Catherine

Yup. I detest those with a deep and immovable loathing. Three a day? There have been days when I'll get six or seven. Sometimes the house and the office phones ring within seconds of each other. The only thing that slowed them down (and it might have been serendipity) was waiting until a human came on the line and making gorilla noises into the phone until THEY hung up. I did enjoy that - but generally it takes too long to wait through their stupid spiel and get put through to a human.

Bank withdrawals showing sufficient cash to pay said sub? The IRS guy should accept the deduction, and open a new audit on the sub who didn't report - with thanks to your client for the tip!

You actually seem to have made a good start already. I might recommend that you keep a bottle of your favorite tipple at hand while working on this one. If they kept Excel records, ask for those at least. Bank statements (they have a separate bank account, I hope!) for the years in question. Maybe back to the beginning. Mr 60 needs his K-1 and amended return for 2016 regardless of when the buyout happened. Mr 40's might be OK for 2016, unless he ended up taking 100%. ONLY do this one on a retainer basis. It is a royal mess, and you need to be paid to fix it. If they won't do a retainer basis, give it all back now. In addition to the headaches, you are putting your professional reputation on the line by presenting returns completed on incorrect and insufficient prior data. Never worth it.

I'm absolutely giddy. (stated completely deadpan)

I asked Drake for the prior-year programs. They gave them to me, gratis, for the prior years that I needed.

Do it by hand once or twice. At least you'll *think* you understand it - and you *will* be both upside down and backwards!

Based on just what you showed, and looking up nothing, I think you're right. I may (we both may) be wrong.

My sympathies, @Edsel! Those complications just make it all worse. First time I did an NOL/1045 I did it three times with the same info and came up with three different answers (on ATX). Finally did it by myself, on paper, and then strong-armed the software to come up with *that* result (because I knew how it calculated, I decided that one was right - it had the other advantage that the result almost matched one of the three by computer). Then I took motrin and had myself a lie-down for a while, to deal with the massive headache. Either I've gotten more used to them, or Drake makes them easier. Maybe both!

I just LOVE the movie "The Princess Bride!" In the same vein are both "Undercover Blues" and "Real Genius" neither of which get the attention they deserve.

Patrick is right; the macros are HUGE time-savers and super easy to write.

Me too. He wants to ask questions, fine. Speaker is willing to answer, fine. I don't want to listen during my break time.

Please also note that the entire bottom half of the screen Judy posted gives details for reporting (asset management), dispositions (removal from service, sales, and group sales), and some state-specific fields. You can also - in the top half - access the bonus depreciation elections. Unless there's a pressing need, I elect OUT of bonus depreciation for all my clients. The state doesn't allow it, and keeping one schedule is hard enough for most clients to deal with. Telling them there are two (and then explaining why the numbers are different on the two returns) is more trouble to me than most savings are worth to them. You can choose a specific class, all classes, or a specific asset, to customize depreciation.

And you'd be wrong about that. Remember where I went to college. The *eponymous* nerd source!

Absolutely! I have one such file, on an encrypted drive, password-protected, that I use to keep the historical info for all those sites where you have to keep such records. Last time I checked, it was over 27 pages long. I've had that one file for over twenty years now. Page and a half a year?

I wouldn't store those passwords online, or on a hard drive I need the passwords to access! I do have them backed up accessibly (online and physically but not in my sock drawer) but all encrypted in some way or other.

One of my college dorms had mixed-gender bathrooms on a couple of floors. It was very weird at first, but we all got used to it. I would strongly prefer not to do that again - OTOH, my girls and I have done the "stand guard" thing by the men's room on occasion. LOL.

You've got a strange idea of adorable, but for an electronic gizmo it is..... let's say "unexceptionable" - that's a nice old-fashioned word for you.

Depends on the encryption software. Some allow folder-level encryption and some don't. Whole-disk encryption gives you a different login screen but everything is then encrypted.

That plus the nice long password! Take 'em home and stick 'em in your sock drawer. Make sure the note says "Joe & Sally" somewhere so even if it's found it looks like it's not yours.

They may have filed SFR's that included those dividends, for all you know. T/p may have lost refunds, instead of having tax liability. Or each year's div's didn't bring that year's income above std ded & exemp levels.

Sneak out 15min before the break is scheduled. Or, in a hotel, there are usually other floors with conference rooms - try those halls (scope out ahead of time).

You can still get a fax card (with phone jack) to install in your computer. You need a free slot, and you need to put a phone cord in it. Very convenient to send straight from the computer. Not so convenient if you have to manually sign something, which would then need to be scanned in. It's not always possible to add an image of a signature to a file, or (more often) to a form with boxes. Too easy to cover a box's line, and then it's obvious it's an image.

Depreciation is *always* the place to check first. Most of my conversions went through fine, but a couple had mangled dates. No numbers were wrong, a couple didn't map right and so were in the wrong spot. All very fixable, but it did mean careful compare-and-contrast. The other thing to check is capital loss carry-overs. I don't recall any issues, but I did check them all. Finally, I don't recall, at all, if year-to-year comparison went through or not. If not, it's pretty simple in Drake (COMP page, good job for an assistant) and it compares three years not two, so I like that much better.

Well generally yes, but if the bank statements disagree, then disagreeing with the IRS has to be done. We had a case a while back where the IRS got a big estimated payment and applied it to that taxpayer but NOT to the year. So a big credit was floating around at the same time they were dunning the tp for tax, penalty, and interest. Trust but verify?

Right after a pop-up test. I've never seen two in less than five minutes' time.