Catherine

Hey folks -- Who has transmitted 1099's before? I sent some in last week and the status is "Transmitted to EFC". Should I expect _some_ kind of acknowledgment that they were accepted? This was a "test" client with only a few 1099's; I have a whole slew more ready to go once I'm sure they are actually getting through. So, how do I tell? TIA, Catherine

Theft is theft, and a lie is a lie -- but doesn't it make sense to go after the bigger thieves first? Bang for your buck, and all that? Does all the EIC fraud add up to what Madoff stole? Just a thought.

Remember Lloyd Bridges in "Airplane"? "Guess I picked the wrong week to stop smoking" (snorting cocaine) (sniffing glue) (etc). Just don't jump out the window! Hang in there. Speakerphone or headset, radio in the background, and other clients' work can help make it more tolerable. Catherine

(Sorry, Catherine, I can't endorse the "Once done, it was over" approach to math calculations.) -- Well, I wasn't talking about math errors. For those, double-checking calculations is easy and not a problem. Rather, I was talking about theory or judgment call errors. there's a lot of "well, maybe this, maybe that, what if I look at it this way, does this special case apply" judgment in the test. THOSE are the "don't second guess yourself" places. You can dither yourself into a frenzy of wrong answers by agonizing too long and revisiting stuff over and over. ...ambiguous questions. Who cares? IRS fixes those every year, and any new ones don't count in the score anyway. Not quite. they fix some -- and create others. It seems to be almost a wash, year to year. There are two tricks to remember to keep you from freaking out in the exam (as I saw happen to a couple of people!). #1 -- Read each question VERY carefully -- lots of wrong answers come from jumping to answer the question before you understand it. When I took the securities license tests, the most important thing to do was to read each question carefully, and parse out what they were asking. Conditional triple negatives with inverted syntax will foul up anyone who doesn't take the time to figure out very specifically WHAT is being asked. Ditto on the EA exam -- although it's more the tax details than the syntax. #2 -- Don't get spooked if the question (or the answers provided) don't make sense. You AREN'T (necessarily) in over your head, there ISN'T (probably) some huge area of tax law you don't understand -- you've simply run into another ambiguous question. Someone will protest it, and it will be stricken (or credit will be given for more than one answer). ....but -- hello? --they change the questions each year! However, when you study several years' worth, you start to see patterns in what they ask. The same question will appear in several exams, with details changed. So when you run across one of these in an exam, it feels like familiar territory. Still need to read that question carefully, however! Catherine

Congratulations and deepest sympathies?

I had one client switch to EFTPS because their bank was fussing about accepting coupons (had to go to a manager, not a teller), holding funds too long, and the client was getting IRS notices saying, in essence, "we got money we didn't know what to do with so we're applying it to your 941 tax deposits for month X" (when the coupon had clearly shown Form 941, month X). They charge these folks close to $100/month in bank fees for several accounts plus the float on all the money they hold; how much more do they want? Oh, I forgot. They also want a few billion from us taxpayers so their doofus managers can get juicy bonuses. So of _course_ they don't want to deal with tax deposit coupons! Catherine

I have gotten a _lot_ of good business referred to me by bookkeepinghelp.com -- and a year is roughly $200 -- or what my little local paper charges for four one-shot ads Jan-Apr.

The local advertising I do is in a little freebie paper mailed to all households in my town and the surrounding three or four. It doesn't cost too much and brings about 3 - 5 people a year. If they're nice folks, I ask for referrals. It's slow to start, but then the referrals start to snowball.

