Julie

SBBT rejected me...I don't know why. I only do about 10 bank products a year (~5 RALS). No losses that I know of, but HSBC won't give me a copy of the loss report.

I'm trying a couple others...a long time ago, I was with River City, but switched when they started $100 up front to providers doing fewer than...I think it was 100 RALS.

If she doesn't have a 1099 or W2, you need to ask why, and what her income is. If she's self-employed, she ought to have some expenses. Aside from the dependency questions, I see three likely scenarios:

1. She worked for wages, and does not know what a W2 is, or that she should have it.

2. She worked as a subcontractor, and was taken advantage of because of her ignorance. She doesn't know about 1099s.

3. She's a fraud, and is making it all up.

I think #1 is actually the most likely scenario. After all, she's only 17. Is this her first job?

I've never used any encryption feature in pdfactory, but I've used something called Cryptainer.

Does PDF factory actually encrypt anything or does it just generate a PDF? If it does encrypt, how does the recipient unencrypt the email?

Don't worry. It's because you can check more than one box when you vote.

Just voted and was looking at the results, Total 16 votes but when I added up the count in brackets it totaled 18. I'm confused and this is early in the tax season.

I've complained a number of times about errors on California returns....every now and then one won't efile because the numbers don't add up to the total. Yes, it's a one-dollar rounding error. Eight years, and still not fixed. If I override the total, it works fine.

If you fax it in, you have to wait about three days.

No, you can't get copies of the original notices, but you can get an account transcript, which is a chronological list of assessments and payments, return transcripts, and wage and income statements (w2-1099).

I gather you're working for the wife....you can get most of the joint info with a POA just for her. I have a case of a divorced couple where my POA is only for the husband, but I have generally been able to get what I need. But I don't need her W2s, and if you need his, you'll need him to sign it.

I haven't yet figured out how to submit a POA online. Do you have to get the client to fill in a PIN?

Thanks, KC, Tom & Joan! I followed KC's advice and located it on their website. All set up now. Thanks again!

Wonder how this applies to annualized estimates? I only have a couple people who have to pay estimates, so I'm not too worried. But one of them has been paying annualized, due to the problems in the salmon industry. Should be interesting.

I'm still waiting for my disk. The installation code is right there on myatx.com, and I copied it to a safe place, since I get locked out every couple of times I access it. But so far, no disk. I know they're sending my stuff, because I got the "marketing kit."

Depends on the practice.

Low-income clients are generally getting refunds, and they come in as soon as they have their W2 forms, beginning in Mid-January. So I'm busy by the third week of January. Higher-income clients don't come in for another month, so practices catering to them will have a later start date.

Out of curiosity -

When do all of you guys get "incredibly" busy? I know tax seasons officially starts soon, but the busy-ness doesn't start until some time after. I'm trying to get everyone's input on this, because I do make some outbound calls to tax professionals and I'm curious as to when I should stop calling?

I've never used interview mode.I only look at it on installation day, when I search my software for new features. One of the things I like about ATX is what used to be called the "bunny hop," where you can track a number from the 1040 all the way back to its source. Very useful when the number on the 1040 is not what you expected it to be.

I like the freedom to modify that ATX provides.....I can easily correct the nagging rounding problem that sometimes blocks California returns and that ATX has never been able to fix. I can override anything right up to the 1040...that's also useful when working on draft returns and the like, although I generally get rid of overrides (other than the Calif. error) before trying to file the return.

On the other hand, I can remember from my TPS days how fast you can input a return using worksheets. (HRB used a sort of guided, almost-interview mode...you selected the forms and F10 would flip you through the necessary worksheets in the right order). I have never been as fast with ATX as I was with TPS.

The problem with combining these concepts may be a structural one. Most tax software programs use a database system, where ATX uses spreadsheets. I think that a database system which can use auxiliary spreadsheets, would be more efficient than either alone.

Happy New Birthday's Year?

:bday:

After contemplating it all year, I finally renewed with ATX. Was it a mistake?

Hi! :D

I can understand the need for high-security passwords for access to confidential tax information. I have an idea for that which might help (although they no longer listen to my ideas like they used to).

But I've been locked out of the system several times in the last year when all I wanted to do was access a Knowledge Base item or some other non-secure bit of information. This always results in a call or email to tech support, followed by re-inputting the entire 20-digit install code. Again. This stuff should use a simple password, if any is needed at all. Save the high-security passwords for the high-security info.

For that, here's my idea: Access should be possible only through the ATX program, which can add another 50 digits to your normal, easy-to-remember password and verify that it's registered to you at the same time. If access is needed from a remote location (laptop), they might create an access program that you can get on your install disk, for just that purpose. Either way, a data thief would have to have access to your computer, in addition to knowing your own set of personal passwords. Each member of your staff could then have a relatively easy password for the info that they're supposed to have access to.

