Gregster

Filing Season Opens on Time Except for Certain Taxpayers Potentially Affected by AMT Patch IR-2007-209, Dec. 27, 2007 WASHINGTON — The Internal Revenue Service announced today that the upcoming tax season is expected to start on time for everyone except certain taxpayers potentially affected by late enactment of the Alternative Minimum Tax “patch.” Following extensive work in recent weeks, the IRS expects to be able to begin processing returns for the vast majority of taxpayers in mid-January. However, as many as 13.5 million taxpayers using five forms related to the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT) legislation will have to wait to file tax returns until the IRS completes the reprogramming of its systems for the new law. The IRS has targeted Feb. 11, as the potential starting date for taxpayers to begin submitting the five AMT-related returns affected by the legislation. The February date allows the IRS enough time to update and test its systems to accommodate the AMT changes without major disruptions to other operations related to the tax season. As the IRS has said previously, it will take approximately seven weeks after the AMT patch was approved to update IRS processing systems completely. Although as many as 13.5 million taxpayers will not be able to file their returns until Feb. 11, the effect of the delay may be lessened by the fact that under previous filing patterns only between 3 million to 4 million taxpayers file returns with the five affected forms during these early weeks in the filing season. “We regret the inconvenience the delay will mean for millions of early tax filers, especially those expecting a refund,” said Linda Stiff, Acting IRS Commissioner. “We’ve taken extraordinary steps to figure out a way that we can start the filing season on time for most taxpayers, including some using AMT-related forms. Our goal has always been to make sure we can accurately process tax returns while getting refunds to taxpayers as quickly as possible.” The February delay caused by the AMT patch will affect taxpayers using any of these five forms: Form 8863, Education Credits. Form 5695, Residential Energy Credits. Form 1040A’s Schedule 2, Child and Dependent Care Expenses for Form 1040A Filers. Form 8396, Mortgage Interest Credit. Form 8859, District of Columbia First-Time Homebuyer Credit.While these five forms require significant additional reprogramming due to the AMT patch, the IRS has been able to reprogram its systems to begin processing seven other AMT-related forms, including Form 6251, Alternative Minimum Tax – Individuals. Taxpayers filing these seven forms should not experience delays in filing, and the IRS expects to begin processing those returns starting on Jan. 14. Electronic returns involving those five forms will not be accepted until systems are updated in February; similarly, paper filers should wait to file as well. All other e-file and paper returns will be accepted starting in January. The IRS urges affected taxpayers to file electronically in order to reduce wait times for their refunds. E-file with direct deposit gets refunds in as little as 10 days, while paper returns take four to six weeks.

One way to do this would be to Open Form 8879 in Return Manager Click the "Tools" Menu Then Unprotect Form 8879 You can then type your signature on the ERO signature line Save the Form, and Protect 8879 under "Tools" Never tried it...not certain e-file validation will accept a "Customized 8879" If you try it, let us know if it works...

There is a better way... You really don't need the original disc to install... Go to the Update button in the Return Manager... Select "Manual" Select the state and download the new forms right into the program. No disc or re-install required

I (and my wife) do about 1000 Federal returns and about 80% of them include KS and MO. We efile ALMOST everything...

I have a high speed Internet connection and noticed that today it's taking 15+ minutes to download a form from CCH ATX when doing a forms update... Anyone else noticing this?

Have a client with a home in India and he wishes to deduct the mortgage interest on his US tax return... brain is not working at the moment... Yes or No on deductibility? And is there a specific IRS cite for it Thanks

We like Nitro PDF at www.nitropdf.com Works great with full edit capabilities...$99 I think

Here's the true fix if anybody has this problem... Sometimes on rolled over returns, an extra space is being inserted into the SSN field at the end...which causes the return to fail validation because there are too many spaces in the SSN. The solution is simple and after 4 hours over several days with tech support I think I have solved it. Delete the SSN (s) on the main form, re-enter them, save and re-transmit. Of course you can't "see" the extra space since its an Excel field where the SSN's are entered in ATX.

Never heard of it or experienced it before however I would concur with your interpretation. Love those "quick questions" Gregster

Yes. E-file is up. Log into My ATX and look at E-file tab...you see how many outstanding acks are outstanding per drain per service center. I suppose the theory is if they don't mention it...nobody will know. Ha Ha

We use PayCyle (Wholesale) for Payroll clients...who seem to get really hooked on how simple it is to use online... It has a 50 employee limit per firm I think...but the backside support is very good. As for the 1120s and 1065's not sure what to do about those...most days it seems I could live without them :)

OK...so let's assume the Economic Stimulus Package, a.k.a 2008 Tax "Rebate" becomes law... Do you think they would apply existing Federal Offsets against it...like Child Support, Student loans, etc? And then in 2009 What do you bet they'll issue 1099 G's for the money that nearly all of your clients will forget about in Tax Year 2008? Just something to ponder... All of my clients are asking when the $ is coming and how much and it hasn't even passed into law yet... Gregster

I'm keeping www.oltpro.com bookmarked just in case I need it this year. Will review all available software options after April 15th...

Nope...but I did ask, of course...

