FreedomTaxed

And due to the "DC vs Heller" and "McDonald vs Chicago" decisions at the SCOTUS, one should just be able to walk into any court and get this sort of crap instantly overturned. No level of government in these united states (federal, state, county or municipal) has the power to deny you your right to keep and bear arms. It's not even debatable at this point; it's firmly settled law. What NJ did to that man was unconstitutional.

https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/26/408 Check out 26-408(3) "Rollover contribution".

It happens on occasion. Since we created a "simple" tax filing category for clients (1040, Sch.A, 1 or 2 W-2 forms, one state, one school district, one city) that's half the price of the regular charge, the only services out there who can compete on our price are individuals running a home-based tax-prep business.

http://www.irs.gov/Individuals/The-Mortgage-Forgiveness-Debt-Relief-Act-and-Debt-Cancellation- "The Mortgage Debt Relief Act of 2007 generally allows taxpayers to exclude income from the discharge of debt on their principal residence. Debt reduced through mortgage restructuring, as well as mortgage debt forgiven in connection with a foreclosure, qualifies for the relief. This provision applies to debt forgiven in calendar years 2007 through 2014. Up to $2 million of forgiven debt is eligible for this exclusion ($1 million if married filing separately). The exclusion does not apply if the discharge is due to services performed for the lender or any other reason not directly related to a decline in the home’s value or the taxpayer’s financial condition."

Here's a good quote that should sum it up: "Section 61 of the Internal Revenue Code requires a taxpayer to include in gross income all income from whatever source derived. Taxation of the income from jointly-held property is determined in accordance with state law for deciding who is entitled to the income from the property. If each spouse has an equal right to the income from the property, the usual rule is that one-half of the income from the property is properly taxable to each spouse. Thus, each spouse is obligated to include in his or her gross income any amount which he or she received, either actually or constructively, as income from mutual funds and interest on bank deposits." Source: http://www.lifemanagement.com/fsa6.2.881/ So if the couple had equal rights to the joint financial asset, the only legal income split from the joint financial asset is one-half.

When she files MFS (since I assume they live in the same household while married) she will have to enter his name and SSN in her 1040 anyway. Does he realize this?

We don't charge extra since there's no significant extra work in filing late. Surely there's nothing extra in filing from Apr 15 to Oct 15, other than calling our extended clients to remind them to come in before the extension expires. We efile it like before. And after that, it becomes a "prior year" filing, which we always paper file. The paper filing takes a little more time, but it's folded into our base price anyway... we paper file for no extra charge, for example when your federal efile gets rejected and we have no other option to fix it. Our pricing structure has driven a few preparer employees a bit batty. Naturally these are the prima donna types, and largely they get ejected from our seats soon enough since they become unmanageable. But there's a strong association between the PDs and outrage that we're "leaving money on the table". I need to keep sifting through employees until we find a few stable ones that will obey our rules and not prey upon our clients. Our prices are designed to grab market share, not scrape the last bit of financial flesh off each client. (I could write an entire thread about the prima donna problem.)

Got two of those just this morning. Most everyone who calls or visits about those, are elderly. They just don't understand, and they suspect that the Ohio request is itself an attempt to defraud them.

Off the cuff, that's her way of telling you to lie to get her the money. If she won't accept that you're going to file it your way (i.e. the legal way) then send her to H&R Block et al.

http://www.ssa.gov/survivorplan/ifyou5.htm That seems to imply, "yes", depending on the age of the surviving spouse.

In 2 years and 3 tax seasons I've never seen a problem e-filing a deceased client.

We have 500 appointments, and 200 fulfilled into ATX so far. One preparer gets the rare "retry" error for some reason. The retry error is very random across all our machines; I can't see a pattern to it at all. We reboot all of our PCs each day, except for manager, receptionist and scanner. Our "Windows Server 2012 Essentials" machine requires no reboot. About my only complaint about ATX 2014 is that our use of custom fields isn't absolutely reliable; one guy can change a field, and it doesn't show up reliably for the other PCs. Once we reboot, that's all fixed, kinda.

Rob, if you don't have the skills for it, pay some techie to install the drive in your successor computer, and then back it up. Thumbdrives are pervasive, reliable and cheap now, so buy a thumbdrive for each ATX year (2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014) and label them; have the techie help you determine how big each year's database is, to guide you for buying the right size of thumbdrive. Once the drive is up and running, have the techie copy the ATX database for each year to its respective thumbdrive. Mark each for the date of the backup and put the thumbdrives in a safe place. Take the computer home from the techie shop and call up ATX tech support to have you reconnect to each year's data.

Off the cuff, if Windows recognizes the printer, ATX should. Are you having any problems with Windows recognizing the printer? Can you print a test page from the printer control in "Devices and Printers"? Can other applications like Open Office print to the device just fine?

We're quite competitive. A client today said she sent her daughter to us, but her daughter misunderstood and ended up going to the tax service that rhymes with "surety" that just happened to be on the same road, and was subsequently slapped with over $300 in fees to get her $430 refund. Ouch. We charge about $150, but for simple filings (likely her daughter qualified) it's $75 or $50 (depending on "low income" status). The client said her daughter will simply have to learn the lesson.

Having worked in the US Census, I can understand how such a large organization can prefer to re-hire such people since the barriers to hiring new people are so large. The people already in your HR database are tempting since a lot of tests have already been passed for them. You don't have to fingerprint 'em again. You don't have to background-check 'em again. You don't have to piss-test 'em again. They're already ready to just step through your office door... despite previous disciplinary problems.

We always print one-sided. We're also stuck on the tail end of some fairly unscrupulous and stupid lease and maintenance contracts for a few photocopier/printer/scanner units. I'll be fixing that crap this year, and it's looking rather probable that we'll ditch the standup units in favor of some desktop printers, like the Brother HL-5450DN ($160, with a per-page cost of about 0.4 cents over the life of the printer).

We customized the Billing form for how we bill. We have a combination of type-of-client billing, with by-form billing. We make price additions to a base, largely due to certain forms, and then subtract due to any discounts that apply.

The 14.4 update was painless, but I still had to do it one workstation at a time. The blog entry for the update implied that our server installation needed to be updated, too, but after calling tech support I was assured that that isn't the case. My server component came right off the CD in December and has been running fine ever since.

We got a refund transfer pumped through in 5 days. The client was very pleased. This is what the job is halfway about.

If the IRS would actually do the job that the PTIN system implies, this wouldn't be much of a problem.

We never combine years when paper-filing. We put each in their own envelopes, and we space out the mailings by 1-2 weeks, as told to the client. This lets the IRS properly enter each filed year into their systems in order.

"Corn Huskers Lotion" here. Sadly the edges of my fingers and knuckles get so dry that they crack and bleed during tax season. CHL is pretty good at controlling that.

We made a mistake today on it. One of our new preparers didn't click some checkbox and line 61 didn't populate. Our reviewer also missed it, so she e-filed it. Less than 30 minutes later we noticed the mistake, but the fed came back Accepted. Darn drat damn. We made an amendment. How much did we delay our client's federal refund?

Our cover sheet per Sara's solution is actually a ledger-sized print (11x17) which is printed on both sides, and then folded in half to make a folder. We used slightly thicker paper than 20# bond. The outside of this cover is all the stuff the client fills out; largely it's based on the IRS Form 13614-C, "Intake/Interview & Quality Review Sheet". We dupe'd the data and adjusted it for our additions and terms&conditions. On the inside of the cover, is all the internal crap that we keep track of, and which we don't want the client to see or be bothered with. So the client fills out the cover's front and back, and hands it back to us when we start preparing.