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Eric, KC and I had many discussions over that year and a half period, and all three of us agreed to put a ban on politics for the good of the forum. The description of General Chat is clear and does indicate that the forum will not include politics, and most everyone has been understanding of this and sticks with accounting, tax, and software subjects as is our focus. For newer members that weren't here a couple of years ago and as a reminder to those that were here, remember that we did try a separate forum, tried asking posters to be respectful, tried reasoning, tried warning points, tried time outs as a cooling off period, and no one liked any of those solutions and they weren't working either. When the occasional political posts do occur, there isn't any way left to deal with this other than to hide or delete them and let the poster know, and that is how Eric suggested it be handled. I'm following his decision on that across the board with ALL political posts so that it isn't personal or at all biased against one side or the other, and so that there is no judgement call about whether something is so mild that it won't be offensive or not. Since I am the moderator that happens to be on here most of the time, I am the one that is either hiding those posts or editing those words out of a post by using a very light font so that the post is preserved with the offending part not visible to the membership. Again, what seems innocuous to start with can quickly escalate into something else. All it takes is for a followup post to include some reference to their candidate, party affiliation or platform, or something against the other side, and we'd be off and running. At this point in time, we aren't going back to hosting political discussions.

There are about a million online ways to express political opinions, enjoy political humor, argue political ideology, etc. I'm fine with this one site being "clean" of politics. Politics, religion, and football are pretty sensitive topics IMHO and best left to forums dedicated to those issues.

Bart: I enjoyed the political give-and-take in the early days, and I enthusiastically participated in it. I think I even had a few posts deleted or was strongly encouraged to alter some things I said. For those of us who have pretty thick skins, not much bothered us. But it was obvious that some posters took things to heart and had very emotional, visceral reactions (even to what I considered some fairly humorous or innocuous stuff at times). Since the main purpose of this forum is sharing professional guidance & experience, it was a wise decision of the moderators to adopt the current policy.

The Internal Revenue Service today reminded employers and small businesses of a new Jan. 31 filing deadline for Forms W-2. The IRS must also hold some refunds until Feb. 15. A new federal law, aimed at making it easier for the IRS to detect and prevent refund fraud, will accelerate the W-2 filing deadline for employers to Jan. 31. For similar reasons, the new law also requires the IRS to hold refunds involving two key refundable tax credits until at least Feb. 15. Here are details on each of these key dates. https://www.irs.gov/uac/newsroom/reminder-employers-face-new-jan-31-w2-filing-deadline-some-refunds-delayed-until-feb-15

Received an email purportedly from ATT saying that my email account had exceeded capacity and account would be blocked if it wasn't remedied. AT&T 'Account Limit Exceeded' Phishing Scam OutlineEmail purporting to be from AT&T claims that the recipient's email account limit has been exceeded and that the account will therefore be suspended unless it is verified within 24 hours.Brief AnalysisThe email is not from AT&T . In fact, it is a phishing scam deigned to trick AT&T account holders into divulging their account login details to Internet criminals.

Oh, yay. /s

The Internal Revenue Service today reminded the nation’s more than 725,000 federal tax return preparers that they must renew their Preparer Tax Identification Numbers (PTINs) for 2017. All current PTINs will expire Dec. 31, 2016. https://www.irs.gov/uac/newsroom/2017-ptin-renewal-period-underway-for-tax-professionals

Me Too.... I have been deleted also. .... Posts that is.

Nothing special. Just hang on to your calcs. Most of the people who do this do it because one IRA has investments with better returns that they don't want to sell.

You're right. Can't believe I've gone this entire filing season without posting a link to it...