I covered some of this in my earlier message, but will try to fill in the blanks. My dad was an accountant -- not HIS first choice. He wanted to go to medical school and even did his first year , when WW2 intervened. By the time that was over, he didn't want/couldn't go back (I don't know the details). And somehow he ended up in accounting. I literally do not recall _not_ knowing how to keep a double-entry ledger. (I was the stereotypical "Why do you do that?" kid.) I left home just before I was 17 and ended up putting myself through college. Found AccounTemps through a sign on the subway and went and talked to them. I guess I sounded knowledgeable enough; they put me to work one summer. Worked at a cable TV station in Boston in the mid-70's for the business manager. She was overwhelmed with having had a missing assistant for a couple of _months_ at that point, and dumped all the books for the station in my lap and came back a week later and asked how it was going!!! Talk about baptism by fire! It was a paper One-Write system that I figured out by "deriving from first principles" as they said back in my engineering days. I still remember my hands shaking like a leaf when I used the PayMaster check writer to write out the check for the TV transmitter - $13,000+ every two weeks, in a year where my tuition at MIT _for the full year_ was $3,000. I was all of 18 at the time. I worked for them that summer, and went back the next summer as well. Got my engineering degree just in time to graduate in the middle of the 1979 - 1981 recession and the only engineering job offer I got was in southern Texas. So it was back to AccounTemps until I got a job in my field about 6 months later. And back again when they laid off my department a year after that. And again when the next company went out of business after I'd been there ~ 2 years. And again after I got fired for discovering my boss and my office mate were having an affair (not that I _told_ anyone; I just knew and therefore I had to go). I had six engineering jobs in 12 years, with several-month periods of unemployment (HELLO, AccounTemps!, it's me again) between. At that point, I wised up and decided that accountants always have work. Worked for a CPA for a while and found out from him that to get a CPA required more college. Blech. Didn't want that. Tried financial planning but since I'm no good at the hard sell, I didn't earn too much. But lots of my planning clients would say, essentially, "this is all well and good, but now I need someone to help me with my accounting and taxes". Ended up going out on my own with an accounting and bookkeeping business in mid-1997, and here I am almost twelve years later. I have NEVER been laid off since I left engineering, and what I do helps people every day. And to my own surprise, I enjoy it (for the most part). It's like putting together a jigsaw puzzle, and depending on how I choose to put the pieces together, it makes a different picture. So I can pick the pattern that does my client the most good both now and going forward. YES, it can get crazy at tax time. You can control that by limiting the number of returns you do and being quick to put people on extension. You can also hire more help, if you want to grow your business that way. I've chosen to limit my business, although now that I have one girl out of high school and the other mid-high-school, I find I have more time to work and expanded my business about 50% last year. I could grow it even more on the word "BOO" if I tried, but I figure I'll let this level settle down for another year and see how much more I want to grow. One consideration is that my husband will be taking early retirement in another couple of years, and I may need to be CFO of his consulting firm. More accounting! Catherine

Yes, of course.

You're welcome. I've gotten lots of good comments on my web site, too. They do a pretty good job. And _you_ own the domain name -- so if you ever want to move, you can (but then you have to re-create the site). Catherine

Yes, it has helped my business. The alphabet soup after my name (even when they don't know what it means) lends instant credibility. And shortly before I decided to "go for it" I had a new client with old tax problems and was very limited in what I could do to help in terms of dealing with the outstanding issues. He was even more limited in what he was willing to do, so in his case it didn't particularly matter. But I wanted to be prepared and ready for the next case. Also, after going through all the Gleim stuff, I had a much better idea of where my knowledge was solid and wehre I needed more study on my own, so I was able to tailor my CPE courses to areas I wanted to be better in. And my state association has monthly meetings with CPE credits that are also a good opportunity to get to know others. As a sole practitioner, sometimes it's really nice to have a place to "talk shop". And I've found others with specialties that I don't cover (like advanced case representation, C-corps, non-profits) so I can refer folks out -- or sometimes just get a second opinion on my own thoughts. Kind of like here (and other newsgroups), but more local issue specific. Catherine

I use it all the time. My accounting clients send a backup or portable copy of their QuickBooks file, and my techno-clients send tax docs and returns both ways. Works great. You can let people sign themselves up or I have also signed people up and assigned them a password. Some clients use the portable file in QB rather than backup because file space is limited to 50MB; two folks have huge QB files that exceed that size in backup but not portable file. I've posted a half-dozen returns at a time with tons of room to spare. The one and only thing I do _not_ like is that you must use IE (or the IE tab in Firefox) to use the site. So that means all the inherent weaknesses and security flaws of the Microsoft product -- but only while you're actively there, so it's not as big a risk as it could be. Catherine