I got these instructions for developing a password long ago, and have only started using them recently, as companies are requiring me to change passwords more often: Start with a quote you like, or a bit of poetry. Use only the first letter of each word. Capitalize a few letters, and change a couple of them to numbers. The poetry or quote is then the memory-jogger for the password.

Mine is the same as Tom's. $165 a year, but the limits are much lower than what some others here have mentioned....I think 10000/25000. That's a tenth what some others cover, and maybe too low for this day and age.

I get mine through CNA for $165 per year. Got it through a broker out of SoCal called Dimarik (sp?). They were advertised at a California Society of EA's publication. Very happy with them. Every year they send me an invoice in Oct, Nov, and the one I pay in Dec.

I have a small practice also. Just me and the missus and the two children (receptionists).

Tom

Lodi, CA

As a former proofreader and one-time spelling bee champion, I too am embarrassed by a score of 23, although, as mentioned above, at least one was an acceptable alternate spelling.

I guess it's been too long since it really mattered. Either that, or I've been reading too much Internet and not enough books.

:blush: Awww....thanks, guys! :)

Since pdfactory will "print" to pdf from any program, I use the built-in scanner for my all-in-one printer, and "print" from its native format (which is mostly useless) to the pdf.

I will stick with my copier. I can scan 40 pages into a pdf file in 1.2 minutes. I timed it.

It will do 40 pages in one file, or 40 individual pages in 40 files, and will number the file names accordingly.

Check your copier. If it has network capability, it probably will do this as well.

I got them all, and I'll be 49 tomorrow. Howdy Doody I only know from my husband singing it (and some picture books I had when I was very small), and I became acquainted with Dobie Gillis only when Channel 58 started up with all day reruns of Dobie Gillis, Mr. Ed and Car 54.

I got all 20, and I am 'only' 48. Of course Superman I saw in reruns, Pepsodent I guessed, I've never seen Dobie Gillis but anyone who knows popular culture should know Maynard G. Krebs, & I know music pretty well (a least anything recorded before I turned 40 and that isn't rap). My laundry day song is "ITS.... laundry dooty time, Its laundry dooty time, lets get out the grime, its laundry dooty time!"

Lets all sing along!

I can appreciate this, having had to give our elderly cat Smokey medication on a regular basis for the last couple of years. He was born feral, and has lived with us for most of his 17 years. (We were never able to make a house cat of him, though.) Liquid meds are easier to give than pills, but if you have two people, you can do the pills. The "holder" (me) cradles him on one arm, holding both back feet firmly in one hand, and both front feet firmly in the other. The "piller" pries the mouth open, drops in the pill (while the holder resists the struggle!), closes the mouth and strokes the throat. When the tongue pops out for a moment, it's done. Do this too many times, and your cat will disappear for a day or two, though.

At the moment we're missing our cat Baby, who found a way to slip out of the house last week and hasn't been seen since. He's 13, and we've had him since he was a tiny kitten.

Mine is the same as Randall's. No luck there, I guess.

Thought: since I still have my old hard drive (not reformatted yet) can I restore the returns somehow from the program folder if the backup is corrupted?

I think that Mel's answer is the correct one.

Mel: Does this mean I have to just keep digging till I find a final 2004 disk? I'm not sure whether I have one. Do you know the final version number, so I can at least check that? Can I still get updates on line?

BTW...before the reinstall, I had all years of ATX running on my XP computer, dating back to 1997. All worked fine.

And although I'm sure I made pdfs, I'm not at all sure I can find the disk I burned them to.

My guess is that she updated her 2004 program on the old computer over the internet. Then you reinstalled using a not so final 2004 CD, so the version number is less than what saved the return. But this is a guess.

As I said earlier, I put in a new hard drive this summer. I restored my '06 and '07 returns at that time. Now I need to restore a 2004 return (for reference), but the program insists that it can't restore any of the files because they were made in a different version of ATX. Any suggestions?

Thanks for solving my problem, too. I'd forgotten that issue after putting in a new hard drive this summer.

Anyway, you solve the problem in the preparer manager tab. Under "e-file" you can set your beginning and ending DCN. You can probably leave the "ending" one alone, but set the beginning higher than your last successful file. Then retransmit.

First some background: My computer crashed a couple of months ago. I was able to back up my hard drive onto another computer before reformatting but now for some reason I can't get the other computer to power up either.

Now my problem: I needed to efile the only return I had on extension today. I transmitted the efile and its status now shows duplicated. I never thought about it before I transmitted the return but I assume this is because my DCN counter started over at 1 since I had to do a fresh install of my software. What action does the duplicated status require? I have no idea what my DCN counter was up to before the crash. Is there any way I can find that out, or is there some other way around this?

Thanks in advance for your help!