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FYI IRS efax is down today.

Your address can be randomly spammed, it can be grabbed from someone's address book, and so on. (AOL was notorious for having their address books compromised.) For business use, there really is no perfect filtering, other than manually setting up filters, and reviewing your spam folder. If you need the easiest solution, gmail likely has the best filters (you can wash your mail through them via forwarding if you do not normally use their system). I used to use mailwasher, and it is a decent product. Caveat, gmail, and other online filters, do read your messages, and use the content to make money (serve ads).

Thanks for the suggestions. I monitor my credit regularly, but will step up the intensity. I'll start paying attention to IP address on some of them. I've wondered if they are bombarding my inbox in hopes I'll accidentally open an attachment. Not all the emails have attachments but many do. But I never open an attachment unless it's expected.

Be alert, your contact information may have been sold some where in the hacker universe. You may end up having the same issues on your cell phone. You should probably check your credit information and be actively monitoring your financial accounts for awhile.

Success. Finally Googled the question and got great answers. Thanks so much to all of you.

You are all great help. I'm back after an absence of a couple days. Reddit was promising and I was able to post. But then a moderator removed my post because the title "failed to state the problem". Didn't know I was supposed to put 150 words into a title. I'm not going back. Some people think they are supposed to be Gabriel guarding the gates of Heaven with a flaming sword. Forget it - people like that need to take a good look in the mirror. A couple other sites want to add personal information to login credentials. Prerequisites to setting up an "account" which is required before you can ask a single question. Under the guise of security. I believe some websites want to datamine for information so they can sell it to others. In fairness to the above sources - I am looking for free advice and should probably not expect others to the trouble to spend time and effort for nothing. I don't enjoy doing this either. This board is great but I was happy to send Eric a little bit a few months ago. I'm going to revisit Lion's post above and try again. Thanks for listening to this rant. Most of you know me to be outspoken.

Not quite to that point myself, but I suspect there are cases where a grandparent would not be willing to give money to the parent directly, which is how it appears it should be done rather than grandparents contribute directly to parents 529. For us, we are appreciative of the ABLE account aspect of 529, and our main focus is figuring out how to max that out before our time is done. Can the plan be transferred from the grandparent to the parent? In our case, child attended community college, pay as you go, then transferred. We borrowed what we could, but only had to pay 2 years worth. Might have worked for a grandparent 529, if the ability to pay out during those last year or two would not be a negative sum process. Of course, he is now looking at med school, if it is cost effective compared to his current career path. FAFSA planning is good practice for medicaid and SS planning (I suppose)... and for many, needs to be a service bought. What I found online: Change account owner. If the 529 plan allows, the grandparent can change the account owner to the parent. This will minimize the reduction in financial aid the next time you file a FAFSA. Check to see if your state will recapture state income tax benefits if you change the account owner. Rollover 529 plan funds. Grandparents can roll over a year's worth of funds to a parent-owned 529 plan. If the rollover occurs after the FAFSA is filed, the funds won't be reported as an asset on the FAFSA (assuming the funds are spent before the next FAFSA is filed). Distributions will not affect aid eligibility because the 529 plan is owned by the parent. It’s important to note, the parent-owned 529 plan should be opened in the same state as the grandparent-owned 529 plan to avoid recapture rules when funds are rolled over to a different state’s 529 plan. Take a distribution later. If the student will graduate in four years, grandparents can wait until January 1 of the student's second semester of their sophomore year in college to take a distribution, after the student has completed his/her last FAFSA. This is because the FAFSA uses the prior-prior year’s income and tax information to calculate eligibility. If the student will graduate in five years, families should wait until January 1 of the student’s junior year to take a distribution.

I don't think that the efile system for corporate or 990 returns shuts down, so you should still be able to file the return. The modernized efile system for 1040's is the one that shuts down for a couple of months.

If they distribute the funds in the child’s final year in school then no hit to financial aid.

If you follow this path, the grandparents will pay a 10% penalty, due to the disbursement, from them, was not used for education. The funds will be considered a gift to the parents. This is why 529 plans should only be in the parents' name. Grandparents can give cash to the parents, then it can be put in the parents' 529 plan, which will not affect the FAFSA calculation at all. It is a good thing that the grandparents want to help, but they were not given information about the proper way to do so.