Gail in Virginia

Sell it on E-bay! Just kidding!

As far as I know. One of the EA's in the local society uses 12345 for all taxpayers and 54321 for all spouses. Never has trouble remembering someone's pin.

I am interested in this venture, but don't want to commit until some kind of plan is made. I do not have any connection to ATX or CCH except as a customer.

I have gotten very leery of using any part of anyone's social security number for any reason, and the IRS does not seem to care about duplication, so I use my client's zip code for the pin; if married, I reverse the zip code for the spouse. I have used phone numbers occasionally, but zip codes seem simpler.

Not just Florida - When I was treasurer of the local PTO, the previous treasurer had not followed up on some bad checks. After trying unsuccessfully to get responses form people directly, I filed warrants for bad check charges. When it got to court, I got a lecture from the judge about what a serious thing it was to charge these people with writing bad checks when I did not personally see them write the check, nor did I personally receive the check from them (the checks were from a fundraiser, and probably were accepted by a grade school child.) I might have felt really badly about it, but I collected on every one of those checks once the people knew they were going to have to go to court and face a judge. However, I have learned that once in court, they do have the protection of the court on their side.

I have a partnership return I am working on - real estate partnership where the real estate was sold in 2007, and the partners want to wind up the partnership. I had told the managing partner to bring me everything when they sold the land so we could prepare for a final return in 2007, but of course he did not come in until 2008 even though they closed on the land in July. My question relates to the timing of the final return. They are cash basis; the only income/expenses they will have for 2008 are my fee and $25 to the state of VA to dissolve the LLC. Can I accrue those two fees onto the 2007 return so that I can mark it final and they can be done with it, or do they have to file another return for 2008 showing payment of the fees? Any comments welcome.

The more stories like this that I read on this board, the more frightened I become. I don't know what we would do without this forum to help each other.

If they would answer e-mails, maybe we wouldn't all have to call. And then too, if we had chat support...

I don't think it is a local law, I think that it is part of the Uniform Commercial Code. However, whether they ask that many questions about the check is probably a local matter. In many cases, if you don't volunteer the information, you are never asked.

Thank you for answering, Beth. I really appreciate you, and the others who were laid off, continuing to help us anyway. I am not sure that I would be that big of a person. :wub:

Does anyone know why we can't e-file fiscal year 2006 returns that are due after 1/1/08? Is this a problem every year? It seems to me that I did some last year without a problem, but I had the same problem with a 990, and I have two more that will be due 2/15 that I am assuming I will have to mail. I emailed tech support last week, but so far I have not received an answer. At this point, I really don't expect to any longer. However, it did appear from a notice I got when I e-filed last week that this is a problem for this year only. If any one knows more about this than I do, I would love to hear about it.

Have you actually tried changing the last two digits? I tried changing the last digit of the password - I was just going to use the same password and number it to keep going - and I got an error message telling me I couldn't use the same password even thought I had changed the digit on the end from 1 to 2.

I thought it was funny, too, Nicole, but I wasn't laughing. I did send them last year's letter. We will see what happens. The woman I talked to really did not seem as knowledgeable or as interested as I was used to with the Caribou people. In fact, it was almost like I was back with the year ATX outsourced support to India. :(

A local church had some of their members attend a seminar put on by a firm that is an "expert" on accounting for churches and other religious organizations. They now are questioning how they do things, which is probably good. They have asked us to come and explain exactly what they should be doing, and while I thought that I had a pretty good grip on the subject, some of the questions they are asking make me wonder since I am sure they are points raised by the expert. For example, they wanted to know if it is "illegal" for them to have more bank accounts than an operating account and a building fund. To the best of my knowledge, they can have as many accounts as they can keep up with, but does anyone know why this question would arise? They also asked if it was true that church payroll cannot be more than 32.6% of the total income, and I have no idea where that specific percentage came from. Do they actually have to retain the envelopes of member pledges for 7 years? I am pretty sure my church throws them away once they are entered into the computer. There were other questions that were more in line with what I think of as normal questions for a church to ask, but I wondered if anyone on this board had any thoughts about these questions.

I may be wrong, but I don't think you can replace your EIN with a PTIN - I think that they only replace SSNs. Unfortunately, your EIN is still going to be out there.

Actually, I suggested the letter from last year and was told that I needed the letter from this year. I am going to send them last year's letter; if that is not good enough, they can go on line and look for my ERO status. I was trying to give them a chance, but I think, like Old Jack, I will be looking for new software for next year.

I did finally get on as ADMIN, but now I find out that they no longer have a record of my EFIN, or my EIN, and they have to have me fax them the letter from the IRS showing that I am registered to EFILE this year. Now as we all know, the IRS is not sending out those letters. I am not currently enrolled in e-services (I keep forgetting to change my password often enough because I don't use this service much.) It will take up to 28 days for IRS to mail me a new confirmation number so I can print out a summary letter showing my e-fin for ATX to set me up over again. What is the point in staying with the same service? I was a little ticked before, but I am FURIOUS now!

You are doing better than I am - I have been on hold for 1/2 hour so far and counting to try to get someone to help me log on to the account. I don't have time for this every time I want to look something up in support. :angry:

This has been very frustrating for me as well. In the first place, I use Firefox for my default internet browser and everytime I try to use support, I get a warning that I need to use IE6 or higher. I don't want to, but... But now I can't log on at all, and I can't see my "secret question" to reset my password. I know it is supposed to be secret, but I can't remember which sites have which secret question. I know that if I had the option to set a secret question when I first logged on to this, I did. So, since tech support lines are down, I thought I would just e-mail them and see if I couldn't get an answer by tomorrow. Well, as far as I can tell I can't email them until I can log on to tech support. This certainly is a more secure site - tech support shouldn't be bothered with clients much at all, if any. Not a happy camper with this today. :angry:

And this is only the beginning! I love it when I come in on a holiday or weekend to try to catch up while it is quiet, and my clients think that is a good time to catch me with "nothing to do." OH YAY TAX SEASON!! ( And this year I am taking three college classes at the same time because I can't get them on my schedule otherwise. Its gonna be fun!)

I find that lots of times when I get the warning, I can continue anyway without a problem. I, too, use Firefox and for the same reason - security. But now that I have used it for a few years, I hate to work with IE when I use someone else's computer.

I AM NOT AN EXPERT on this area of taxation, but... If the day care is totally owned by the church, and if the purpose is part of the same tax-exempt purpose of the church, then I think it is probably covered by the church's exemption and would not have to file. But this might be a somewhat gray area, and I would do more research than this before offering real advice. You might ask the CPA and/or attorney for their reasoning for advising the day care not to file - it would save you time in researching something that has already been researched if they will just tell you how they arrived at their conclusion.

I don't really mind most of the implications about Democrats implicit in your holiday wishes, even though I am a life-long, dyed in the wool, card -carrying tax and spend democrat (as opposed to a don't tax and still spend Republican), but I really don't think that we are two years behind the rest of the world. :P

It did not arrive in the nice binder with the instruction book even if you had renewed already. I kind of miss that, even though I normally prefer less packaging to more.

Can anyone explain to me the reason the business mileage rate increased from 48.5 to 50.5 for 2008, and yet the medical/moving rate decreased from 20 to 19 cents? I understand it takes an act of Congress (literally) to change the charitable rate, but why would medical/moving go down?