rfassett

The form is not required unless there are qualifying children. The due diligence form (yes I am that tired that I can not recall the form number at the moment) is required anytime Eic is on the return. Is the Eic being allowed on page 2 of the 1040? If so, you are in good shape.

Those 50 are on top of the 45 corp extensions I did for the corporate deadline. You, Taxed, just don't understand my business. Mine is a full year service. We have over 100 monthly and quarterly financials and 150 quarterly payroll and sales reports. So working all summer is just part of the job. Tax season is just a blip in our yearly schedule. Managing the workload, as JohnH suggests, is paramount.

Did the percentage of use fall below 50% this year from a higher than 50% use in the prior year? If so, the system is recapturing the excess depreciation taken in the prior years.

Last count I have 50 committed to be finished but not yet started, another 20 in house to be extended, and anticipate another 30 over the next two weeks that will be extended. 112 hours per week for the past three weeks has helped me catch up. I can tell where I am at by certain clients. I always assign pins based on the date and the number of that return for the day. I have a client that always gets his stuff ready while he is watching the Daytona 500. I worked on his return this year the morning after the afternoon I worked on it last year. I am pretty well caught up. So it is coast to the finish line here.

During tax season we are open 8 - 6 Monday through Friday and 8 - noon on Saturday. Non tax season the hours are 8 - 4:30 Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday and 8 - noon on Wednesday. Those are not the hours I work, just the hours the doors and phones are on and the staff works.

On the left coast as well! Wait - maybe its the right coast! Oh well, it is a lovely dawn across America today! I chose to close the doors on Good Friday years ago when I decided to run the business instead of letting it run me. Before I started my own practice more years ago than I care to admit, I quit a very good job at a prestigous firm in Central Texas because management insisted everyone show up for work on Easter Sunday. I tendered my resignation on April 16th and have not looked back!

"Our office is closed today for Good Friday. Have a joyous Easter." Anybody else close down today? My office is only open for four hours this weekend - 8 to noon tomorrow. Happy Easter !!!

I showed a series of broker statements to my wife yesterday and said this is what will drive us in this industry to drink (as if we needed something else). For five different accounts for the same broker, I had a statement that said the figures are not final. I thought cool, at least they are telling us something else is coming. The next statement said the figures are final. I thought cool, I will use these numbers. Then I open up the next statement and it says revised final figures. I am almost afraid to prepare the return before we get the corrected revised final figures. Are you kidding me?

Rich asked in another thread if there was a way to avoid entering every stock transaction onto the 8949. I did not want to pirate that thread, but it made me wonder, how many transactions do you enter before you opt for one of the non-data entry methods? I ask because it seems every return I pick up at this point of the season has stock transactions. I finished one earlier today that had about 70 entries but I don't think I could have automated it in a manner that made sense. They were coming from 5 different Edward Jones accounts the statements of which are very easy to data entry from by the way.

That is exactly the way it works. And I was led to believe at one point that the inequity was more a function of SSA's inability or undesire to do adjustments for "out of current year's" issues. Anyway, self employment tax is not a bad thing. It builds up your credits for disability benefits (which anyone of us could need at any given time if life serves up some lemonade) and credits for future retirement benefits (future viability of the system not withstanding).

FAM is an up charge item but comes included in some of the package deals. I get it included in my "most everything they offer" package. I do not have time to look but I am certain the stand alone price is on ATX's website. I liked FAM from the outset. Much, much improved over last year. There is a fixed assets tab with the 4562 in the tax software that integrates with FAM. So what you enter in the tax software automatically gets added to FAM and vice versa. BIG plus this year.

The appointment is one-sided. That is the client's appointed time to drop off their info, no commit is made on our end as to when the return will be worked on. But that said, our first scheduled drop offs begin the first week in February. Been doing it this way for 15 years and the system has weathered all storms. It works.

What makes it easier for us to tell folks that their return will be extended is that we pre-schedule everyone in late December. This does wonders for spreading out the workflow. And our last scheduled drop off was last Friday. So other than the 107 returns we had in house Friday evening, there is no pressure. I feel comfortable that the 107 will be done by April 7th.

My cutoff was this past Friday and I have enough in house to keep me busy busy through April 11th. On the 12th and 13 th we will do extensions and maybe take the 14th off and do a half day on the 15th.

and turn around and yell at my rear-end to try to keep up. It is really dragging today!

Yep - where need meets greed. I am dealing with an older couple now that responded to one of those phone / mail soliciations claiming a lottery winning. My client was out $190,000 before it came to my attention and we put the brakes to it. These clients are educated, have an adult son with brain cancer and saw the this as an answer to prayer. The $190,000 was their life savings and they are now relegated to living off social security for the remainder of their lives with no contigency funds. The $190,000 was sent over an 18 month period.

Ok, what did I miss? Why is the 16th the last day ? Not that it matters. The 15th is the last day in my office even if the government does like last year and extends it for no good reason.

Sleep late - most likely until about 6:30 in the morning. And then I am going looking at bicycles. And then take a nap. And follow that up with another nap. These 16 hour seven days a week (112 hours per week) are getting old fast. We will be done with prep work on the 12th and work on extensions until noon on the 15th. After the 16th, we will be back crunching out quarterly payroll reports. We do not get back on tax returns until late May.

There is a tab on the efile worksheet. You will need to scroll over to see it.

OK - was the "weird, but good" directed to me or our similiar experiences. I gotta know cause this may be the second time today I was called weird - but the first one did not have the word good with it. On the eve of Spring - I feel conflicted.

I filter by typing the first few letters of the name or use the scroll bar. All of those in the return manager are either done, extended, or being worked on. I do not roll over returns until I am ready to work on them. If I want to know how many I have left to do, i can look at the sign in list which includes date of arrival, date of completion, and date of release. OR, I could just get out of my seat and go to the work in process room and see the huge pile of stuff yet to do. At last count this morning, there were 117 returns sitting in house yet to be started.

I can't answer that. I have never used that feature.

Hey back at you Joan. I installed 11 when it hit the web and it seems to have stabilized the program some more. I had been experiencing issues with fixed assets before 11 but those seem to have resolved. I am no longer holding my breath when I click on or work within that tab. As to the program over all, I opened, worked on, e-filed, or extended via efile just under 100 corporate returns over a 3 day period at 16 hours per day. And virtually all of those had fixed assets and at least two states. I would be lying if I said I had no crashes. But I can count on one hand the number and I attribute those to my older memory depleted workstation and my lack of attention to when it needed a re-boot. I use that three day period as my water mark when I say I believe ATX is back. I would like the newly rolled over returns to build and open faster, but that issue will not be a deal breaker for me. But yes, in my opinion 11 is better than 10. Can I say the program is faster? I would have to say yes. And printing is better and faster.

I thought the same thing and just checked and yep, I am already running 11.

There was an information release recently that said you may have to import the fixed assets from where they are. Apparently your program is just looking in the wrong place. I had to do I once and it was a God send because the return had over 100 assets.