Lee B

According to the Wall Street Journal, Equifax is still in a CYA mode: "However, Atlanta-based Equifax Inc. recently disclosed in a document submitted to the Senate Banking Committee, that a forensic investigation found criminals accessed other information from company records. According to the document, provided to The Associated Press by Sen. Elizabeth Warren's office, that included tax identification numbers, email addresses and phone numbers. Finer details, such as the expiration dates for credit cards or issuing states for driver's licenses, were also included in the list.

The House passed the bill 4 hours ago and the bill was signed into law about an hour ago.

It turns out the Tax Extenders Bill was attached to the to the Budget Bill currently in front of the Senate without mention or discussion! Film at 11

According to ATX, it's undergoing testing and awaiting appproval

Posted this morning by ATXWendi: "You may want to call into customer support to have them address this issue. The section 179 limits have likely been dropped from Fixed Assets. If you are comfortable, this KB link from last year gives the steps to correct the issue (substitute 2017 in place of 2016), but it involves deleting program files so they can be re-downloaded. These are the steps customer service will do for you if you call in. https://support.cch.com/sfs/solution/000057508 Alternatively, you can type in the limits, but they will then be treated as overrides and may not update if we have to issue updates (which happens as the states legislate in the spring). The limits are in Fixed Assets, Asset Global Settings for federal and then click on the State Calcs tab for the state data."

Actually I did something very similar to that , 5 or 6 years ago. Really nasty divorce, but after I carefully explained it to both of them, they were both OK with it.

Just start removing letters from the end of the name until the efile is allowed. I have never had a problem with truncating a last name.

Just received all of my 1099 acks that I transmitted back on the 24th.

Posted by ATXWendi today: "The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act changed bonus depreciation to 100% for qualified assets placed in service after 9/27/207 (before that date it will remain 50%). In the current program version 50% is the default for all 2017 dates. A program update will come out in a week or two that will properly default to 100% for the appropriate dates. The message is a warning that the current program version is using 50% for all 2017 dates and has not been updated to default to 100% when date appropriate. The tax act also provided an election to for assets placed in service after 9/27/2017 to elect to use 50% bonus depreciation instead of 100%. If you want to use 50% for assets after 9/27/2017, there is an election on the elections form that has to be manually marked" Looks like it be another week or two before ATX has a fully functional 4562.

One other thing, since I have switched to gmail for business and outlook for personal, the number of junk and scam emails has dropped to almost zero.

I just use the Windows free firewall and anti virus program as my active security. Then I use Malwarebytes as a passive backup. Different security programs are good at different things so there isn't any one program that will catch everything. As different people have said many times, the best defense is you. I don't use my business computer for anything personal plus the only searching I do are business related so that limits my exposure significantly.

Still waiting for acks on the 1099s I transmitted on the 24th.

Doesn't the scholarship have to be unrestricted allowing you to apply the scholarship toward non qualifying expenses for you to do this ? Be sure to find out how much was spent for books and materials, which in some cases could include a computer.

It's part of the tax extenders bill currently sitting in the Senate. The House has shown little interest in passing the bill. Probably the only chance of the extenders bill passing is if the Senate attaches it to the CR on February 8th, when we face the next government shutdown. Also included in the bill are: 1. College tuition and fees deduction 2. Forgiveness of Home Mortgage Debt Cancellation Income 3. Home Energy Credits 4. Electric Vehicle Credits 5. A long list of special interest provisions for NASCAR & etc.

If I remember correctly, this issue arose last in more than one place in the ATX software and the workaround was to enter .0001

Posted on the ATX Bog 1 hour ago: "Some customers are experiencing intermittent interruptions with the EFC. We are investigating the issue. Please save any work in-progress"

According to an article that I read recently, the National Average Fee for these two returns ( w/o Tax Planning ) was $273 and $ 176.

The Senate Finance Committee is pushing to pass the extenders. However the House is showing little or no interest. Likely the only way it passes is if the Senate attaches it to next CR on February 8th.

I think there may have been an update this morning to fix this problem.

Excerpted from Bloomberg News: Now, various states are considering circumventing that limit by switching from a state personal income tax to an employer-paid state payroll tax calibrated to produce the same amount of revenue. Employers can deduct payroll taxes fully on their federal return. This would be a tax on Gross Wages paid by the employer. Supposedly New York is leading the way down this road.

There several users who said they were able to efile with a Schedule A late Friday ?

Malwarebytes Update Released to Fix High CPU & Memory Usage in Mbamservice.exe Lawrence Abrams An update pushed by Malwarebytes today for their Malwarebytes Anti-Malware product has caused a lot of problems for those who use their program. This new protection update caused mbamservice.exe to consume a lot of memory and upwards to 90% of the computer's CPU. A new update has been pushed that resolves these issues. Mbamservice.exe Using a lot of CPU First reported in the Malwarebytes forums, numerous people have been complaining today about mbamservice.exe consuming large amount of memory and spiking the CPU at over 90% usage. This has caused some computers to crash or become too unstable to use. In a post to their forums, Malwarebytes CEO Marcin Kleczynski explained that a bad protection update caused these problems and that a new update had just been released that fixes these problems. Information about New Malwarebytes Update that Resolves Problems To resolve these issues simply start MBAM and check for new updates. The program will automatically download the new update and install it. If your computer is unresponsive, you can either terminate the mbamservice.exe process in task manager and restart Malwarebytes in order to try and download the new update. As a last resort, you can uninstall MBAM and reinstall it. Once the update is installed, your computer should no longer be having problems and mbamservice.exe should be using the appropriate amount of resources again.

Go to the thread pinned at the top of the page, "Resources on new tax law" and read pages 44 - 48 of KPMG's analysis.

Really, you think these temp files related to zip codes are magically appearing out of thin air. Obviously, the ATX program is creating them and then for some reason on certain users computers the program isn't deleting the temp file.

This happened to my wife, when she was Girl Scout Leader, calling mothers for help with the troop. My Wife, " Can you help with . . . . . . . Mother, " Gotta Go, Dog Fight" and she hangs up.