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You've received all the ways to safeguard last year: the completed checkbox, changing the color of input fields of the prior year, and using pdfs to refer to instead of opening last year's computer file. I kind of agree with Jack about the integrity or quality of personnel. In all the years I spent as a supervisor and training personnel, the ones that relied on looking at prior year input were those that did not know what they were doing, and a few were actually mimicking the prior year input instead of working through the current year documents and inputting whatever data it was. I hope that makes sense.

The completed box has been around for longer than just a couple of years. I have the ATX programs back to 2009 on my current machine and that box is there in the return manager, and I am sure it was there in earlier years too because I used that a lot to sort and show only those returns that are incomplete.

That's what I was saying in the other topic where this came up. I think it will still open before the end of Jan for those early filers (cough) that must have the refunds they are (cough) entitled to.

I accidentally click on names too!

I would not make excuses or make up reasons but would rather find a nice way to tell her the truth. My area is very small and all the CPAs and other tax preparers know, or know of, each other, and many of these people are my peers that I've worked with or sat through many seminars with over the last 30+ years. The last thing I'd want is for that (former) client to go to another professional, or worse- someone in our mutual social circle, and say that I couldn't handle the complexity of the work or that I had inferior or inadequate software. If the person is a slow payer then I need to address that collection issue straight on. We aren't in this profession to give work away at a steep discount of 60% off unless it is of our choosing.

Did you get it installed initially after removing that corrupted file, and now you can't update? Or, are you still working on the initial installation?

It's in the "Other Vendors" section with the other non-ATX providers.

And, what happens to access to MY clients' data if I move to another service in future? NO THANK YOU! The only thing I'd want on the cloud or internet-based is tax and accounting research. Unless I want hard copy print of a book or manual, I see no need to install that type of software on my computer or deal with receiving updates via download or disk, but that is totally different than actual prep and data storage.

Safe link to Library of Congress for the text of the bill: http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/F?c113:3:./temp/~c113pWwBY6:e2637:

No, not that I can see. They are supposed to work like a 529 plan. From one of the Congressman's sites that voted for it: WASHINGTON, D.C. – On Wednesday, U.S. Rep. Glenn ‘GT’ Thompson voted to support “The Achieving a Better Life Experience (ABLE) Act” (H.R. 647/S.313), which passed the House with bipartisan support by a vote of 404-17. “The Achieving a Better Life Experience Act eases the enormous financial burden placed upon individuals with disabilities and their families by making it easier for them to plan and save for the future. As a cosponsor of the ABLE Act, I am proud of this bipartisan effort to empower individuals to live with greater dignity and independence. It is my hope the Senate will act swiftly to pass this important legislation,” said Thompson. Under current law, individuals with disabilities face significant barriers to finding and holding employment and living independently because their access to certain safety-net programs can be lost once they establish a minimum level of savings and income. The ABLE Act aims to provide families of a severely disabled child with some peace of mind by allowing them to save for their child’s long-term disability expenses in the same way that families of able bodied children can currently save for college through popular 529 investment plans. The ABLE Act empowers disabled individuals and their families to save their own money in a 529A (or ABLE) account to maintain health and independence with a goal of allowing those individuals to transition away from government assistance and benefits. ABLE Accounts would be a savings vehicle for disability-related expenses that will supplement, but not supplant, benefits provided through private insurances, the Medicaid program, the supplemental security income program, the beneficiary’s employment, and other sources. 529A accounts would be administered on a voluntary basis by the States in a similar manner as 529 college savings accounts. The ABLE Act has 381 House sponsors and 74 Senate sponsors.

Yes, a pool. I think it will be something like in prior years where the season opened around the 3rd week of Jan for basic returns, but those with sec 179 and other extenders weren't available for e-filing until late Feb or sometime in March, but paper filing those earlier was an option.

I agree, I wouldn't worry about it not being included yet.

Save the returns in pdf format, and then you could allow those preparers access to the pdf to view the completed return that would protect the actual input from inadvertent changes.

