Catherine

But the first-year "loss leader" approach is certainly used in many industries. Do you think we can get Ally Bank to write tax software?

Hope you have a VERY

Hope you have a VERY

Hope you have a VERY

Hope you have a VERY

Leave it up there, then! If anyone ever questions why it is expired, you can tell them it was the last one you needed from NY and you left it up as a reminder that you never have to deal with their horrid web site ever again.

It's not CATEGORIES, jainen, and you should know that if you have ever used QuickBooks. It is VENDORS. And, as long as Lion's client keeps her meal receipts, Lion is NOT required to ask for those receipts or see those receipts. We are NOT auditors for the IRS -- and when they require that, I predict wholesale exodus of many, many return preparers (EAs, CPAs, and the new registration categories as well). There is NO business purpose for this client of Lion's to track her meal vendors. The information ONLY serves the IRS. We get that you like to take outrageous positions to make a point sometimes. But please keep them outside the realms of the fruitless and pointless. This was both.

Make a paper airplane? That's what I may do with mine!

Hope you have a VERY

Hope you have a VERY

Hope you have a VERY

A post-vacation

A post-vacation

A post-vacation

A post-vacation

A post-vacation

A post-vacation

A post-vacation

A friend of mine gave me the first shirt as a gift -- it gets quite the response when I wear it!

Had a lady a few years ago come to me when she got an IRS letter. Said the phone number of her preparer had been disconnected. The return said "self-prepared" and she told me that the preparer told _her_ that she'd have a much higher chance of being audited if he signed it, so as a favor to her, he wouldn't sign. There will be more of those types. There was a cartoon in the New Yorker last year, with two men in suits in an office. One says to the other, "These new regulations are going to fundamentally change the way we get around them." 'Nuff said.

Hope you have a VERY :bday:

Hope you have a VERY

I'm with Margaret and Marilyn. I make way less than $50K per year and get bitched out by clients making hectuple my income over tax prep fees that are, in my opinion, too low for the annoyance they put me through. My house is 50+ years old, drafty as all get out, and I sit here working on taxes in the winter with fingerless gloves and a blanket on my lap with the office area at 62 degrees F because it costs too much money to heat the whole house when it's just me here working. A $400 difference is HUGE to me. But I do agree that bitching out an employee for following company rules is harsh and undeserved. Bitch out the company if need be, but not the employee.

The paper return problem is that the client is in Peru, and mail sent from there gets here only about 25% of the time. Catherine

Here's another one. I had (still have) an issue where a state e-file won't create for a taxpayer with a foreign address. Went through the (generally useless) knowledgebase and carefully followed the instructions I eventually found. Still no state e-file (federal _would_ create just fine). So I emailed support and very carefully detailed what I had done and the error messages I still got; the next day got a reply telling me to follow the knowledgebase instructions that I had already told them I had followed step by step! So obviously the support person did not read my email in anything more than the most cursory fashion. Called them at that point; spoke with someone who requested that I a) send the return and reply to the email they'd sent stating that I'd sent the return, so they could watch for it. Promised they'd get back to me next day on it. I sent the return AND the reply, as requested, immediately (all this was within ten minutes of my receipt of the annoying email), and told support that I had already sent the return while we were still speaking. And yes, it was coded with the incident number, too. SIX days later, still nothing. So I called again. No one had looked at the return. No one had noticed my reply. No one had done anything I'd been promised. As it turns out, this issue had to be bumped up to the developers. And I am still waiting to find out how they're going to fix this problem. My client is still waiting. This return has been DONE (complete, reviewed, ready to e-file) since July 6th and I am stuck in the water in large part because of their inattention. This is July; it's not like 4/12 and they are being swamped with calls. I am _seriously_ ticked off. I'd call them again right now but whoever answers the phone does not deserve to be on the receiving end; writing this all up has riled me up again. I'll wait until I've calmed down. But a consistent complaint on this board (somewhat better over the last couple of years) has been the non-responsiveness of ATX support to emailed requests. If they wake up, they would see that email requests can be better for them than phone calls for many support issues. BUT -- they have to READ the emails sent, and they have to RESPOND in non-geologic time!!! Catherine