Gail in Virginia

I might be wrong, but I always thought that if you e-filed using a power of attorney signature it was necessary to do the 8453 and mail in the POA form with the 8453. I would be interested if anyone knows for sure.

I had already renewed in May, after calling and hearing about the drawing for those who renewed by the end of May. I had intended to renew in time for the discount anyway since I have yet to find a software that I liked as well for the money. I am wondering if they are now going to have two drawings (not likely, IMO) or if they have just made a "business decision" to change my odds after the fact. Surely there will be people who renewed after May 31 (the date I was told was the deadline) and June 20 (the new deadline to participate in this "lottery".) <_<

Unfortunately, taxwise doesn't operate anywhere similar to ATX. As I recall, it is not forms based. I believe it is what I used as a VITA volunteer years ago.

We used TaxWise prior to switching to ATX, and it is a forms based program - or at least it was during the 2004 tax year.

I got 24. Not sure what i missed: wasn't paying attention!

I got 22, but it took me a while to access the site. Apparently, it doesn't like Mozilla for the browser!

No, she will not be able to e-file. If the death occured in 2007, the IRS will not be able to access that information and the e-file will be rejected. Since this is contradicting the prior answer you may want to call the IRS e-file help desk for verification of this info.

Mike

The answer that Mike gave has been my experience. They cannot e-file if spouse died after tax year end, but the surviving spouse will be able to e-file next year without a problem.

Ditto!

Thank you both!

In this case the funds were sold within six months of the date of death, and so were not part of the estate on the alternate evaluation date. If the alternate date option were chosen for estate tax reasons, the funds would have a basis exactly equal to their selling price. (See instructions for Form 706, page 6, last paragraph.)

I am not sure I follow that Don. Date of Death was 8/22/05. Six months from then would be 2/22/06. Funds were sold 4/6/06. Am I missing a finger when I count my six months?

Melvin,

I think that you and others will discover when you begin to use Windows Vista that that operating system will attempt to help you determine and resolve problems that may occur while using it. This has been true in my case using the Ultimate version. I don't know if the other versions do the same thing, but Ultimate does. It has analyzed problems within my computer system and has offered suggestions to resolve them.

I got a "geeky" teenager to demonstrate Vista Ultimate to me about 6 weeks ago, and he was showing me the error resolve feature. He said it was really good at fixing any problems that you had with Vista, and that XP did not have comparable feature. He then went on to say the problems that it fixed were all problems that he didn't have until he started using Vista. :lol:

Decedent passed away on 8/22/05. Personal Rep sold mutual funds on 4/06/06. I will need to know the # of shares and price per share on 8/22/05. This will be the cost basis for long term gain or loss (inherited = long term and cost = FMV on date of death). Correct?

The sold shares that accumulated (from reinvested dividends) after 8/22/05 would have to be considered separately in order to figure short term gain or loss. Right?

Also, I want to do this return for the calendar year 2006. It will be the first filed return, since it was not necessary to file a 1041 for 8/22/05 through 12/31/05, so should I mark this first filed Form 1041 as initial return or leave that blank? The first year of the estate is not 2006, but this is the first required return. Know what I mean? Thanks!

I agree also, except that you should check with the personal representative about the valuation date for the stock. Depending on what else is in the estate, and the respective values at each time, the representative may make an election to use the alternate valuation date which is six months after the date of death.

Fred Thompson, I don't think Fred Flintstone is eligible, although I could be wrong on that.

And yes, I guess it is redundant, but what's a little redundancy among friends, Bob?

I really thought you meant Fred Flintstone since he has the only car with a really "green" alternative energy source that I know of! :P

Notice also the division within CCH that the ATX program is in ... Universal Tax Systems, which was the parent company of Taxwise that was also taken over. Perhaps Taxwise will be the surviving lower end product.

taxbilly

Our office used to use TaxWise before we switched to ATX. If the two products were combined to give us the best of each, and at the price of either rather than the pricier products, I think we might actually come out ahead. TaxWIse is not a bad product - they just don't have quite as many forms and in the past were not as responsive to customer feedback. ATX was more responsive, but now that they are owned by CCH they may not be able to be as responsive as they were in the past, which eliminates that difference.

I had a client who felt that they were only in my office for about two hours (personal and corporation return) and that therefore my fee was too high. So I explained that next year it would be even higher since they had opened a business location in another state and that they might want to go ahead and start now to find someone to do next year's return. They have already called to apologize and tell me that I took their comment the wrong way and they just didn't understand how I charged. I was kind of hoping they would find someone cheaper - my fees must be too low! ;)

Only the taxing arm of government could manage to so screw up such a simple thing as this 'standard' refund. Thankfully, in most every case, the amount of imputed interest will be too small to make a difference if it is left off on the 2007 return. As it will be on almost all returns.

Since the refund amounts are standardized, I would assume the interest portion is also standardized and therefore as long as we have a copy of the previous year's return, we will be able to tell how much imputed interest they received. Unless these huge amounts are figured based on the very day the refund check was mailed Wouldn't that be fun?

Our office has not yet decided what to do. I have reservations about ATX because of the discontinuance of the community board 2 weeks before the end of tax season without warning, and because chat support was yanked right after that without warning. However, I don't want to be in a position where I am cutting off my nose to spite my face. We have only used ATX for two years. Prior to that we used TaxWise. I would probably return to TaxWise (since the reason we left was that they didn't seem responsive to customer feedback, and ATX no longer seems to be) but they were bought out by the same company. We used Drake for one year, and while I think it is a good program, we had a tough time adjusting to input screens rather than working with forms. We used Total Tax Office, so I don't think we are really seeing a price increase this year. I think we will look around at least until the end of June... :rolleyes:

Even mailing a check is not foolproof. I mailed my check with my return a few years ago, and about a month later got a letter telling me that I owed the taxes. I checked to see if the check had cleared, it had not, so I called and told the agent that the check was with the return when mailed. Somehow or other, they managed to find the check but not until I called and told them to look for it. That was probably my fault too. <_<

Only one more to go here...it is half done and waiting on more info from client.....As soon as he calls, I will finish up and (aside from the client vacationing in Florida with extension filed) I am done.....Now I can get back to less stressful things like teaching my 16-year old daughter to drive!

Could be worse - my son already knows how to drive - just ask him! He will be sixteen next month, has never been behind the wheel of a stick shift, but is sure he could drive one if I would just buy one for him!

My favorite LLC this year was the one where they swore they were "incorporated," maybe an S corporation. When I asked for the paperwork where they incorporated, all they had were the LLC papers and a letter from the IRS directing them to file a 1065. OK, they are actually a partnership, right? Well, that would be fine except for one thing - there is only one member. I love people being able to set this stuff up on the internet all by themselves!

Sometimes the problem is as simple as a trade name on the first line with a social security number resulting in a mismatch. I try to find out whether I am dealing with a social security number or and EIN but it isn't always easy.

This is great! I think once I learn to use it, I will like this message board even better than the new and improved one we no longer have! I hope ATX didn't spend a whole lot upgrading a board they were just using to jerk us around with! THanks, ERC, for setting this one up! :rolleyes:

Good Point!