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When I read posts like some here in this topic and others, and I think back to the workload I endured in my earlier career, I worry about some of you and about us as a profession overall. I haven't made nearly the amount I could have for whatever talents I have, but I have made a concerted effort for a healthier work-life balance and am happier because of those choices. This work can be extremely rewarding, but I believe that it shouldn't be at the expense of our health and well-being. I wish you all well, hope that you recover quickly, and are able to enjoy some quality time away from the office. I also hope to see you here in the off-season as we continue to work at a less hectic pace.

100% agree with this.

i totally agree. I can remember working 11 hour days and drinking lots of coffee. I have been gradually cutting back the last decade and now I just work mornings

Hey, please don't beat up on engineers! We have two engineers in our immediate family. Both are very smart, work hard, are kind and caring and friendly. Sure they like some things exactly so, but they can give a little. I think that where the clash with taxes comes from is that in their wildly complicated math computations, there is only one right answer. Both of my relatives are civil engineers, and if that answer isn't right millions of dollars could be wasted or even worse, people could die. In the tax world, our most common answer is "it depends," which drives engineers off the wall. So be charitable, recognize where your engineers are coming from, and praise them for being smart enough to come to you.

Absolutely agree too. No job is worth sacrificing your health. I’ve learned to pace myself, only because my time the last two years have been tied up with caregiving at home, having a 101 y/o mother 232 miles away that I need to relieve my brother every month, who is ready to shoot himself. So finding a balance to safeguard my health was imperative. I found that balance and never felt better. I hope everyone here can do the same. Congratulate yourselves, you made it!

If someone did that to me, I wouldn't have wasted an hour and may have considered not continuing on with the client, all depending on the tone of the lecture and insistence. Probably not over rounding though. Twice in my career I had returns ready to file, took them back from the client and disassembled them, handed original source documents back, and showed the (former) client the door. However, it was people who had outright lied, insisted I file a certain way, and when I refused to file fraudulent returns, accused me of not knowing what I was doing! Fine, they could go find someone else!

You have to consider as well that a smaller truck cannot haul heavy trailers. I have a client that has a nice 350 that I know is occasionally used for personal stuff (hauling the boat.) But if you consider how much a loaded trailer weighs when you load a piece of equipment on it thats weighing 20,000 lbs, you need a pretty big engine to move that thing, and stop that thing. Then add a few hills or mud, then he needs a big truck. He needs to keep track of usage, but this kind of truck is basically a piece of equipment. I tell my farm and contractor clients to take pictures of the trucks hauling something heavy so when asked I can let the auditor from NYC know that this truck has a purpose.

Reminds me of the guy who called yesterday and asked me to file an extension. He never brought his paperwork in for the extension that I filed last year. We told him that we didn't have time for him. He said, "Doesn't she know who this is?" My assistant told him that I did know and we didn't have time for him. He hung up. Goodby!!

Did your clients sell that first home in the intervening years? The credit owed is settled up at the sale. If sold for a loss, it's erased.

I think that's really strange, because usually if there's a FTHB credit and a 5405 required, the efile will reject (in my experience ... having clients who didn't tell me they took said credit and needed to pay it back).

Yes you have to take care of yourself so that you can help other people.

You are speaking directly to me. As a warning. And I thank you because I needed to be reminded. I've been doing taxes since 1986 or 1987. On my own since I think 1990? I have brain fog right now but it's close. Many, many of my clients are about to be "fired." It's best for all of us. After almost 40 years? Time to put myself first.

Yesterday was the worst day of my career. Patti said that nobody liked her; I don't even like myself. I finished last night at 10 PM with two pages of extensions filed; swollen feet, an aching back and exhaustion. I am trying to get things done this morning that have been neglected for months. Let's get some of these bills paid, etc. Turns out that most of them were already paid. Must have done it in my sleep. I prepared a deposit which will sit here until someone goes to the bank for me. My assistant showed up all grumpy after I almost had to shove her out the door last night. She will never know how close she came to being fired. You see why I don't like myself today.

Me too! Usually after trowling thru 20 spreadsheets that they have created.

ATX blog had this posted on it yesterday (https://myatx.blogspot.com/2025/04/state-news-michigan-is-experiencing.html)

This is me but with a bottle of Chardonnay and wearing my flannel pants and I'm never coming out.

No one else does today so I thank you

Engineers know more about anything than anybody about any subject. Some of the worst returns I've had to clean up have been self-prepared by Engineers who knew everything.

From a CPE talk I gave back in 2023; (staged) me under my desk after fully reviewing the disaster I had inadvertently accepted as a new client. You may find amusement in this, @mcb39.

I spent an hour of my life that I will never get back debating rounding with an engineer. He wanted to know why his calculation of interest income differed by $2 from what was on his return. After I told him it was due to rounding, he asked if I rounded first, then added, or added first and then rounded. He proceeded to lecture me on why I should add all the interest first and then round. I explained how the software required that each 1099 had to be entered separately and would not allow me to enter the cents, so I had to round first. And how $2 did not change the amount of tax owed. He insisted I add $2 to his interest amount. Luckily he did not come back the next year.

Patti, I like you.

The instant I think a client is not being truthful, they become an ex-client. That's a hard red line for me.

The IRS instructions tell us to round like we learned in school, up from .50 AND down. However, the IRS truncates numbers at the decimal point, essentially rounding DOWN ONLY. They make the rules, but they do NOT follow them!

Our clients can spend their money foolishly. But their record-keeping better be accurate and organized, so I can make sense of what's deductible.

I'm getting old and spicy, and now, when people tell me something preposterous (or give me some crazy tax rule they 'know'), I look them straight in the eye and say, 'Did your hairdresser tell you that'? Stops them cold. Literally. You should try it. They look at me dumbfounded for a minute, then they usually chuckle, and then they remember that it's a 'fantasy tax scenario', and we never speak of it again. You have to be over 50 to pull this off, but I've now made the cut, and I use it every time.

Who knew that whether or not water can be deducted with respect to "office in home" would be so entertaining

Could be bad advice from the preparer; could be bad listening by the taxpayer. Just recently I had a client call me about a transaction which we had discussed 3-4 months ago. At that time she told me what a friend had told her about the taxation of the capital gains. I explained to her why that advice from her friend was dead wrong and I then gave her the correct information. On this subsequent conversation she repeated the bad advice to me, and when I corrected her she said "But I remember you telling me that on our last conversation." Fortunately I had made notes and more-or-less read them back to her. Either I'm a very bad communicator, she's a very bad listener, or (most likely) she only remembers what she wanted to hear rather than what was said.

The well equipment wasn't replaced or refurbished, it was repaired so from my point of view the pipe replacement did not extend the life of the overall water system, it just stopped the leaking.

Look on the positive sign. It's over, until Oct. which is never as busy as Apr. I screwed up royaly and now have to report the bad news to a client with an LLC. Forgot to plug in the LLC income to the SE page. It's going to add about $12K to his tax bill.