I took the tests years ago, back when it was still four parts. Spent a few weeks with the Gleim test prep (books and software), and passed all four sections first try. Worst part was the second test day; halfway into it I developed a vicious migraine from glare in the room, but had to keep going regardless. But I lived. Nothing about the test or the prep was near as bad as working through that pounding (and then getting home afterward). Keep in mind that you get about 10% "free" -- that's about the percentage of questions where the correct answers are NOT included in the choices, or there are MULTIPLE answers depending on how you read the question, or where the question is so poorly worded you can't tell how to answer. I thought Gleim was really good about this -- they take their practice questions straight from old tests, and in the answer section tell you the gory details about ambiguity, multiple answer credit, and the like. When I got to the point where I was finding the errors in the answer choices, I knew I was starting to "get" it. That format also proved to me that my FIRST answer was best -- if I went back to re-think one I wasn't sure about, the changed answer was way more likely to be wrong than my original answer. So in the real test, I did not allow myself to go back and re-think. Once done, it was over. I'd spent a few years doing accounting and bookkeeping on my own, and taxes were becoming a larger and larger portion of my business. However, with a degree in Earth Science/Materials Engineering, I figured an honest-to-goodness tax credential was a good idea. My dad was an accountant, I put myself through school working in accounting, and went back to it every time I'd been laid off from an engineering position. But all my knowledge in accounting and tax was from Hard Knock University, and that particular institution doesn't give out anything to put up on the wall or give your clients a warm and fuzzy feeling about you. To my great joy, taxes require no calculus. And once I gave up the assumption that the rules were somehow supposed to make _sense_, it all became much easier. Know the rules, know how to apply them, but remember they were all invented by Congress and therefore there IS neither rhyme nor reason; they just ARE. Catherine

Oh jeepers -- you mean we're supposed to do MORE than that?!?!?!?!? No one told ME!!! :P

I've sent in one set -- are we supposed to get acks back on these? I've never done it before. Also used AccuWage to report W-2's for one company; do I have to go to SSA online to see if they went through right? Would like to see one get through before I try my other clients. Having always paper filed W-2's and 1099's I am nervous about the whole deal. Used a client who has a whopping two W-2's and 2 1099's as my test case and have all the others poised and ready to either e-file OR paper file, depending on how the "two-fer" attempt goes. Catherine

We used to have to run water in the house I grew up in (here in MA) on any cold night int he winter. Water pipes ran up the outside walls and there was NO insulation in those walls. We trickled it all night, and in the morning ran hot water to melt whatever ice had built up over night.

I've got the site bookmarked! Catherine

That one I thought was funny, as well. But the funny part was the boss telling them to carry on, not the tormenting the poor guy in the first place. Catherine

I figured I'll be spending a _lot_ of time looking up stimulus rebate information myself; I can pretty much guarantee that next to none of my clients (who got anything) will remember what they got or when. The ones who _didn't_ get payments will remember that -- but I'll double-check anyway. Catherine

At the risk of being called a shill: anyone else here tried the Welsh cookies made by the inFamous Welsh Cookie biscuits? A slew of flavors, NOT sicky-sweet. I can never decide if the apricot-almond or the cherry-hazelnut are my favorites. http://ukmarket.samsbiz.com/?mainURL=/stor..._Cookie_Co.html Catherine PS I have NO connection to these folks other than a lust for their cookies.

Pain In The Accountant? :lol:

Makes me feel warm that it was "just" -4F this morning here (Massachusetts) with light winds. My husband lived in California for a while (3 years) after he got out of school. He says he went close to crazy from the one-and-only forecast: "Late night and early morning low clouds and fog". Catherine

Thanks for the reminder -- I was going to put a note in the folders of the two clients this may apply to -- I'll do that right now. Catherine

I did this for a client late last year (printed out the "not for filing" ATX copy). The bank took it. And I ordered some blanks to keep on hand. The suggestion of signing up for EFTPS would be a good one IF it didn't take a couple of weeks for the registration plus snail mail confirmation and PIN to come through. The clients I've had who've gotten stuck have usually been caught by a tax payment due _after_ their old PR vendor stopped working for them but _before_ the new one took up the reins. And there is _never_ time to wait for EFTPS signup or for coupons to come in the mail, either. Another recent problem I've seen is banks _refusing_ to take tax deposits unless you are also a bank client (BofA is one). I've made a list of a couple of banks around here (eastern MA) that will still take deposits from non-banking clients, just in case. Catherine