mcb39

Agree with Mr Pencil.............

John, I love the sign on your porch post.

I have toys for the kids to play with too, but they would rather play with MY toys. I also have treats, but today chocolate was a mistake as I was wiping it up after they left. I have no issues with phones. If they need to take the call, they will ask me first if it is OK, just as I ask them if it is someone that I really need to talk to.

I left and came back in. All is as usual. (Goblins on Valentines Day) What is this world coming to?

Parents.......if you are going to bring your two adorable toddlers into my office and home; please think about it first. I love children too, but this is business and I cannot discuss your taxes and watch your children touching all of my equipment at the same time. Not to mention turning summersaults in my good chairs. I am happy that you send me their pictures at Christmastime. I do not need to meet them in person.

Somehow, my forum got marked as read. How do I get it unmarked? I don't have any of the little dots and stars to the left of the threads. Actually, forum was acting a little strange when I was on it earlier. Was it just me?

Mine is a HP1200.....just keeps on printing. I just printed off three pages of business cards....last toner change 03-18-12

I felt that the test was just as much about how willing and able you were to do research as it was about how much you knew. The preparation stress was max as I had no idea what to expect. I had to get on the road at 4:00 AM for a four hour drive to a 9:00 AM appointment. Factor in the cost of the trip and the cost of the test and you know that you deserve to keep the certificate on the wall. Also, the ethics questions definitely had to involve study as there was no ability to look up those answers. Add to all of this the fact that everyone did NOT pass the test. Yes, preparers should be tested and licensed.

Very Stressful!!!! I could handle it if they wouldn't waste my time calling to see if their taxes are done yet. That really freaks me out! They are definitely coming in faster than they are going out. The past two weeks have seemed like two months.

My Gateway has the on button on top also. My husband built a stand to set the PC on and raise it up under the desk. My cat doesn't sneak in there. This stand also serves to keep machine up off the floor and deters the fan from sucking in dust. My cat usually sits on my desk on top of whatever paper I am trying to work on at any given time.

No matter what. I am not removing my RTRP certificate from the wall. I earned it. I will keep it, worthless or not.

I started my career as a stay at home Mom while my husband worked three jobs. (Pencil and carbon paper then). I am just so furious today....just had my first case of identity theft for the year.

Found that out the hard way. Thanks for posting this info.

My message was NTLDR is missing. And, no, it would not boot into safe mode because there was a corrupt boot file. Somehow, my guy got into the setup and changed the order of drive booting from A to D so that he could boot into the restore disk. From then on it was just a matter of installing the full system backup that I had. Jack did tell me to get rid of it because it would no longer be supported after April 14. However, at the time, we did not know that Microsoft was going to announce that they are going to continue to support Security updates through July of 2015. I wasn't planning on using the computer on the internet, but as I explained before and as Rita states, there is a lot of old stuff on there that can still be used and which is not compatible with Win 7 or beyond. It has not been my intent to prepare tax returns on that machine since 2011. I plan on keeping that old XP machine alive and well as long as I can because many of those old programs will not work with Win 7 64 bit. XP is 32 bit. An odd thing is that my Grandson, who has my old XP laptop, which was in perfect condition, cannot boot either. Am wondering if MS might have sent out a bad file in the last update. I beg to differ with Pacun, but it CAN BE resurrected; just a question of why and how. If I find a solution, Rita, I will send you a PM.

I always round the numbers myself when entering the data. There is a choice under Preferences as to whether to print zeros or not.

No, that exception only applies to IRA and Sep plans; never to 401K withdrawals. Just last week, we had a lengthy discussion of this subject.

The thing that never makes sense to me is backing up to your harddrive. If your drive fails, you cannot access the original or the backup files. Only an external backup will allow you to do that.

Several weeks ago, my 2002 XP machine refused to boot. That is no longer my main computer but it has a lot of information on it and several useful programs that I still use. In fact, it has every program and files for ATX/Saber on it back through 1999. I was told everything from failed hard drive to dead battery to bad files. Due to some extremely sad circumstances and other issues, my IT friend couldn't get to me until last night. My greatest pain was not being able to access my labels and business cards on Print Shop 5. I had them all saved on a jump drive, but that version of Print Shop was not compatible with Win 7 and the new Print Shop Program that I purchased was not compatible with those old files. What to do? He finally got to me last night. He manually booted into startup. He then changed the order of the boot up drives so that it would boot to the CD. He inserted his disk for the backup/restore program we use and was able to restore the entire system intact from a recent external HD backup that I had made. I look across the room at that lit-up monitor and just smile. Even if the hard drive had failed, he could have done the same thing because I had a good current backup in the safe. As it was, it turned out to be a corrupt boot file. Please, please always remember to back up your files. On the computers I use every day, I have alternating drives for complete system backups and , as I have stated often enough, I export each and every file to a jump drive that lives in my machine all day. Every time I make a major change to a return, I do another export. In all of my years, I have never had this happen, but I had a good teacher and I was a good student. You will never know the pain until it happens to you; nor experience the joy of seeing your system come back to life. The program that we use is a simple little free program called EaseUS ToDo Backup and is installed and updated on every one of my machines. This is a happy day.

I have never trusted the backup on this or any other program. I do my own system backups periodically and at the same time export every return to a jump drive as I am working on it. I am going to start another thread to explain when and why this is so important.

Same here, though my Client letter explains where they can go to check on status of both Federal and State refunds. Saves me a lot of time as they used to call and foolish me would drop what I was doing and go check it for them. Now, I just tell them to read the directions in their letter.

Several years ago, I had a single male who did just that. No withholding whatsoever. I didn't know him that well then, but having to impart the bad news was one of the worst tasks I ever had as a tax professional. I remember having to talk to the plan administrator (who, of course) had explained all of the tax repercussions very clearly. I truly feared for the young man. He was in so much despair and shock. He had no money, but he did have a job. He made payments to the IRS for a number of years. I can happily report that he is now married, much more mature and knowledgeable and one of my most faithful and supportive clients.

When I used pencil and carbon paper, I was lucky to do 12 to 15 returns a year. I can remember running all over the world (so to speak) looking for a 2106 form when my son started working and had employee business expenses. The greatest leap of progress for me was the purchase of a copy machine. From then on, the sky was the limit.

Today must have been haunted. I had clients coming and going all day; with and without appointments. A Tues apt showed up today, a 3:30 appt showed up at 2:30; because she got out of work early. My 9:00 showed up at 11:00. In the meantime I had a client show up who never makes an appt and I have usually never let him past the front door. However, with the new office, he walked right in and interrupted my conversation with the client who did have an appt and was on time. When the walk-in left, I had to light candles to remove the aroma from the room. Dear Above: I am going to have a very quiet nervous breakdown tonight and you may or may not ever see me again. Thank you for your inattention.

I have a bottle of White Merlot Cranberry Twist. Can we get together?

Try deleting all that education stuff. Create a copy of the return and see if it will work on that. It sounds as though you have some info already entered that you don't want to delete and start over.