Abby Normal

Wall St bankers are working for big corporations and they tell local brokers what to sell us. We're the least of their concerns.

In Return Manager, under the Reports menu, you can export a client list and open in excel.

All of these methods are just security theater and can be hacked. The one I think is best is the authenticator apps. I have google authenticator on my phone and use it for google and 2 other sites. But I'm sure it can be hacked too. There's a movement to get away from passwords and go to authenticator devices that you plug into a usb port. Just don't lose your device! https://www.pcmag.com/commentary/364693/why-passwords-might-finally-go-away

Does anyone know if ATX keeps a copy of our efiled returns on their servers? I would hope they delete them after passing them on to the IRS or state, but I wouldn't be surprised if they kept them. And are efiles encrypted?

Why don't we have a long Mother's Day weekend and reconnoiter on Monday.

This is key. We never really own software, we're just licensed to use it, and we agree to the TOS without ever reading it.

I'm only basically familiar with DNS but I did install the Cloudflare android app and I may try updating my home modem with the Cloudflare DNS addresses.

I know they can't pursue collection on the 8965 tax for not having health insurance, because the IRS bills that separately and that's what the ACA law says. But if you got too much APTC and have to pay some back, I'm pretty sure they can pursue that.

More general articles about this ransomware spreading: https://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/news/matrixthemed-ransomware-megacortex-1/ https://siliconangle.com/2019/05/06/matrix-themed-megacortex-ransomware-rapidly-spreading-across-corporate-networks/

Nope.

Update 3:23PM: Reddit user Jluvs2dive reports that two employees at their firm received an email from a Wolters Kluwer address that includes a malicious link. The email was reportedly sent from a user named "Tammy" with a Wolters Kluwer email address. Could be totally unrelated... or not.

https://www.accountingtoday.com/news/the-wolters-kluwer-cch-outage-what-happened

We used to have spreadsheets but then realized the ATX Return Manager was essentially a spreadsheet so we've incorporated columns to handle most of our work-in-progress tracking. It needs refinement now that we have 4 preparers but it's adequate. For fiscal year due date tracking I just have a sticky note (StikyNot.exe) on one of my monitors. We could use some improvement on due date tracking.

ATX is poor at communicating. They tell me they make too many changes to communicate all of them. They already have a release notes page. Just have some low level person post as many updates as they can every day. I spend half of tax season discovering new features, sometimes by accident, and I wonder what else is there that I've missed.

"Wardriving" is not as easy as it was 10 or 20 years ago, because back then no one changed the modem or router logins, and modem/router manufacturers shipped them with logins of admin and blank password. The last router I bought for home came with a supposedly unique password. The best thing you can/should do is change both the login name and password on your modem and your router, and the passwords should be long and complex. While you can have bluetooth technology on your computer, I wouldn't recommend it because it's just another access point to your network, making you less secure. You use wifi tech to connect to a wireless network, which pretty much every device has these days.

When windows runs out of RAM it uses a file on the drive to act as memory. It works well as long as your drive is fast. And, windows is supposed to be smart about it by putting less important things on the drive. But it's always better if everything can stay in memory. How much better? Maybe not enough to matter.

If you don't want to go to 10, you can get 8.1 for 10 bucks. At least, that's what my IT guy charged me on new build recently. I've been on 8.1 for over 6 years with zero problems. Support for 8.1 ends 1/10/2023. https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/13853/windows-lifecycle-fact-sheet

If you only have 4GB of RAM, windows is using the Page File a lot. The Page (or Paging) File is space on your drive that Windows uses when it runs out of memory. Wi-fi is less secure and much slower than a wired network. I don't like combo modem/router devices because it's nice to be able to replace one or the other, but they work and if you're renting it, that doesn't matter.

I heard it was going to be clicking their tongue while moving their head slowly from side to side, followed by a sigh.

I put 16GB in my computer in 2012. Now, with just email and browser programs open, it's using 32% of that. Normally (when I'm working and not screwing around on this forum), it runs about 50%. So, if I had gone with 8GB it would not have been enough.

Seconded. Did this at work and at home. The home computer was almost unusable. Now it's runs well. Work computer wasn't usable for 20 minutes after a cold start and frequently bogged down for 20-30 seconds during the day. Now it's better than new even at 6-1/2 years old.

I don't like to do any returns before early February, unless they're really simple. We did one about 2/1 this year and right after we transmitted, they got a 1099 in the mail that they didn't realize they'd be getting and we had to amend. For businesses we'll do the federal and and make a list of state returns to be efiled later. Usually no reason to rush entity returns anyway. But if you're doing super low-end returns for folks desperate for their refunds, I can see how your business would suffer for not having states ready to go.

The individual mandate still exists BUT the penalty is set to zero for 2019, so there's no penalty for not having minimum coverage.

SSDs last as long if not longer than HDs these days and it's the single biggest speed improvement you can make in a computer. HDs were always the bottleneck in processing.