Catherine

And "Tax Freedom Day" is getting later and later, as well.

And another email this morning; someone got a 1095-A and wanted to know how to get the company to rescind it as she doesn't know what it's for. My husband came home from a trip to deal with stuff from his mom's estate in an ultra-foul mood, and someone in my town is putting a motion to town meeting that needs to be fought and I have a feeling that coordinating the battle is going to get dumped on me. I'm telling you, New Zealand is looking real good right about now. Even with all the earthquakes.

Maybe April 16th, after the madness has gone on hiatus and some sleep has been obtained.

I got an email from Drake recommending either Firefox or IE; that notice said Chrome was also incompatible (as well as Edge).

I will send out my document checklist (instead of an organizer) and engagement letter as soon as they are ready to go (i.e., printed and collated). I hope by the end of this week. Have already had one phone call and one drop-off for 1099's for clients' vendors. I am SO not ready for this...

It is SO bouncy!

What Lion recommends is actually really good advice. Mail back his original. Possibly include a letter to the effect of "despite repeated requests for information we have heard nothing from you since your email of (date) - so here's your stuff good luck and goodbye."

Even if they repealed the 16th amendment tomorrow we would have work guaranteed for 10 years, as they work on collecting under the ten-year statute. And I would far rather help my clients figure out how to make more money in their businesses than help them plan for the annual tax hit! Every time someone asks me about a flat tax I say, "It's great - until you have to define income and expenses for businesses. And in three years the legis-vermin in DC would be paid off to put in enough special provisions that we would be right back with the self-contradictory mess we have now." That makes them think.

Happy New Year to all!

My advice is to print out ALL those emails (from and to) as pdf's (or as paper, or both) and put them in the client's file. Should this loser ever decide to sue YOU for being the "cause" of losing the refund, it will serve as an important part of your protection. CYA, always, especially since it's the losers we chase - to help them - that turn around to blame us for their failures.

Oh I do not wonder AT ALL, Jack. Nor do you wonder why I delay upgrading until the bitter end (I upgraded to W7 less than a month before support for XP was to end).

I will respectfully disagree with Jack - with caveats. I use the Drake document manager with Gruntworx. I love getting the indexed pdf's back, nice and tidy. I have learned that I still need to look at the originals (at least once) for any items hand-written on back or blank sides that I otherwise would not bother to look at in the pdf. But it really is great to be able to keep all the originals AND give them back. Electrons take up far less storage space than papers! Then months later when the client calls with the CP notice or just a question, you have not only your work but the originals you worked from right there.

Ah, Gail hit on a key point. I am hoping to get out gracefully over the next several years, as my accidental career as teacher, writer, and lecturer gets busier and busier. It doesn't pay a dingleberry, but we have always saved liked fiends and don't spend a lot - with my husband's pension and some investment income, we're OK without the money I earn. (Which I admit has *plummeted* since I moved out to an office and hired help; the gross went up about 10% and the expenses about doubled.... yet I can't improve that gross figure much and teach my assistant to take my place, all at the same time.) But making the rounds teaching I now find far more satisfying than tax prep. So time to pass it on to a young man who wants a profession that will ensure enough income for he and his fiancee to marry.

Usually I would agree BUT... were the skyrocketing profits a surprise? In the latter part of the year, perhaps, or for someone who did not really keep their books up to date? I have one S-corp where they do everything on spreadsheets (I detest that, but the one year they tried an accounting program was even worse and so far they have not had enough profit to hire a bookkeeper) and they don't really "get" how to put it all together for a P&L. So our first indication of how things are going is when they send me info in November. First year of profit was a big surprise to us all. In that case it was not huge so the S-corp officer-as-employee compensation issue was not a particularly big hurdle. However, if sales were growing throughout the year, and/or his books showed a good profit by mid-year-ish, then I concur with Gail.

With Gail in Virginia as I am "only" 57. However, about a year and a half ago I hired an old classmate of my older daughter's and am training him to eventually take over the business. I figure in 6 - 8 years he will be ready for most of it and I can come in once or twice a week to consult on the oddball items.

@Gail in Virginia I remember those copiers! If you approached them just wrong you got a strong blast of ammonia right in the face. I was a young engineer and we used a large-format copier for blueprints. My nose is wrinkling up just thinking about it, lol.

One of my favorites as well, @BLACK BART.

Terrific; I am glad you like it. One more way we all help each other out!

Their nephew runs the photo printing place near my house; great family.

I tried Chaos Intellect and could not get it to work properly; it was obscenely slow, seized up, and re-downloaded the same messages dozens of times. So I gave up on that and instead now use something called eM Client which is terrific. Email, contacts, calendar, tasks, widgets -- integrates seamlessly with the gmail email service that comes with my web site.

Car Talk ends its program every week with a long list of "production workers" whose names are puns. Their statistician, Marge Innovera (margin of error). Their driver, Pikoff Andropov (pick up and drop off). And a dozen or more others, each one worse than the one before. They are hysterically funny and go by way to fast to write down.

Within some Marge Innovera.

I absolutely ADORE the "Dear Client" letters and over the years have saved several of them in a file that I read when I need a laugh. To back up @rfassett's comment above, I have to keep reminding myself (and/or re-learning the hard way every couple of years) that I simply can NOT care more about my client's taxes/accounting/whatever than they do themselves. That said, "Dear Client, Thank you SO very much for dropping off all your tax documents for 2014 at my back door yesterday. I particularly appreciate that you have, at long last, claimed also to have included the information for the 1099-MISC's that were due to be mailed by 1/31/2015. You may note that I said "claimed" and that is because I have not yet BOTHERED to open said package. For all I know it has a stale cheese sandwich in it and not much else. I hope its contents are worth more to me than a stale cheese sandwich but frankly don't hold out much hope for that. By the way, I won't be looking at it this week. Or next. I'm busy. Toodles!"

And "Abby Normal" is far easier to read and spell than Frau Blucher (neigh!!!!)

Merry Christmas to you as well, Elrod -- and to EVERYONE here.