BJM

I have a machine that is close to what you are talking about, I think. Problem is I don't know if they still make the model as it is over 3yrs old now, but might have a newer model that does the same. What I have is a Panasonic KX-FPG371, which is just the phone (cordless) caller ID and Fax. What it does, when the answering machine is activated the message will say, whatever you want it to say if you prefer, "that you have reach so and so tax company, if you are sending a fax, please send now, if you are leaving a voice message please wait for the tone". Works fine for me. Don't know if that is what you are looking for or not. You could probably go to various Office type stores on the internet and check for them, or Panasonic's web site. I actually got mine at Sam's Club for the best price.

I also received the ATX package without the installation codes last week. Yesterday I got a follow up call from an ATX rep stating I should have received it and if I would like to renew, they would then give me the ativation code. I was not in when the call was received, just had the message on my answering machine. Today I received an e-mail basically asking the same question, if I wanted to renew and receive my code today. I also did not renew with ATX this year, so did not return the call or e-mail inquiry. It did not arrive in the nice binder with the instruction book like last year, and would they still charge you the shipping and handling charge if you renewed after they sent it and would not charge if you did not renew?

You are correct Eli, I went with TaxSlayer Pro. I have done two 1120's and one 990 on the demo they sent me so far and seems to work fine. The 1040's of course are within a couple months or less, so I must do a crash course on those.

I am also getting my program estimated to be delivered on December 11th. To my sadness, it is not ATX for the first time in years. I was a Parsons fatality and then offered the ProSeries program at a cost similar to Parsons from Intuit if I would renew with them since they had just bought out Parsons. I was in the infancy of my business, just retiring as an Agent with the IRS a few years earlier when I started with Parsons. The next year ProSeries went way out of my price range at the time and I found ATX, Saber and have been with them ever since. Until this year, for the first time I did not renew by the discount date, was upset as many were about the closing of the message board, but got over that. My main concern was the take over by CCH, so for the first time in years I started ordering demos, some ok some not. Of course I was so used to ATX that everything else seemed so uncomfortable. I was just ready to renew with ATX within the next week, had been talking to a rep from another provider, whose company I did like and program had been taunted by many, not on this board but on others, such as the Tax Book board where many ATXers went when the ATX board vanished. Some of course loved it, the people who use it and are loyal and those who didn't and used other programs. I had told him if he could offer me the program under $700 I would consider it, he couldn't. Yesterday morning he called, and offered me the all inclusive program for under $700, 1040, all business returns including the 990, all states and free e-file, a today only deal. I took it, after it was all done, I felt like my dog just died, so used to ATX and being part of that "family". They also had no shipping and handling charge and are coverting ATX files to thiers. I even hesitated to relate my experience on this board, feeling now as an outsider, although I may have only contributed to the board 5-10 times a year, I was here on a daily basis, meaning the old board as well as this new one. I guess I just had to tell my sad story to the only people that would understand. The one good thing about it, is that in a way it is a bit exciting to learn and use a new program, to discover the small things like I did with ATX, although it took some years to find those neat little tweaks you could do. The program is much different, but I run my office where the client is not present while I prepare the taxes, they either drop them off or come in for a short interview, so I have time to prepare the returns without the pressure of some one over my shoulder, not meaning there won't be pressure getting them out and long nights into the morning. Ok, I am done now.

We might not have any gas stations yet, but we got us an Arch so those easteners can find thier way west. Some of them just decide to stay here and try and find thier gold on our river boat casinos, usually don't work out and with that extra money we are going to get one of those new fangled gas stations, but our horses sure don't like it when we try and fill them up.

I was actually hoping, if I held out long enough, to get free Zillion Forms forever, free e-filing and the bestest of the best, the free companion airline ticket.

I received an e-mail from ATX today, the subject line said "Last chance for discounts, renew today" The e-mail itself was just a promotion for CCH Site Builder, but at the bottom it said if you have not, renew on line or call a rep. I was just wondering if anyone knows if they have extended the discount on the tax programs. I have not renewed at this point, looking over other options and will make my decision soon.

I will just add a little information from when I worked for the darkside. I had my manager bring me a few audit reconsiderations, never once did I open one. Took me all of 10 minutes to send it back. Never had any new information that was of any value, in most cases the taxpayer had plenty of time and many document requests in the file to resolve the issue during the original examination. Unless there was over whelming new information, which there never was in what I received, I just denied the request. I had enough of my own cases in inventory to resolve. Just as an example, I do remember one that involved travel and entertainment, the issue everybody hated but was mandetory to look into, the person submitted a log with dates, names and business purposes of the expenses for a year, no receipts or back up information. To fool us of course, every other day or week was in a different color ink or from ink to pencil so that you wouldn't think it was just recontructed in one sitting. This never appeared during the course of the intitial audit. When I would hand the file back to the manager with the request denied, they would also smile, they didn't want this in the group either.