Right! Some of mine don't open anything that says "contains important tax information" on them.

Hi PurpleTaxLady, and welcome to the group. I think Jack is correct about it being a design flaw in the program that CCHSFS can't or won't fix, and there are other problems at CCHSFS also, one being lack of adequately trained technical support staff. I think his statements from another topic summarize this very well:

For those of you that receive notifications and updates by following the forum without coming directly to the site, Eric has graciously set up 2 new areas for us. One is specifically for the ACA discussions and the other is for ProSeries users to discuss that software without going to its official forum. If you would like to receive the postings and updates for either of those new subforums, you'll have to log on and choose to follow those in addition to following the general chat area. Of course, we'd love to see you logging on and participating too.

For the few invoices you are talking about, you could set up an excel workbook with links to one master sheet containing the date field and month service relates to. Changing the date and month fields on that master sheet would take the few moments to make the change and the data would auto-populate throughout the workbook. Print the entire workbook once a month and you are done. I prepare the quarterly CAM bills for one client having a commercial rental with a small number of tenants, and this is how I do it. I have the master sheet that does all the math, and it flows beautifully to each tenant's bill. Of course, I don't have to worry about tracking the receivable though.

The only problem I have with Catherine's "pay up or no more work" is that it gives those once-a-year clients the idea that they can carry that balance out for an entire year until they need our services again. I don't want to extend that level of credit or have to worry about balances dues out that long. Credit card companies do that very well, and I am not in the business of extending credit. Most of my clients pay when the return is picked up, but I do have a statement formatted on my old invoices that gives them 30 days interest free. Beyond 30 days is when I start charging interest. Two years ago I started using the bill function within my tax software to generate the invoice, and that 30-day statement is gone, but I would still honor it. There are some business clients that have more extensive work that I spread the payments over several months to lighten the impact, but those terms are clearly spelled out in the engagement letters in advance of starting my work.

Passed on Tuesday and awaiting the President's signature - http://journalofaccountancy.com/news/2014/dec/tax-favored-savings-accounts-for-disability-expenses-201411491.html New law creates tax-favored savings accounts for disabled taxpayers By Alistair M. Nevius, J.D. December 17, 2014 As part of the larger tax extender legislation passed on Tuesday, Congress approved the Achieving a Better Life Experience (ABLE) Act of 2014 (H.R. 647), which will allow disabled individuals to save money to pay for their disability expenses in tax-favored accounts, called ABLE accounts. The House of Representatives passed the measure on Dec. 3, by a vote of 404–17, and it now goes to President Barack Obama for his signature. The purpose of the bill is “[t]o encourage and assist individuals and families in saving private funds for the purpose of supporting individuals with disabilities to maintain health, independence, and quality of life” and “[t]o provide secure funding for disability-related expenses on behalf of designated beneficiaries with disabilities that will supplement, but not supplant, benefits provided through private insurance,” Medicaid, and other sources (H.R. 647, §101). The bill adds a new Sec. 529A to the Code, under which a qualified ABLE program will be exempt from taxation (except for unrelated business income tax). A qualified ABLE program is a program run by a state that allows a person to make contributions for a tax year, for the benefit of an eligible individual, to an ABLE account established for the purpose of meeting the qualified disability expenses of the designated beneficiary of the account. A state’s ABLE program must limit designated beneficiaries to one account and must allow accounts to be opened only for residents of that state or a contracting state. Eligible individuals must file a disability certification with the IRS or meet certain criteria for blindness or disability under the Social Security Act (42 U.S.C. §1382). Contributions must be made in cash, and the program must limit annual contributions to the amount of the annual gift tax exclusion in effect for that tax year. The ABLE program must provide separate accounting for each designated beneficiary, and designated beneficiaries and contributors must not be able to direct the investment of contributions or earnings in the account. Distributions from the account will not be included in the designated beneficiary’s gross income as long as they do not exceed the beneficiary’s qualified disability expenses. If they do exceed the beneficiary’s qualified disability expenses, the amount otherwise includible in gross income will be reduced by an amount bearing the same ratio to that amount as the expenses bear to the distributions. Funds in ABLE accounts will also be disregarded for purposes of various federal means-tested programs. Once signed by the president, the bill will take effect for tax years beginning after Dec. 31, 2014. — Alistair M. Nevius ( [email protected] ) is the JofA’s editor-in-chief, tax.

