Catherine

I've been telling folks that (a) any money you need within 5 years shouldn't be in the stock market EVER, (b ) any money you don't need within five years can afford to wait it out, and (c ) if the whole economy collapses we'll all be working until the day we keel over anyway. So if it's there, let it ride. If you want to buy at liquidation prices, time to go shopping (carefully). And assuming we do eventually pull out of this hole, they'll be glad to have stuck with it. And if we don't, they won't be able to afford to care.... All of this is preceded by my disclosure that I am _not_ a stock broker, financial planner, or investment advisor. Catherine

If I were to be punishèd for every little pun I shed I'd hie me to a puny shed and there I'd hang my punnish head....

Attached is my favorite tax cartoon of all time. I've saved it since 1977, long before I started doing taxes. Barely after I started doing my _own_ taxes! MacNelly_1040.PDF

from one of my other newsgroups, something sent to a participant by one of his clients.... REVISED MEANING OF STOCK TERMS: CEO --Chief Embezzlement Officer. CFO-- Corporate Fraud Officer. BULL MARKET -- A random market movement causing an investor to mistake himself for a financial genius. BEAR MARKET -- A 6 to 18 month period when the kids get no allowance, the wife gets no jewelry VALUE INVESTING -- The art of buying low and selling lower. P/E RATIO --The percentage of investors wetting their pants as the market keeps crashing. BROKER -- What my broker has made me. STANDARD & POOR --Your life in a nutshell. FINANCIAL PLANNER -- A person whose phone has been disconnected. MARKET CORRECTION -- The day after you buy stocks. CASH FLOW-- The movement your money makes as it disappears down the toilet. WINDOWS -- What you jump out of when you're the sucker who bought Yahoo @ $240 per share. INSTITUTIONAL INVESTOR --Past week investor who's now locked up in a nuthouse. PROFIT An archaic word no longer in use.

Aha -- another Beck reader! I certainly don't agree with him all the time (maybe not even most of the time), but his research is impeccable. I have yet to find a _factual_ error in anything of his I've checked. Catherine

A rope walks into a bar and sits down on a barstool. The bartender looks at him and says "Get out of here, we don't serve ropes in this establishment!". The rope gets up and slinks out. Once outside, he grabs the end of his tuft, making the little rope fibers go every which way, and curls himself up into a few loops. Thus composed, the rope walks back into the bar and sits down. The bartender says "Hey, aren't you that rope?" and the rope looks him in the eye and says "No, I'm a frayed knot."

Good luck!

Hi folks -- I went to the Drake seminar near Boston yesterday. There were about 18 people there, and two folks from Drake. The Drake folks were basically sales folks, but knew the program very well. And one of them also knew quite a bit of tax stuff as well. Many of the problems I've found with Drake in the past have been addressed to some degree or other. The two big stumbling blocks for me are the same as they've always been, though -- the data entry sheet type input format, and the lack of "drill-down" from the forms. But, it is _much_ easier to toggle back and forth from form view to data entry. I did like the customizable access for different workers (more important for someone with a larger office than my one-person shop!), and I _really_ liked the many customizable letters (including specific letters for amended returns and many other situations). And the customizations you set up ROLL OVER to the next year. They do have Form 8821 (tax info disclosure) -- but it's a checkbox on the 2848 entry sheet. If anyone has specific questions, I'll do my best to answer. Catherine

Congratulations on being home; that is always SO much better. Hope that Don continues his recovery at a good pace. Take care of yourself!! Catherine

Happy Birthday, Jainen! And many happy returns! (yes, terrible pun intended) Catherine

We can thank the invention of the "mute" button for this, I do believe. Once we were no longer captive, the commercial had to be worth bothering with. Catherine

Watch all the way to the end through the info boilerplate; there are tag lines worth seeing. Catherine

We're all very glad to hear that Don is improving. I hope that he does come home soon, and that neither of you faces any more health crises for years to come. Catherine

Be warned that tiny marks also count and "non-numeric" -- including periods, apostrophes, and BLANK SPACES!!! (Ask me how I know this.....) Go through the return and, under edit, hit "Restore Field" to get rid of spurious characters Catherine

And the problem with _that_ is, the way Microsoft does bloatware, 3.5GB of RAM soon won't be enough to load Office, let alone any more useful programs. Open Office, anyone? Catherine

They do great work with gallbladders these days. My husband and I went out to take care of his mother when she had to have hers out a couple of years ago. She was 84 at the time and had laparoscopic day surgery. We brought her in first thing in the morning, had her home by mid-afternoon. The very next day, I had to physically remove a dust mop from her hands -- she was trying to mop up dog hair in the hall. I hope Don's goes as smoothly. Catherine

Done. And ongoing, through Tuesday at least. Catherine

I also thought it was a reminder to us all of what level of help proper tech support should provide.... Catherine