I too have been looking around at different tax packages. As my practice is not my sole support as I am retired, I have a client base that has been as high as 200 and low as 100 and right now settled in some where between. I was a past user of Parsons and searched for more reasonably priced software and thus ended up with ATX for years. If you want less costly software TaxAct has a 1040 program for $99 and offered it last month at $79 which is really a good deal unless you e-file a lot of returns, the fee for that is expensive and can run up your final cost. Another one I have looked at and have the demo of is TaxSlayer, I have seen a lot of good and not so good reviews of this. I used it last year to prepare an 1120 I had on extension and liked the finished product, but it does take awhile to learn the program, not really that difficult, just different from ATX and I am leaning towards them. Thier program, which includes the 1040, Business 1120, 1120S, 1065, 1041 and the 990, and free e-file and all states, sells for $995, thier rep offered it to me for $825 and I told him last year they offered it to me for $695 and I would consider it if they could offer a price similar to that. He told me to use the demo and he would call me back in a couple weeks and after I have elvaluated it, he would discuss price. I am going to explore other options and make up my mind around September or so, the early discounts were not as important to me as my total satisfaction and with a program I will stick with. I still could go back to ATX, just without the discount. Possibly if enough former ATX customers would settle on one product after searching them out, we might get a deal from one of them if we could promise a certain number of us would convert to thier program.

That is exactly what I meant. Maybe I stated it wrong, I meant that they should not have, and do not have, that privilege and common sense would dictate that. I wasn't asking a question, I guess it may have appeared that way, I was making a statement.

I probably worded that wrong. I didn't report the Whirlpool as sold, he still has those. I just reported the Maytag as sold. I did allocted the fractional share, just didn't complete that sentence.

This Revenue Bulletin was written long past from my retirement. But it refers to returns prepared by the Secretary, or agent there of, to perpare a return under IRC 6020. The code says that if a person fails to submit a return, but contsents to disclose all information for return preparation and then that person signs the return, it is considered a return, even though it was prepared by the IRS. My experience with the non-filer program was not to just receive a case file and immediatly prepare a SFR, but to make reasonable efforts to contact the person more than once to prepare the return. In many cases the person responded and brought in all their information, some of which we didn't have of course, such as itemized deductions, Sch E, Sch C and so forth. The person assigned to the case would prepare the tax return for the person, using their documentation, and then, if agreed, the person would sign the return. This was not a SFR, this was a return prepared on the regular 1040's and schedules for that tax year(s). SFR's were prepared when there was no response or a refusal by the person to file or bring in thier documentation for us to prepare their return after many attempts to contact them or after having contacted them. What make sense of this is that many people were not avoiding filing and some were. I had sympathy for those that had mental blocks and could not file, a few had close love ones that they shared the experience of preparing and filing thier returns, that loved one died and they could not bring themsleves to do their return because of the memories it brought back. I had a couple that had their return half done before they could not go on. I prepared thier return(s) for them and some would even break down crying during that, (and not for what the owed, many got refunds). I did feel good bringing them up to date, but wondered what would happen the next year, I did tell them to bring it in to the service desk the next year for help. But then there were the dope dealers, pimps, gamblers, etc who gladly took a SFR rather than their real income. Why should the SFR prepared for them start the statute clock? Ok, I rambled on long enought, maybe I am wrong, but I don't think that bulletin refers to SFR's.

I just received a corrected 1099-B from a client due to the merger of Whirlpool with Maytag. There were 3 transactions listed, one was the numeber of shares of Maytag surrendered with the cash proceeds received for those shares in the merger, I treated those shares as a sale with the Maytag stock basis and holding perioed. Then next transaction was Whirlpool Stock received for surrender of the Maytag stock, I treated this as a sale using the shares of Whirlpool value at the time of the exchange less the basis of the Maytag stock and holding period. The last transaction was cash for sale of a fractional share for a small amount of $42.49. Reported all as a sale on Sch D. Client will be happy though, resulted in loss and he gets a refund. Just make sure and keep note of the basis of the new stock received if it was not sold at the same time.

I believe it was around 1988 or so that examination division was thrown into the non-filer program. At first it went to the newer agents, GS5-9 then to GS11 and there were so many GS 12's & 13's started getting these cases, and nobody wanted these PIA cases, but they had to be done. Being finally forced to worked these cases, I can tell you a SFR is not accepted as the filing of an original return, if you want to file a correct return you need to file the 1040, not the 1040X. You technically can not change a substitute return, you can change an original filed return signed by the tax payer under the penalties of perjury.

Sorry, hit the button twice. I work with a beer in my hand too!

