Catherine

For the OCD/CDO among us, who want their teeth set on edge with slightly hysterical laughter: 23 photos

A tax pro who is also a lawyer and who specializes in bankruptcy and OIC's was asked how he dealt with clients who come back every 7-8 years with the same bleeping problem. He said the trick is to stop thinking of them as "problem clients" and instead think of them as "walking annuities" - which seems a little cold-blooded, but also both funny and accurate.

Sorry, @Gail in Virginia, I didn't mean to throw a wrench in your scheduling.

"Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman" is one of the best books I have *ever* read. His tale of the missing/hidden fraternity door had me crying, I was laughing so hard. And it was really interesting to read about Los Alamos from before my husband's family lived there (they moved out there post-WW2).

In case y'all didn't think I was weird enough, and have been wondering what sort of things I do in my spare time...

I made a mistake. I listened to a Vi Hart YouTube video on the decimal .9999.... = 1 issue (which was fun). But then she mentioned split octonians, which are eight-dimensional algebraic expressions. And I looked them up. Hence the mistake. the Wikipedia article is strange; all the *words* are in English, but they don't make any sense. Kinda like portions of the IRC, except these have a point (UN-like the IRC, frankly, too often) because they describe sophisticated wave equations. Here's the link: Split octonians and here's the first paragraph: "In mathematics, the split-octonions are an 8-dimensional nonassociative algebra over the real numbers. Unlike the standard octonions, they contain non-zero elements which are non-invertible. Also the signatures of their quadratic forms differ: the split-octonions have a split-signature (4,4) whereas the octonions have a positive-definite signature (8,0). Up to isomorphism, the octonions and the split-octonions are the only two octonion algebras over the real numbers. There are corresponding split octonion algebras over any field F." Umm... I'm really glad they included that bit about isomorphism, 'cuz that just helped SO much. Not.

No problem there, m'dear. We'd start to worry if you said you saw two unicorn flatuses in one day!

Especially the part about using the PPL and knowing how to get to AUR. There is rarely a clean way to get through to them on the letters they send out.

At best.... (Although sometimes I think they use QB as an accountant's torture device. A bit like knowing someone is OCD and making all your pictures crooked before they visit.)

Sometimes all we need to do is to write out all the gory details. Putting it all in order sufficient to explain the problem to others can allow our subconscious to shake out the answer that was in there hiding.

That is just GORGEOUS. Thank you!

A tattered piece of rope; mangled-looking and twisted around, walks into a bar. Bartender looks up, glares, and says "Hey! Are you a cord? We don't serve cords in here!" The rope answers, "No, I'm a frayed knot." (Ba-dum-CHA!)

I had an unexpected visit from my younger daughter, on her way to work. Did a CPE course online on trust and estate taxation that was actually useful. It was part 2 of 3; part 1 got finished last week and now I need to find time for part 3, but that's three hours. Did the bulk of one return earlier today, have two to tackle this afternoon. One is a royal PITA, and the other is disorganized. So I am poking around online and dithering. Kinda like @jklcpa's procrastinating but with less structure. LOVE @BHoffman's picture! Great to hear from everybody.

Anybody here today? I'm lonely without you all...

I have found that posting a question to the forum is the *best* way to make the information you have been searching and hour for to jump out from wherever it has been hiding. As soon as you hit "submit" it jumps out, calling "surprise! here I was, all along - fooled you good tee hee!"

Oooh! They are *excellent*!

I dunno - some of them sound good, though. Try a couple - if you don't like the first one or two, there are other options. Not like it's going to cost you a lot of money to try.

Bingo.

Flip a coin for the address to use? Get the court to choose? This one is a nasty problem, you have my sympathies.

I would MUCH rather see vigorous prosecution of tax fraud than more "regulations" for those of us who are *trying* to do our best. We've all seen it here - comments in various posts about the guy down the street or the other preparer in little town X who makes up EIC-increasing data - usually with a comment "but we know nothing's going to happen." WHY THE BLEEP NOT?!?! THAT is where the problem is! Get those creeps out of our industry, and thereby lessen the fraud plus help taxpayers from getting cheated by shysters. IMHO they are ham-handedly pursuing the *wrong* aspect of the problem. And I'll put my toe on the "politics" line by saying that's typical of government (any government). Bureaucratic solution = ham-handed, anywhere, anywhen, anyone, anyhow.

I have a bunch of ways to take cards. Drake e-pay from right inside the software. Fast payment to me, per-use fee only - nothing monthly. PayPal from my web site (works great for out-of-state and foreign clients). Also just a per-transaction fee. QB like Lion has; per-use fee only. For acctg clients or people with non-current-year tax returns (or several years at once) or non-e-filable returns, where doing it through Drake wouldn't work. Drake's e-pay gets me $$ the fastest. Paypal is next but it stays as a balance in that account until I transfer it (I leave some, and pay for CPE meetings from that account as my local society prefers that method). QB takes longest to get me cash. Not having a smart phone, all the little swipey readers are useless for me.

Scientists have determined there are only two thoughts in the minds of cats. 1. "All this is MINE." 2. "When does the staff serve luncheon today?"

And frankly if one is NOT ethical, it's really easy to snooze through a class and get nothing - or give (untrue-for-you) correct answers on a test. The *only* ethics that has been useful for me is the UMass Tax School ethics. The guy leading it is great and gets a group discussion going around grey areas and how clients can gradually sucker a preparer into those grey areas - usually NOT with bad intentions. Not sure I learned anything, really - but at least it was interesting! I *detest* those "ethics" presentations that start out assuming everyone there commits (or wants to commit) extensive tax fraud daily.

Only as something to joke about! And I also like the name "Borg" for the new cat. Plus, his resistance to behaving will also eventually prove futile - won't it?

Well, yes - except you can *charge* for the time to get the transcript, and then you know what else the bozo is missing. It can be a good way to decide whether to keep a client, how much to up-charge him (keeper or not), and on top of that head off next year's CP2000 letter at the pass.