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I e-filed an extension request yesterday and still have no ACK, but I've e-filed some 1040s today and they were acknowledged soon afterward.

What they really want to do is to drop it from inventory, reducing Cost of Sales, then also deduct it on Schedule A as a donation. Make that donation do double-duty.

If they have that much in marginable securities, they should sell enough of them and repay the margin loan.

I like the kind of client who ends up owing $10,000 or more and says, "Is that all I owe?"

Spoilage should automatically be taken care of by the reduction in ending inventory. For example if you had 500 items and 200 spoiled: With no spoilage: With Spoilage Beginning Inventory 1000 1000 Purchases 1000 1000 Minus Ending Inv -500 -300 Cost of Sales 1500 1700 In this case, however, he probably does not maintain an inventory. If he gives customers a discount, then he could either record the net amount or, if he records the gross amount, show discounts as an expense.

Once I did a return for a prostitute who worked at the Chicken Ranch (the Best Little Whorehouse in Texas). I asked her what she wanted to list as her occupation and she said, "Secretarial Service."

Also explain that your fee goes up $25 per day for each day after the deadline.

The more you owe, the more I charge.

About the only holiday I celebrate is the Fourth of July. I celebrate the fourth with a fifth. (Jack Daniels or some Scotch)

When you buy a put you buy a right to sell a stock at a certain "strike price." If you sell a put you agree to buy it at a certain strike price. Often the buyers and sellers of puts have no intention of actually buying or selling it. They are gambling that the price will move a certain direction. For example, you buy a $ 50 strike price put and pay $2.00 per share. If the stock goes up to $ 51.00 it has no intrinsic value. If the stock drops to $ 45, the put has an intrinsic value of $5.00. In addition to the intrinsic value, there is a premium for "time value." A seller of puts has much less risk than the seller of a call option. If you sold an "uncovered" call at a $ 50 strike price, the price could theoretically go up to $ 100 or $200 and you would have to buy it back at a big loss or pay $ 200 to cover your position or buy back the call. In the dot com bubble days, I could sell an out-of-the-money put on QQQ for $10 or more per share and they would expire worthless and I would keep the money, then sell another one with a later expiration date. I made a killing that way, but when the bubble burst, I lost most of it.

My doctor tried to get me to have one. I said, "No." I'll just take my chances. That was a couple of years ago and I'm still living with no signs of cancer.

The first time I tried Drake, it was basically a DOS program, but for the last few years it is a windows program.

I don't know if it is much extra work to rush a return for a gotta-have-it-now client, but it is an extra inconvenience, since you may be in the middle of another return and have to stop to do the rush job. I think an extra fee is appropriate.

The best thing you can do is drop this guy as a client. Even if he hadn't made the Dr Zaretsky comment, anyone who gets that angry even if you did something wrong is not worth having as a client. I had a client like that once. He complained always. Once I even got a call from his bank where he had been complaining about something they had done that supposedly affected his tax return. Once he complained because I had combined two of his figures into one figure to enter on the tax return. It was a $600 tax return, but it was $700 worth of trouble having to listen to him.

It's available now. I just filed one today that I'd been holding until the IRS gave the go-ahead. It was accepted a few minutes after I e-filed it.

Here is my estimate: Most returns are between $ 100 and $1000. Usually that scares them away since they probably want it done for $20.

if you can enter the transactions on an excel worksheet and import them into your tax program, it goes much faster. Doing it that way, you could charge just $ 5.00 per Form 8879 plus $4.00 or $5.00 per transaction and still be making over $150 per hour. My software lets me do it that way, and you save time by copying and pasting repetitive data and you can sort and re-sort the information and get sub-totals for matching to 1099B totals.

The sequester might cut one or two things that shouldn't be cut, but it's worth the price if that's what it takes to keep this nation from bankruptcy.

One thing mentioned is Drake's CWU program. It works fine as a payroll program, recording payroll, preparing and e-filing 941s, 940s, W-2s, 1099s, but as a write-up program it is like making every entry as a general journal entry. If you enter a debit to supplies, you must also enter a credit to cash or accounts payable--and look up the account code. If you do any bookkeeping work, use Quckbooks or Peachtree. I use Peachtree without updating every year, so the cost is minimal.

I tend to agree. A salaried job would be better for me if I had to work full-time.. Tax preparation, however, on a part-time basis, working from home, is better than being completely retired and I don't have to fight the traffic, get chewed out by the boss, and I can quit for the day when I feel like it. Fortunately, most of my bosses were good guys. The best boss I ever had was the Resident Auditor at Harlingen AFB when I was in the Air Force.

The Drake input screens take some getting used to, but they have a forms-based option for Form 1040 returns which you can access by pressing CTRL+G or by right-clicking on any screen. Page 1 and page 2 of Form 1040 pop up with related forms shown by the relevant line on form 1040. Just click the form and it takes you to the input screen. After becoming familiar with Drake's input screens, you will use the forms-based method less, but it's there if you need it. Another problem some have mentioned is entering stock market transactions, but Drake has provided a method by which you can enter them on an excel worksheet and import them to Form 8949. This enables you to copy and past repetitive information and enter the transactions much easier than doing them within the program. It is so easy, I use the imported worksheet even if there are only a few transactions. You can create one worksheet and after using it on one client, just save it if you want to keep it, then erase the data and use it with a new name for another client.

I see no reason not to renew early. Even if you wait until January 15 to renew, you don't know if the program is going to work as well as it has in the past. Even if there are a few glitches the first day or two, they may be corrected immediately. Of course there could be so many glitches and it may take a couple of months to straighten them out, but I see no way to avoid that possibility without being able to predict the future.

CCH is going to survive whether ATX does or not.

Everyone makes mistakes. Once I even made a mistake.

I have PDF Factory as my default printer. I also have PDF 995 and one other PDF printer, so I just print using a PDF printer. Then if I want a paper copy, I print the pdf with my HP printer.