Catherine

Hope you have a VERY

The one BIG recommendation that I have is get as much RAM as the machine will hold!

Somehow this entire thread double-posted, sorry!

A couple of pictures from the wedding ball last Saturday. We'll have professional pictures later (those were the wedding favors to guests!), but for now the only one with me has my eyes closed. Sigh. So -- first one is my two girls and I. Fiona (the older) on the left, Gwen in the middle (wearing a dress formerly belonging to the bride's now-deceased mother; it was a great hit with the bride, her brother, and her father), and then me. Doug isn't in the picture because he was taking it. The pro pictures have all four of us but they won't be available until Thanksgiving week earliest. Other two pictures are bride & groom from front and back. Bride made her gown, almost entirely hand-stitched. It's a sacque gown made of ivory and peach silk. Catherine

A couple of pictures from the wedding ball last Saturday. We'll have professional pictures later (those were the wedding favors to guests!), but for now the only one with me has my eyes closed. Sigh. So -- first one is my two girls and I. Fiona (the older) on the left, Gwen in the middle (wearing a dress formerly belonging to the bride's now-deceased mother; it was a great hit with the bride, her brother, and her father), and then me. Doug isn't in the picture because he was taking it. The pro pictures have all four of us but they won't be available until Thanksgiving week earliest. Other two pictures are bride & groom from front and back. Bride made her gown, almost entirely hand-stitched. It's a sacque gown made of ivory and peach silk. Catherine

Hope you have a VERY

I read on another forum that Red Gear has now dumped TRX, as well (should be treated as unsubstantiated rumor at this point). But if true it surely does not say good things about them in general. Hope you're reading, TRX.

I got my ATX disk today by US Mail -- the envelope was torn across the top but it seems that everything is there (archive disk and marketing flyers). I am also a TRX-deal person, and like Kea have only gotten a couple of calls and emails - nowhere near the nuisance level. The nuisance level calls/emails I get is from Red Gear, from whom I got a demo CD about 5 years ago. They just will _not_ let up. Catherine

Hope you have a VERY

Hope you have a VERY

Great improvements, Eric, and thank you!!

And all the new regulations will STILL not affect the shyster who told the retired woman it was safer for her to sign the return as "self-prepared". She can't prove he prepared it even if she could find him. Nor do the regulations provide for better, faster ways to remove the Roni Deutsch's of the world from hawking their questionable wares. So how, exactly, is all the new hoo-hah going to help anyone? It's just a pain for us, the ones who follow the rules. Enforce the existing rules before instituting new ones. The new rules are just a way of claiming to do something while actually doing nothing to improve the situation for honorable tax preparers or tax payers.

And charge them for it, too, as they were given paper (and, in my case, pdf on CD) copies when they originally filed. I've decided no more free copies. Funny how they suddenly "find" them when they know I won't print and mail for free.

It's election day. Please remember to vote. Please remember also to vote for candidates who are honest and principled, and who will do the best job of representing your values. It doesn't matter whether the person is an incumbent or challenger, Democrat, Republican, Independent, Libertarian, Green, Constitution, Anti-High-Rent, or any other party. Just demand integrity and true representation from them. Remember - and remind them, that they work for YOU. NOT the other way around, and certainly not for the gaggle of special interest groups just waiting to co-opt and corrupt them. Remind them often, and - if they sell out to those special interests - fire them next time around.

Joan, I am reminded of a cartoon in the New Yorker some time ago, two men in business suits at a desk. One says, "These new regulations will fundamentally alter the way we get around them." There will ALWAYS be crooks and charlatans in every profession. They need to be found and prosecuted, and mainly can be under existing law with existing tools. Rather than make us "good folks" jump through extra hoops that make us no better and take away our time from improving our skills, it would make more sense (to my mind) to spend the time and money on an education campaign so people know what to look for and what to avoid in a return preparer. I had one lady years ago who told me her prior preparer told _her_ that she'd be a MORE risk of an audit if he signed the return as a preparer, so he recommended to her that she sign it as "self-prepared". It was full of major errors and skirted outright fraud. She was a retired bus driver with all the financial acumen of your standard jelly donut - there was no way for her to understand what he'd done, and that it was wrong. But she _could_ have understood a warning that anyone saying something like that was a crook. It's not the money. It's the time, aggravation, and frustration of "how many MORE hoops are we supposed to jump through -- after all, WE'RE not the problem!" A bank teller has nearly as much access to financial information as we do. Should they also be regulated, licensed, registered, and charged for the privilege? "Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it whether it exists or not, diagnosing it incorrectly, and applying the wrong remedy." -- Ernest Benn

A belated

A belated

Did anyone besides me send in paper form with check? If so, have you heard anything back?

Ah, but overloading the servers with a blizzard of form submittals is well-established.

Every time I have come back to the forum in the past two days, this thread has shown up tagged with "new messages" -- but it keeps coming back to this one from joan. I'm adding this reply in the hopes that whatever loop it's gotten stuck in will un-stick now.

I charge straight hourly, plus postage for those few clients who want me to mail stuff straight out for them.

Shut the IRS down by flooding them with 1099's for every type of payment imaginable? Sounds like it may be possible. Jan 2012 looks to be interesting - unless Congress does the sensible thing and puts a stop to this nonsense before it starts.

Hope you have a VERY

I use the Tenenz folders myself; I get the top-staple ones. The first couple of years it was a bit of a topological exercise every year to re-remember how to staple in the pages so they come out correctly once all the folding is done - but now I have it down. I really like them. If you're looking for customized folders with lots of options, I got a solicitation from Binding Systems of America. They'll make them with any spec you want; paper color, weight, style, texture, embossed, personalized, staple top, clip top -- you name it, they have it. And you pay for it. The pricing was more than Tenenz and the minimum order was _large_ (500, if memory serves). The Tenenz folders you can buy in packs of 50. I also once used plain old double-pocket folders from the office supply places. Gave that up one year when I couldn't find solid color packs; just variety packs, and I thought that looked a little cutesy rather than professional. But they worked well.

Sorry; I took the test in 2003. Since I passed, I don't feel the need to take it again. Hope you get some answers!