, likely to an hour or less, so they would still see almost all of the most recent content. Then, after that period of time, the cache expires and the next hit generates a fresh copy. It would go a long way to dealing with all of the bot activity that the site sees. Every hit from one of those bots is processed like any other, which generates multiple database queries. Serving them a static file would be tremendously more efficient. In any case, I'll know more once the move is complete, and I've had time to work on the server/software configuration for a little while. There's a reasonable chance we'll be able to get away without the caching layer at all.

The site does have the option to stay logged in, and stays that way until the user clears browsing history unless leaving cookies intact. I'm logged in almost all the time. The site also has the ability for a user to log in anonymously too and stay that way.

I wasn't asking if the preparer must send two emails. Based on what Margaret said here: ...what I meant was, for example, must each party signing the 8879 have his or her own separate email address.

If you are a member of NATP, NAEA, Tax Pro Fellowship, these organizations offer free subscription to Verifyle, a secure document sharing platform. Also included, and free, is electronic document signature.

Hello all, We've had some (very few, but more than zero) issues where database tables have crashed during times of heavy load on the server. These load spikes are usually related to other sites that I'm responsible for that happen to share resources with the ATX Community. These haven't been significant issues, and in fact have been very easy to resolve when they arise, but it does cause brief downtime on the Forum. So, in the interest of constant improvement, I would like to move the ATX Community to its own server (VPS) with its own dedicated resources. There are other server configuration changes/challenges that I'll tackle at the same time. Because this is the only forum I maintain, I am less experienced with performance tuning for this software than, say, more standard website content management systems. All that to say, I am expecting it to be a slightly bumpy transition but with improved speed and stability in the long term. There might be as much as one or two days of downtime followed by intermittent hiccups until everything is smoothed out. I'm aiming for mid-May to get this work done, but there is no hurry on my end. If there are business reasons to put it off longer, please speak up! Thanks!

Good point about the bot activity. In which case, caching the site makes a lot of sense.

You're very welcome. I feel like people should be donating to Judy instead, as she's got more to do with keeping this place running smoothly than I do. I doubt there will be any significant change in cost--instead of one powerful/expensive server, I'll have all my sites broken up into multiple smaller, less expensive virtual machines. We'll see how the first few days go. Because the whole site is dynamic, I can't get away with leaning on caching as much as I do with your average static website. E-Commerce sites are similar in that way. It'll be interesting to see the CPU/RAM required to run the site when it has its own dedicated resources to work with. If resource use seems excessive even after tuning, I may entertain caching the site for guests (those who aren't logged in) so that content might be outdated by an hour or two unless you log in.

Thanks everyone. My client is Old Order Amish so no drivers license to change. The property was under contract prior to the time the physical move was made. It just did not close until after the move. The farm was actually split into two tracts when sold - one was unimproved farmland and the other was the sawmill and the house and lot. The house was built on the property after original acquisition in 2010 so figuring the exclusion for principal residence was not too difficult. I will talk to the client to see if residency in WI was fully established by the date the closing occurred or if there was still a lot of going back and forth at that point. Thanks for your input.

I did get a renewal notice from Drake, with different options. I'll be looking at them soon. Still recovering from bronchitis.

Thanks Lynn and Margaret. Sounds very interesting. I will certainly checked them out.

Verifyle is only $9 per month if you are not with one of those organizations. I have been using it for 3 or 4 years and am very pleased with the service and responsiveness to my questions at the outset. I use workspaces, one for each year, and request that all client communication be managed there. That way I can keep messages for each client in one place. At the end of the season, I copy the message string to my client file for each one for each year, just in case.

I'm not doing it for clients either. I'm waiting to see if they change the requirement. Otherwise, I'll let them know about it and send them to a website for info.

Fortunately for me, the Oregon Secretary of State has published a two page guideline with live links that I am going use. I am also going provide a live link to FINCEN'S guidelines which is 51 pages long

First it's too complicated to cover in 1 page, given all of the exceptions and etc. IMHO, creating a "How To Flyer" is offering advice.