With apologies to all the men in the group..... Dear Tech Support: Last year I upgraded from Boyfriend 5.0 to Husband 1.0 and noticed a distinct slow-down in the overall performance, particularly in the flower and jewelry applications, which operated flawlessly under Boyfriend 5.0. In addition, Husband 1.0 uninstalled many other valuable programs, such as Romance 9.5 and Personal Attention 6.5, and then installed undesirable programs such as NFL 5.0, NHL 4.3, MLB 3.0, and NBA 3.6. Conversation 8.0 no longer runs, and Housecleaning 2.6 simply crashes the system. I've tried running Nagging 5.3 to fix these problems, to no avail. What can I do? Signed, Desperate Dear Desperate: First, keep in mind Boyfriend 5.0 is an Entertainment Package, while Husband 1.0 is an Operating System. Try to enter the command: "C:/ ITHOUGHTYOULOVEDME" to download Tears 6.2, which automatically should install Guilt 3.0. If that application works as designed, Husband 1.0 should then automatically run the applications Jewelry 2.0 and Flowers 3.5. But remember, overuse of the above application can cause Husband 1.0 to default to Grumpy Silence 2.5, Happy Hour 7.0, or Beer 6.1. Beer 6.1 is a very bad program that will create Snoring Loudly. Whatever you do, DO NOT install Mother-in-law 1.0 or reinstall another Boyfriend program. These are not supported applications and will crash Husband 1.0. In summary, Husband 1.0 is a great program, but it does have limited memory and cannot learn new applications quickly. You might consider buying additional software to improve memory and performance. I personally recommend Hot Food 3.0 and Lingerie 7.7. Good Luck, Tech Support

One of our family friends is an IT specialist; his recommendation is to avoid VISTA at all costs. Especially if you have older peripherals (printers, scanners, etc), as there are still compatibility problems with drivers for those devices and VISTA. It is still possible to get XP Pro computers. You have to look (and sometimes ask specifically), but they are available. Anyone who builds computers (as some folks here and on other groups have done) can certainly install XP Pro. Catherine

I'll suggest it to the NAEA and my state affiliate (MA). Unless someone else has national connections; I just pay my dues every year nationally but am more involved at the state level. Catherine

Well said, KC. There are two functions being spliced: accurate preparation and reporting of what actually occurred, and enforcement of accounting/tax rules at the specific taxpayer level. The first is the job of tax preparers. Advice and recommendation on the second is also the job of tax preparers. But enforcement is the job of the collecting agency. Trying to force us to take on a role not our own will drive away people who can't stomach being an IRS enforcer. It will increase the number of poorly prepared returns submitted (either self-prepared or done by unqualified preparers). And as these requirements keep creeping in, clients will lose the sense of us as their allies and reliable resources, and they will start to hide information from us. Ultimately, it serves no one. OK. Time to leave this thread and go write my congresscritters. Unfortunately for me, being in ultra-liberal Massachusetts, my congresscritters have never seen a regulation they didn't want to expand.... I am reminded of a line from Tolkien, "...over the years we have fought the long defeat" (paraphrased). Catherine

Apology accepted. There are certainly preparers who disregard the rules. I had a client whose previous preparer told her to sign and mail in her returns as "self-prepared" because there was less chance of an audit that way. The return he had prepared was a masterpiece of creativity and fantasy, and he deserved either a medal or jail time; perhaps both.

You completely neglected the portion of my response that talked about attached statements. If the client "intentionally disregards a rule or regulation" despite strong recommendations to the contrary, the penalties should fall ON THAT CLIENT, and NOT on the preparer. The preparer HAS performed due diligence in this area by informing the client, making strong recommendations, and then attaching the disclosure to the return. The snide remark about "Congress had to establish preparer penalties in the first place" is a personal attack. And has no place in this forum. I have respected your opinions in the past and have followed some lively threads with interest, striving to see the point of view presented by various people, always to my benefit and learning. But my respect for you has fallen significantly today.

But the point is not "fairness", but rather that we, as preparers, have no authority in our client's corporations to authorize - or de-authorize - any one particular treatment of expenses. Our job is to tell our clients what the rules are, and to prepare an accurate return based on what they have chosen to do. We all have clients who take much more conservative stands than they are entitled to, and those who push the edge of aggressive stands. We must make them aware of their rights and responsibilities. But they choose their level of comfort; we are neither their nannies nor their keepers, to choose for them. If a client came to me with zero salary but large distributions, I would be remiss to not tell that client of the rules and the consequences of breaking those rules. I may choose to decline to prepare the return, or choose to prepare it but add statements etc. But I have NO authority to force this client to change his practices. To then hold me responsible for this person's choices does nothing to advance a goal of accurate and complete reporting for tax purposes. The IRS's job should be to penalize the shareholder not following the rules, and not to penalize the person whose work will bring the case to them! Their job will be made harder if they must wade through poorly-prepared S-corp returns (done either by the shareholder or an unskilled preparer, if no qualified preparer will touch it), looking for no-salary cases. And that should be an argument that will catch a congresscritter's attention; less money brought in. Catherine