catax

I am writing my first Penalty Appeal letter. I am looking for someone that has had experience with this. The penalties I am trying to get waived are Delinquency Penalty and the Failure to Pay penalty for a 2005 Tax Return. Facts and Circumstances: Taxpayer deceased March 20, 2006. I took until 9/5/06 for son to be appointed administrator of the estate by the courts. The taxpayers son then filled form 56 with the IRS which did not receive a rsponse til October 16th. There were several foreign accounts that took time to find and be authorized to gain access to the data. All paperwork was finally put together to file a return in the middle of December. Client was not able to get an appointment with a tax professional until early January. Everyone was on vacation. Once a taxprofessional was located (myself) there were a few more items needed to prepare the return accurately. Once those were located the return was filed. The date it was received by the IRS (it was mailed) was Februrary 23rd it included full payment. Question 1: Do you think we have a case worth appealing? Question 2: How do you suggest that I go about researching tax law to back up my position? I currently do not have a subscription to any research program. Any feedback would be appreciated. Thanks, Nena

Regarding evaluating Drake software. I have looked at it seriously over the last month, including attending a 4 hour presentation. Mostly due to my emotions a $450 price increase for ATX and the dropping of the bulletin board. I figured if I was spending that much more money maybe there was a better product available for the price. Things I liked: Value offered a lot for the price. All my interfaces with staff were professional There was a lot of control regarding the way you could print returns, reports, labels Seemed to be a powerful program overall I liked all the letters offered in the program (I consistantly have problems with letter with ATX) Seemed to handle what I input correctly Things I disliked (or would take some getting used to: Screen entry - it is counter intuitive for me and would represent a significant learning curve - maybe not for someone else Seems still a little DOS like with all kinds of short cut commands Depreciation entry - Had to pick year, type of depreciation, etc., for Fed and State alot of entries here (more than ATX) Seems as if it could be streamlined alot. Unlike ATX you can't get Federal or State instructions by line. You can get RIA by line and you can get to some of the publications (but not to the specific area you are working on) I use this feature often when working on something out of the ordinary (in ATX) Things I was hoping Drake would do that ATX does not (Drake doesn't do them either) CA Renters credit diagnostics. "This client may qualify for the renters credit." or "Hey you didn't check a box did you mean to miss checking it" Manually entering CA depreciation and other differences throughout the program Better diagnostics in regard to tax preparation, "Hey tax preparer did you mean to not check this or that" I also looked at Pro Series but not as indepth. It definately has better diagnostics then both ATX and Drake. It does do the things that I was hoping Drake would do but at yet an even greater price. And you can't network and on and on without paying even more. If Drake had handled the items on my wish list better and dealt with Depreciation a little more smoothly I would have probably considered making the switch and dealing with the learning curve. But since at this time it didn't seem to be necessarily a better program for my practice. I do not feel that the learning curve is worth it for me at this time. This doesn't mean it may not work for you and your practice you may want to try to mess with the things in the demo that I mentioned above it may work better for your specific state. They did mention to me that they are really starting to grow in CA maybe they with improve some things in the future. Hope all my thoughts help someone. Nena Carey, EA

Regarding evaluating Drake software. I have looked at it seriously over the last month. Mostly due to my emotions a $450 price increase for ATX and the dropping of the bulletin board. I figured if I was spending that much more money maybe there was a better product available for the price. Things I liked: Value offered a lot for the price. All my interfaces with staff were professional

When the site went down right when I needed an opinion I was so mad. I have been an ATX user since 1999. I had hung in there with the company through the early years with the help of the community. More currently I would search the archives and save lots of time with items that were posted. I searched the internet for other bulletin boards and didn't find much. So I tried again today and found The Tax Book site and found this community board listed there. Since the software is going to cost me $400 more this year than last I have spent some time reviewing other tax software programs. I can't find anything better for the price so far. I have looked at Drake, Pro Series Basic, and Pro Series, and others. Plus I do not really want to learn a new software program at this point. I am glad that I found this board today. I have hoovered in the background on the other board for years, posting occasionally. I wish I found you all when I looked before I have felt alone without the community for the last 2 months. catax (formerly CAEA)