I met with the principals of the VFW to get a grip on what their "mess" is. They had some one who prepared their payroll and 990 returns. This person became a "person of interest" when funds started to disappear. When questioned about this he walked out later that day and just left everything, except he deleted a lot of files on their computer. They want to get things straigtened out as they have recieved notices concerning the non filing of some 941's, 940's, 990, W-2's. Of course the books are just boxes full of paper that have no organization to them. The VFW also has a forensic computer guy comming in to see if he can retrieve the deleted files. Going through some of the boxes of records, there are some of the forms questioned as non-filed in there. It looks like the guy did the returns, such as the W-2's and gave them to the employess but just never filed them. He wrote out checks that would equal the 8903 deposit amount, but never deposited, the forms are in the box. From what I have seen so far, my job is to get them current and request abatement of the penalties. The penalties are the big amounts due, civil on the W-2's and so on. The only 990 I could find was from 3 years ago, it did have the UBI reported and a quick look over it seemed he knew what he was doing, I will of course go over them and hopefully find some work papers that tie to the return numbers. It would seem right now, my job is to get them current on thier returns and request abatements. The time factor will be locating records and hoping I have a paper trail to follow. I am trying to figure now if I should split my billing time in two catagories, bookkeeping and tax billings. The fun part of the job was they were real relaxed, the officers and others would come into the office to offer help if they could, each them would always have a beer in their hand, so it is a happy place to be.

I met with the principals of the VFW to get a grip on what their "mess" is. They had some one who prepared their payroll and 990 returns. This person became a "person of interest" when funds started to disappear. When questioned about this he walked out later that day and just left everything, except he deleted a lot of files on their computer. They want to get things straigtened out as they have recieved notices concerning the non filing of some 941's, 940's, 990, W-2's. Of course the books are just boxes full of paper that have no organization to them. The VFW also has a forensic computer guy comming in to see if he can retrieve the deleted files. Going through some of the boxes of records, there are some of the forms questioned as non-filed in there. It looks like the guy did the returns, such as the W-2's and gave them to the employess but just never filed them. He wrote out checks that would equal the 8903 deposit amount, but never deposited, the forms are in the box. From what I have seen so far, my job is to get them current and request abatement of the penalties. The penalties are the big amounts due, civil on the W-2's and so on. The only 990 I could find was from 3 years ago, it did have the UBI reported and a quick look over it seemed he knew what he was doing, I will of course go over them and hopefully find some work papers that tie to the return numbers. It would seem right now, my job is to get them current on thier returns and request abatements. The time factor will be locating records and hoping I have a paper trail to follow. I am trying to figure now if I should split my billing time in two catagories, bookkeeping and tax billings. The fun part of the job was they were real relaxed, the officers and others would come into the office to offer help if they could, each them would always have a beer in their hand, so it is a happy place to be.

I have a fairly diverse practice consisting of most entities, individual and business, but not specializing in one prticular area. I would like a little advice from anyone who has experience working with a VFW post. I recieved a call, a referral, from a VFW member who would like me to take control of thier tax obligations, and as he puts it, a real mess they are in. It seems the person they had take care of thier books and records and filings just disappeared, leaving them with a burden. He went on to say they have a ton of notices from taxing agencies and the last one with a time frame of 30 days to respond. He of course does not know what any of it means or relates to and asked me to look over what they have. I was hoping maybe some one has experience with this type of organization, as I have not, and can give me a general idea of what is involved and how to proceed. Of course I have no idea of what is involved until I meet with them later this week. So I would appreciate a general outline of the work involved with this particular type of organization. Thank you, BJM

There is always a cite, it is the Internal Revenue Code. An Agent would never use a commercial source such as CCH in thier work papers and they would never use an IRS publication either. I did carry the Master Tax Guide with me on examinations but this was for reference only and I might furnish a taxpayer with a publication revelent to thier situation, but these were for information only to help the taxpayer understand the issue. An Agent's workpapers would only reference the code section, if the adjustment was unagreed the workpapers to write the unagreed issue up would include the IRC, the Regs and court cases. You can ask the Revenue Agent, or the Revenue Officer, if this is in collection, the IRC for your particular situation. These other sources have no authority. I believe there are sites on the web you can find the IRC for your cite and position.

I downloaded the trial TaxSlayer program the last two years. I prepared two corporate returns that had been on extension with the program and it worked well. I guess if I had put all my corps on extension I would not have needed to purchase a program that did 1120's. A few days ago I recieved the 2006 TaxSlayer Pro CD in the mail, I had not requested it, so I guess I was just on thier list. I will now take more time to evaluated the program, especially the 1040 which I had not used. They did send me special offers via e-mail through out the year after I had downloaded the program and believe the best offer was down to $695 from the regular price of $895.

It would seem that ATX is taking the same approach as some of us do with our PIA clients, just raise the fee and maybe they will go away and if they stay then the increase will be worth it. I am referring to the lower tier programs, the basic 1040 and the 1040 Office. Although the intitial cost of the basic 1040 is still $390 the fee for e-filing has increased from $-0- to $5.00 per return for the Federal and one State. If you do 100 e-files this package now costs $890, not including shipping. Having been with ATX since the untimely death of Parsons (oh, the days of the $80 program) I will be looking at other software, as I think others will also. This price is also the same as Proseries basic 1040 program. I am sure there will be many initial offers from other suppliers to intice us to switch. One poster on The Tax Book ( when the community ATX board was put to rest, some ATX members went there for solace) mesage board is praising Taxslayer as an alternative and I am sure there will be more such posts when the tax season is over. I think the big mistake was announcing the 2007 software prices and the resulting end of the message community before the end of the filing season.