joanmcq

No days off. And I have a sick kitty too. Finish coffee, shower, and get ready for my first appointment. New client, though. I'm picking up a lot of new ones this year. Which is good because I need to pay my assistant!

I disagree. Expenses and points are amortized over the life of the loan. Expenses can't be amortized on a personal property and points are amortized over the life of the loan. He's right about any cash pulled (unless the cash was used to renovate/repair the rental).

Where have you been? Get the IRS bulletins by email. The IRS cannot process certain forms because of our illustrious Congress changing the tax laws in January, retroactive to 2012. Read the newspapers, get on a few tax related websites, take update classes and educate yourself. I can't believe someone holding themselves out as a tax professional would not know this. And I may be being harsh, but this type of question is why I am all for preparer regulating.

Yup same here. I always load it when I get it, roll over my return and enter what I can. This year couldn't work on it at all, but I did get to play in the program a bit. Every year it's a bit different, and I knew this year was going to be very different since I went to the CCH Small Firms conference and got a chance to take some classes in the new program and see what they were doing. They'd been working on it for two years. And it was running at the conference in October. That said, I had my first crash after 12.7.

I moved from my old laptop with XP to my desktop with win7 in 2009. One thing to do, which I found out the hard way, is to load your old ATX programs oldest to newest. All the old programs run in win7, but if you load backwards, as I did, older than 2008 won't load your data files. I was hoping to be able to wipe all the old programs off my XP machine to save hard drive space, but now I need to keep them. Btw, I loaded from my archive CDs. Other programs and data I migrated using a flash drive.

Thank you! I was using sec 179. Just checking. I haven't added assets in this new program besides this first return. Shows how far behind I am on my own return, lol.

Are you updating from within the program or shutting ATX down and downloading from the website?

I test drove Drake two years ago and found a major flaw in the CA calc with a 2555. I had already heard the CA module was weak and that confirmed it. I also read both Drake & Lacerte were allowing exiles when the 8667 wasn't filled out. ATX has been warning about the 8667 even before this year.

I had my first crash today. And the last update caused the returns not to show up in the rollover tab sometimes unless I close & reopen the program. But at least the program opens quickly!

I don't give estimates. And I work by appointment only, so I don't have a lot of these types of shoppers. The fee shoppers I get. One of my standard lines is "Until I know a bit more about your tax situation, I can't determine the range of fees I might charge".

Did you try changing the check number?

Oh yay! I just had to add depreciation to my tenant's return (and he gets EIC, at least for 2012 and owes me a LOT of back rent) and I want my moneh! I thought I'd have to tell him the return would be delayed for three or four weeks...

At least Drake sent an email.

I'm entering new assets for a client, and AMT depreciation for general equipment defaulted to 200DB. Is this a software glitch or did AMT depreciation change with the new bill?

This is one of the benefits of taking a decent tax update class each year! And also taking said class in January. They go over stuff like this.

It shows up automatically in the print list. No need to add it.

Someone posted on another board that Lacerte was the Caddilac of tax software. Nope, it's Profx. That software was doing stuff back in 2002, when I last used it, that Lacerte wasn't even dreaming of a few years later. It's pricey. But when I see what Proseries and Lacerte are charging PPR, if you can get Profx for similar, there's just no comparison.

I use my mailbox; it locks and is outside the gate, so my dogs aren't a problem. I love the client portal-docs are already scanned too!

If clients come from afar, I offer to mail the returns to them, or send them through my portal as PDFs. I do a lot of remote work; sometimes the clients only come in to pick up because they've already sent everything through the portal. And I don't have to deal with a lot of original docs either. Win/Win. Some clients are so remote, I've never seen them!

Also, shutting down the program clears out crap that's in your memory.

Ah, I just didn't see them when I was on my iPad last night. There's my headdesk!

I didn't even file my 'one w2 clients while they waited this year. They've been my test returns. I only did one that way anyhow in the past. I prefer to work at night too.

The manual is a PDF version. See I did read your signature line! I used Profx back when I worked for Grant Thornton, 1999-2002. It was an impressive program back then. Input screens can take getting used to; I remember on for S-corps I just never could remember where a particular input was, and spent a lot of time searching. After the moaning and gnashing of teeth settles down, I need to find out who my sales rep is and inquire about Profx PPR for one return that is beyond ATX. I did it last year, but was definitely not easy. It would have been un-doable in Drake, Proseries, or any other mid-priced software.

JB, thanks for a smile on a cold night! Not fun at all on your end (or Lila's for that matter) but it'll be a great story on April 16.

You do have to enable emoticons. But they seem to have disappeared. Damn, I've been getting a lot odd use out of head desk.