No...It's CCH...their internal systems went down when I was on the phone to customer support :)

So here is the proposed fix from ATX (Which DID successfully Validate) Select the returns that have the error one at a time. DUPLICATE THE RETURN Re-submit the Copy Return to the EFC electronically... And Guess what? It VALIDATED fine! So will wait to see whether it gets ACCEPTED or not... (By the way...the entire CCH network...even the computers at customer support went down while I was on the phone...and are still down)

IF you send most files to the same ack center I think you can customize the 9325 Master Form and save a few keystokes in terms of the location... It used to pull in the date and time from the Status Date or Postmark Field with the old ATX servers and CCH servers don't do since they all default to 12AM...makes the "Status Date" useless I think

This delay has nothing to do with ATX...it's the IRS...see below: Filing Season Opens on Time Except for Certain Taxpayers Potentially Affected by AMT Patch IR-2007-209, Dec. 27, 2007 WASHINGTON — The Internal Revenue Service announced today that the upcoming tax season is expected to start on time for everyone except certain taxpayers potentially affected by late enactment of the Alternative Minimum Tax “patch.” Following extensive work in recent weeks, the IRS expects to be able to begin processing returns for the vast majority of taxpayers in mid-January. However, as many as 13.5 million taxpayers using five forms related to the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT) legislation will have to wait to file tax returns until the IRS completes the reprogramming of its systems for the new law. The IRS has targeted Feb. 11, as the potential starting date for taxpayers to begin submitting the five AMT-related returns affected by the legislation. The February date allows the IRS enough time to update and test its systems to accommodate the AMT changes without major disruptions to other operations related to the tax season. As the IRS has said previously, it will take approximately seven weeks after the AMT patch was approved to update IRS processing systems completely. Although as many as 13.5 million taxpayers will not be able to file their returns until Feb. 11, the effect of the delay may be lessened by the fact that under previous filing patterns only between 3 million to 4 million taxpayers file returns with the five affected forms during these early weeks in the filing season. “We regret the inconvenience the delay will mean for millions of early tax filers, especially those expecting a refund,” said Linda Stiff, Acting IRS Commissioner. “We’ve taken extraordinary steps to figure out a way that we can start the filing season on time for most taxpayers, including some using AMT-related forms. Our goal has always been to make sure we can accurately process tax returns while getting refunds to taxpayers as quickly as possible.” The February delay caused by the AMT patch will affect taxpayers using any of these five forms: Form 8863, Education Credits. Form 5695, Residential Energy Credits. Form 1040A’s Schedule 2, Child and Dependent Care Expenses for Form 1040A Filers. Form 8396, Mortgage Interest Credit. Form 8859, District of Columbia First-Time Homebuyer Credit.While these five forms require significant additional reprogramming due to the AMT patch, the IRS has been able to reprogram its systems to begin processing seven other AMT-related forms, including Form 6251, Alternative Minimum Tax – Individuals. Taxpayers filing these seven forms should not experience delays in filing, and the IRS expects to begin processing those returns starting on Jan. 14. Electronic returns involving those five forms will not be accepted until systems are updated in February; similarly, paper filers should wait to file as well. All other e-file and paper returns will be accepted starting in January. The IRS urges affected taxpayers to file electronically in order to reduce wait times for their refunds. E-file with direct deposit gets refunds in as little as 10 days, while paper returns take four to six weeks.

ATX asked me to send the 2 files to them that were rejecting for electronic diagnostics...however never have posted anything on My ATX about the error. I tried another file later after updating and it was validated without any problems. I was hoping there would be something on ATX AM the web based daily video update which is supposed to be up by 9 am ET every day...at the moment...that has not been updated either and still is yesterdays program. Will post the fix here when I get it back from tech support on the 2 tax returns that I have which are an issue which will not validate even with new updates. One of the upper level techs who came from Caribou to Ga is working on it. ATX's answer was that I "might hear something by the end of the week"...which doesn't help much for todays e-file drain deadline... Perhaps its best to update the program and file, hoping the error does not happen to you...

E-file worked fine for me since opening day...25 or so Accepted files I did a Automatic Update today as I do every day... Soon after that I was getting an EFC Reject Error... Returns do not validate and are kicked back almost instantly as a reject... ATX Error 998...Validation Error ATX suspects that a recent form update may be causing it. ATX tells me I was the first to report it... Is it happening to anybody else? Thanks Just heard back from ATX Tech support who called me back and said this is a known issue...they are working on it and will post details on the My ATX site in Latest News when it will be fixed.

What about making it a web based application so that regular program updates and installation issues by users would be minimized? I begged ATX to do this since I began using Saber in 1998... It seems to me if you removed the local computer installation component that you could save a bunch of tech support headaches and general networking problems as well... Allow users to pay for a login to access the program and simply allow data to be saved to a local machine...or saved to an integrated remote backup service where server space could be sold to users as needed. It seems to me that my high speed Internet is more reliable and available than answers provided by CCH tech support

Did you try adding the W2 Form separately and keying the information in there instead of using the Jump To command? It might also be the customizing of the Form 1040 could be causing a problem... I try to stay away from customizing tax forms themselves as this can cause issues when the forms are inevitably updated later...What data field is customized on the 1040 & B? Customizing invoices, etc is fine, generally.

And even cash isn't worth what it once was... However, I am curious...if I presented a post dated check to a bank to cash AFTER the valid date on the check, how would any states attorney know it was postdated by the client in the first place?

I voiced some concerns to William last Saturday...his response... "I understand and do not know how to respond. All I am trying to do down here is help with the transition, which is a temporary arrangement. I have lost my team and my experts and am doing my best to help the people down here." Regards, William Tasker CS Manager, ATX

Your experience is the reason I simply don't recommend Direct Debit for clients. Maybe, since it was e-filed you could call the Practitioner Hotline at 1 866 860-4259 to verify receipt of the extension, at least. They have been very helpful on account related issues whenever I have called them. Gregster