Catherine

Passing along random stuff I've stumbled across is _nothing_ compared to the help I've received here!

Restore point restores settings and removes program updates but doesn't touch data. If you're paranoid (and on March 31st, that is an extremely reasonable thing to be), do a data backup first. But restore points have saved my bacon a couple of times. Catherine

Use your system restore to go back to where the ATX software was working (two days ago?). And then leave the extra monitor to deal with after 4/18. Good luck!

There is a web site called gethuman.com (someone referred to it above, but as an app) where you get the magic numbers to get through to a human. It is not instantaneous, but it's pretty darned quick and doesn't require an iPhone. Catherine

Thank you, KC -- this may come in _very_ handy for a number of us one of these days!

Not necessarily to disagree with Pacun, but I have a client who needs past-due returns done and all we have to work with are account transcripts of wage etc. info as reported to the IRS. The stuff we got from them goes back to 2001, and it's complete -- wages, withheld taxes (except state, doggone it, so we had to guess there are MA will _not_ help), mortgage interest, student loan interest, etc. All we needed to go digging for was real estate tax and the town helped us there. Admittedly that's different from return transcripts, but they obviously have info going back a good ten years. Catherine

And in the way of these things, as soon as I posted this the non-resident bits of the drop-down lists stopped hiding. Sigh. At least all the sacrifice that's required these days is posting a query that makes you look like a nincompoop. I'd hate to think of the mess that the entrails of a goat would make on this keyboard!

I have a PA 40 return for a non-resident. Never lived in PA -- was sent from MA to work there. W-2 has PA earnings & withholdings (plus a bunch of other states). Checkbox on data sheet is "N" for full-year non-resident. Error check says "county, school district, and school code are all required when e-filing" -- except there is NO drop-down code I could find for non-residents, blank gives me the error code, and why would they expect there to BE a county etc for a non-resident?!?! So does this state return need to go on paper? TIA, Catherine

Or claim the excess contribution on Line 69 of the 1040?

Haven't checked on the first question. Second question -- yes, if the excess is withdrawn by 4/15 there's no penalty. The twist I'm trying to determine for one of _my_ clients is if re-characterizing the excess as a 2011 contribution (it was all made during calendar 2011) will _also_ suffice for penalty avoidance. Catherine

Just WONDERFUL!!!

Sounds like a textbook example of a return to put on extension and deal with in May!! Seriously -- you'll need time to research treatment, and you have to go back to 2005 and work your way forward. Don't you have easier ways to hurt yourself at the end of March than trying to get this mess fixed by 4/18? Catherine

Whose last words were, "I just drank WHAT?!?!"

That was just a baby reply to the side issue of Daylight Saving Time.

Oh, Rita L -- my most sincere sympathies on your computer problems!!!! Mine are nothing by comparison -- a several-year-old Dell with a slowly failing keyboard. Shift key stops letters from coming up at all, space bar is flaky, and m's and n's don't always show up. A client loaned me another keyboard but I'm too far behind to try installing it; easier and maybe faster to keep fixing and fixing all the drop-out letters and lack of capitals. Good for you, though, for sitting shiva with your daughter-in-law; some things are just more important than tax forms. Sympathies to everyone else who is having issues with computers and health. As for me, on Wednesday I re-tweaked (sprained) my left hip and have been in reasonably bad pain ever since (couldn't get out of bed Thursday morning without help). I've still been _very_ lucky, as today it's down to a nasty ache and I'm trying to wean myself off the high-dose motrin I've been glugging since Wednesday noon. Have been alternating working sitting down until it hurts too much, then working standing up until my wrists give way, and getting headaches from the weird angles with the monitors. More glitches than usual this year, too -- I've used Gruntworx in the past very successfully but this year it hasn't been indexing my pdf's properly (same scanner as last year so it's not the scanner). It did such a BAD job getting three accounts of stock trades into Excel that I re-scanned those three accounts at a higher dpi level and re-submitted -- and it left off ONE ENTIRE ACCOUNT's worth of data. So I have to call them on Monday and bitch them out. Every time this year that I feel like maybe I have a handle on the work flow, it spirals out of control again. It's been just horrid. For next year I hire help. In November, so I can get him/her trained by January. Catherine

Quoting our favorite, Lazarus Long, again: "When a place gets crowded enough to require ID’s, social collapse is not far away. It is time to go elsewhere. The best thing about space travel is that it made it possible to go elsewhere."

We have a friend who goes ballistic over Daylight Saving Time and eventually he decided to set his watch to the Universal Time signal and just subtracts hours as needed depending on the date. While he's more than a little carried away, he is also extremely intelligent and incredibly well-read, and it's fun to listen to him always. But he points out that Daylight Saving Time (NO "s" at the end of saving, BTW) was intended to save energy during the war. It has been amply demonstrated that instead of saving energy, it costs energy. So we should abolish it just on that fact alone. Plus, WE don't get gipped an hour of sleep during tax season!

I'll reply to this thread after 4/19, when I have time to do it a little bit of justice.

Anything you subsidize, you get more of.

Torvill & Dean; always the best Hat Trick

Thanks, Dale.

Chill, please. Lots of folks post lots of stuff that isn't useful. Jokes. Responses to jokes. Boasting about our kids. Griping about other members. If we banned people for "no contribution of useful information" there'd be no one left. If you can't stand someone else's presence here, either IGNORE them, or go sulk in a corner on your own. I didn't put up with this kind of nonsense from my girls when they were little, and it's even less appealing from a supposedly mature adult. Don't we all have enough REAL issues to deal with this time of year (any time of year)? So, OldJack and Bees Knees and anyone else with a chip on their shoulder -- get a grip. Please.

I have a student who needs to file an Indiana non-resident return -- which means paper filing. ATX is telling me A) that I need to add an IN-BAR form as the last page of the return, and that the IN-BAR form is not approved for paper filing. Can someone shed some light on this, please? TIA, Catherine

‎"Give me all your money or you're geography!!" "Don't you mean... or you're history?" "Don't try to change the subject!!"