You might also consider including a suggestion that she accumulate all the necessary data and meet only one so that both of your time will be more wisely spent and not wasted on inefficiency. A pet peeve of mine is having to work on something piecemeal because it is very inefficient, wastes time and leads to possible mistakes when the preparer has to stop and start a job.

...and IRS and all vendor software must be updated and tested to include the extenders.

IRS pub 5157 that is the ACA guidance provided to VITA preparers. It's a nice overview with some brief quiz questions and answers that highlight a few of the more common fact patterns we may see. It's a pdf that can be downloaded. http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/p5157.pdf

From an email I received tonight: On Thursday January 22, 2015, Stakeholder Liaison’s Mid-Atlantic Region will be hosting a two hour Webinar from 1:00 p.m. to 3:00 p.m. EST on the Affordable Care Act. Here is the invitation email for the webinar. Hosted By: Internal Revenue Service (IRS) Presented By: Internal Revenue Service (IRS), Stakeholder Liaison (Internal Revenue Service) On Thursday January 22, 2015, Stakeholder Liaison’s Mid-Atlantic Region will be hosting a two hour Webinar from 1:00 p.m. to 3:00 p.m. EST on the Affordable Care Act. There will be two main areas of focus: the Affordable Care Act’s Individual Shared Responsibility Provision (ISRP), and the Premium Tax Credit (PTC). There will be ample time for questions and answers as well. So if you want a last minute refresher on the nuts and bolts of the Affordable Care Act, this is the webinar for you. We look forward to you joining us for this worthwhile presentation. Registration Process: 1. Please remember the e-mail address that is entered when you register because a registration confirmation message will be sent to that email box within moments, requesting that you click and confirm your registration. Confirming your registration is simple and takes seconds to complete. 2. You must confirm your registration in order to attend the webinar. Webinar attendance is only allowed after the registration confirmation process is complete. Confirming your registration will also enable you to receive email reminders for the webinar. 3. If you do not receive the registration confirmation e-mail, please check your spam folder, and if necessary adjust spam filter to avoid future messages from being blocked. On the day of the event: 1. Please remember to dial-in using 1-888-331-8226, and when prompted enter Access Code 3479383#. 2. Utilize either URL address or join the event hyperlink to conduct a system check at least ten minutes prior to start time of the meeting. To register for this event To register for this event, use the following link: https://events.na.collabserv.com/register.php?id=144165edd5&l=en-US If clicking the above link does not work, please copy the entire link and paste it into your Web browser. © 2014 IRS Narina Bchtikian SB: SE Communications and Stakeholder Outreach Senior Stakeholder Liaison 600 Arch Street, Room 3214 Philadelphia, PA 19106 Phone: 215-861-1061 [email protected]

The spammers don't care what the topics are or sites' main interests. When I started looking into where these were generated and searched for some of them with whois, the IPs came up as spammers that were signed on to a wide variety of sites for the sole purpose of spamming, and some were reported to be associated with blacklisted sites. This forum's internal IP tools revealed that some of the members had multiple members all signing in from the same static IP address, and those might have been automated spam bots being set up once a human had solved the old security question. The new sign up features that Eric put in place on Monday assure that new members are real people and whose IP addresses are not associated with high levels of spam.

I think that too, Tom, and Margaret said the appraised value was $12, and that the fracking company really wanted that land to continue the pipeline and paid a big premium for it. I'm unsure about the penalty inclusion. I wouldn't rely on what some lawyer wrote into a contract, and that was the reason I asked. Punitive damages are definitely includable, but what if they are compensatory received by a non-human exempt entity? I think they still might be taxable, but really unsure about that.