Catherine

Sounds like one of the smart phone swipey options will work well for you, then. PayPal, Square, Capital One's SparkPay, QB's GoPayment, PayWare Mobile from Verifone, Chase Mobile Checkout, and SwipeSimple are some of those out there.

ROTFLMAO!!! I just KNEW this board would take my aggravation and make me laugh instead.

I use PayPal on my web site, Drake e-pay from within the tax program, and QuickBooks otherwise. I only take 5 or 6 credit card payments a year so it only makes sense to use a per-transaction service. No smart phone, so the little swipey readers are not useful to me.

Then they need to start putting fax numbers on the stupid letters. Instead, they give phone numbers (sometimes plural) and say to call for a number if you need to fax in a response. So professionals tie up the lines looking for a frimping fax number, only to get disconnected by bad phone systems. the phone maintenance people are the ones needing a spanking. If they're going to hang up on people, it should be immediately , not after three quarters of an hour or more.

THIRTY EIGHT-plus minutes on hold listening to that miserable aggravating muzak the IRS torments us with, to get a recording saying "Due to technical difficulties, we are unable to answer your call at the present time. Please try again later." Click. Excuse me?!?! You couldn't have said that within the first TEN minutes? I don't often yell into my phone, but this time I did. Don't recall using any potty-mouth words but I won't guarantee that, either. I'm so mad I could kick someone into the next county right about now.

Ultimately, the only way to keep the shareholders happy is to keep the customers happy. That said, a small product line (like ATX) may be down in the noise for that purpose. Sigh.

I agree with you on this. They have had several years working on this already; the information the judge wants should be available within a week. Maybe two if he wants pretty copies, arranged in date order and bound.

I booked it home from the office in time to pull out my grandfather's welding glasses and see maximum occlusion (~63% here) and boy oh boy was that ever neat! Jack - save me a parking spot!

NOT intended to be political. I think it is the IRS' duty to prove they have taken steps *not* to be used as a political tool, by ANYONE. They have enough legitimate work to do, and not enough people to do it, as it is! Judge orders IRS to respond by October 16

Hey, @Jack from Ohio the Drake live stream feed is here: Drake live stream solar eclipse

There is usually an initial fee which will include X number of returns (for Drake, that number is 15 returns of any type). After that limit, you get charged an additional $Y per return filed. They do it that way because they still need to set up their servers to deal with your ERO submissions. But yeah, they all have the option. Lots of offices use lower-priced software for most of their returns, and then use PPR high-end products for the really complex returns that come in.

Danger Will Robinson!

Not so much rarer than the super-nerdy will have already made their reservations. Some of us (like me) who can't travel for whatever reason have their welding glasses, cardboard screen and cardboard pinhole cameras, and live-stream feeds bookmarked, all set and ready to go too.

I got that notice, too - and plan to watch the live feed since we'll only get 63% occlusion here. I've heard of other companies closing for a specified time (through my husband) but none that offered a link to their own live feed. They have just been the best. As reluctant as I was to leave ATX, my only regret is not having jumped ship earlier.

@Elrod - reminds me of the "Improbability Drive" sequence from "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" movie, where they all get turned into yarn figures and then back to people except Arthur Dent barfs up yarn... (My older daughter actually knit a Marvin the Paranoid Android - I have it still ['cuz she left it behind when she moved out].)

And nausea!

Absorbed into the Zero Point Energy that sustains the universe. mwa-hah-hah!

Might depend on what you are keeping. I had an ex-client, who had been through a move and a divorce in the intervening years, contact me for records relating to an international adoption. She had lost track of them, the tax return for the year involved, and the CD with the password-protected pdf's too. I still had them, and was able to provide her with a new set (for a fee) that seriously saved her bacon when she needed to prove something related to that adoption for the youngster's school. Those were all a good ten years old, and I only had them because I have not taken the time to purge my files of records that old. (They were buried in a backup and I did charge her for the time and trouble, and she paid happily, before I released anything.)

Ah, you're right. I forgot they got the $100 bill back.Comes from answering while I was dealing with a question from my assistant. Missed a crucial bit. I stand corrected!

$200 - unless you want to get finicky and say that they did not technically "lose" the foregone profit on the $70 of goods, but rather just the COGS. Except I'd counter that they also lost the profit on those goods for not selling them to a non-crook. Yeah, they got $70 in cash back - in exchange for the same value of goods. Whether it's cash or goods, the value is still gone.

Oh, yeah, baby....

I did research on this back in junior high school in the early 70's (if memory serves) to make sure of it. Hard to do, back in the days of libraries only! I found out the limitations of the local branch very quickly and had to go to the main branch "downtown" to find out. The main branch had more than two rooms of books...

I have an ancient set of welding glasses that belonged to my grandfather that I use to view eclipses. They're great. Full rectangular pane, rather than little squares. But they are heavy to hold up.

An acquaintance of mine lived in the UK for some time and had an ancient Mini Cooper (one of the original, really tiny ones) that was so old it only had three gears left: reverse, first, and third. Second and fourth were toast. No key needed, either - ignition system was also worn out. He left it unlocked and (when not raining) with windows open. It was stolen a number of times; each time he found it abandoned at the side of the road within two blocks of its parking spot. It became almost a game to him, searching for his car.

A friend of my husband is going to Missouri to take photos; he is an amateur astronomer. We'll see about 63% occlusion here.