My E&O (NAEA group policy via Calsurance) said they are NOT covering preparers for this -- at this time. They did say that IF reporting BOI becomes a core service for tax preparers in the course of their biz, that they would consider covering in the future. From Megan Killian/NAEA: "As of right now, Calsurance will not cover this under their E&O policy, and the consensus has been that most other providers will not be either. However, I suspect that this will change over time once it is more established and it is also demonstrated that this will be a core service offered by many tax and accounting professionals." I do NOT want to report BOI for my clients. My biggest worry is that clients will forget to notify me of changes in ownership until next tax season, missing the short deadline for reporting changes. And, create new businesses without telling me until next tax season. I don't think I could charge enough for this. Wresting true ownership info from clients will take time. Penalties are high. I can make money by preparing taxes all year long. Why break my stride to jump out of my tax software over to FinCEN and also spend the year making sure no client has made any ownership changes?! I will make sure all my biz clients know about it this summer. I hope to steal a 1-pager from someone who creates a thorough how-to flyer.

I have to decided to limit my involvement to informing my clients of their obligation to report I am not giving any advice or answering any questions. BOI has nothing to do with providing accounting. payroll or tax services.

The smell and sounds of a printer is one of those favorite things for me. We had a printer really close to our office back in the 90's and I was the lackey who would get sent over to have something printed and loved that smell. Only thing better is a barn.

I would call Sigma. My experience is the people you call are terrific at fixing computer problems, not tax problems. They'll try and help but you aren't getting the best answer if you need help with real tax questions. I've never called with real tax questions but that's just my interpretation from talking with them. If it's not printing, they'll be great with that type of problem. All efiling and downloads go directly through the software to / from Drake. Once installed, you can't tell Sigma is involved except their logo shows up on the initial log-in screen.

I had that happen once. I just figured I had inadvertently clicked something. Also, I have had to re-sign in after updating about 10% of the time this year!

Yes, it has been like that almost since the beginning of this season for me. When the program would open, I had no alerts or notifications in that bottom left corner of the manager screen, and I wasn't able to get program updates. I didn't realize this at first because I was only waiting for state approval of a certain form. Also, MS Edge browser window would open on top of the program every time, and I couldn't make the support person or her supervisor understand this. I have never used Edge, and the supervisor's suggestion was for me to try changing to Edge as my default browser, or try Chrome. I could NOT make either of them understand at all that something with my computer's environment was blocking communication from the program to Drake's server, that it was not a browser issue. Finally after about 6 calls the supervisor sent a message to a higher level support person. Very frustrating! We worked on it and thought it was solved with me changing settings in my AV, but the problem reappeared again in late Feb. I ended up changing to a different AV software completely but had only disabled the original one. That worked until I rebooted the computer and a portion related to the original AV's VPN was still enabled, and THAT was the issue.

I do get emails with things like (literally) "Help", "I cannot print", or "How do I pay my taxes". Over the years, I have built a custom automated reply system for the most common messages. I do track those who seem to ask excessive questions. They are thankfully few, and often indicate no experience or training ahead of time (with payroll processing) and will usually end up with a refund and a suggestion to hire out their payroll until they can get trained. Back when our customer count was beginning to grow, we could take orders on the phone and manually input them, we would spend time on the phone with most, but it actually was a detriment if one considers the time spent per customer and what our time costs (either to replace, or in lost productivity with other tasks). I am not saying support is a money loser, but the best use of support budget is preventing the contact in the first place by programming skills, FAQ, proactive emails, etc. It is also the best for the customer, as no customer (well, not those one should keep) asks for help before spending time trying to figure it out themselves and are likely at a low simmer (at least) when they reach out.

For me. A dollar fee does not prevent calls for things not in my realm of support. It anything, it makes the process worse, as those who pay expect to monopolize my time, even beyond what they paid for. They do not like hearing no, that is not anything to do with my software - but I cannot refund you because you still called and took my time. The reality is, again for me, email is the only fair method, and workable. Anything I could answer over the phone is rare, and well documented already, and the other issues usually require images, backups, or a written-out reply (so it can be followed properly). Then there is the fairness. Should somebody who calls jump the line of those who write, and how much to charge for that effect.