Catherine

Mainly people "buy" a certain number of hours but they are required to take courses and take exams to get those hours. Without doing that, the money was wasted and there are no hours to show for it. I've sat through mind-numbingly BORING live seminars, fallen asleep at times (hey, there's - or was - a picture of Jack crashed out at a seminar somewhere, I recall; it was very funny), and been aggravated at pathetically slow pace on others. Some online classes have been stupid, some fabulous. Some self-study has been not worth the effort to click through it, and some has been terrific. I have not found good classes, that appeal to me, on the new law as applied to corp's and p-ships. I want some, and figured I'd ask. The worth to ME is in what I learn - and I don't much give a hoot as to the style (self, webinar, live, trapeze), as long as it's well-done.

Like Judy, I also switched mid-stream in February 2013 during the 2012-season debacle. Yes, the first few returns saw me frustrated and calling support for pretty minor items. However, running two simultaneous programs would have made it take longer for me to become facile with Drake. Hold your nose and jump in! The water's really nice down here, and your friends from the community are here to help you. Plus the Drake lifesaver (tech support by phone) is superb and in easy reach.

@Terry D SO sorry to hear of your aggravating troubles! I do hope you can get through to an English-speaking grown-up at non-equitable f-x (see, I'm trying not to be foul-mouthed/typed) before your deadline. YES, there should be retribution from the company causing the problem. And I hope you get some good sleep! I think that at times we take an incident and then start exploring options - like an intellectual puzzle. That doesn't help the original poster, though. I've been on the receiving end of a few of those over the years, myself. Glad that you did get what you needed and I'm not surprised at all that it was from Judy.

That's easy. If YOU didn't install it, it's not there. It does not come with your computer. That was a more general warning for others; sorry to have terrified you!

Never, ever, EVER use their whole-disk encryption with partition software. Ask me how I know - closest I've ever come to a stress-induced heart attack/stroke/breakdown. EIGHT DAYS without a computer. In mid-March. Several years ago. I could still cower under my desk, just thinking about it... It works perfectly, until it doesn't. At which point you have a boat anchor instead of a computer.

Hi folks - Anyone have any recommendations for self-study CPE on the new tax law's effects on partnerships and c-corporations? Thanks!

Not that it helps you NOW, but I've always made sure there are at least TWO user accounts with admin privileges on any computer. They may be "Catherine" and "Catherine2" or something. That way, you have the option of logging in to the *other* account to try and fix whatever mess has been made. In fact, that completely saved my bacon a good decade ago when my main machine seized up three weeks before the end of season. I didn't have it set up; a friend of my husband who is an IT guy came over after work and spent hours (first trying to fix the mess and then) setting up a new user account and just copying all the pertinent data over. Ugh, it was nasty. But it worked! What I don't know is how to do that with encryption already on the disk.

And the procedure is to do it correctly (with all changes incorporated) on the current-year return that will go with the 3115. ALL changes to income are on the 3115 and added as "other income" or "other expense" (whichever it comes to; I've seen it both ways) to the current-year return. Don't forget that in Sch C returns, if it's income, that add'l income is subject to SE tax.

"The IRS" - remove the space and extra capital letters: "Theirs" - they think it's all theirs! (Note: JOKE not political, in case that wasn't clear.)

Might be possible - for instance, a wire transfer was initiated for a gift late on Friday, completed on Monday (say, funds left gifter's bank but not posted to giftee's bank), and the person died on Sunday. But no gift can be initiated post-death. Just bequests.

I agree completely. One of my partners asked why I was bothering with a balance sheet for a tiny company, and told him a Reader's Digest Condensed edition of @Edsel's excellent explanation. He got it immediately and agrees. (He does them all the time, but had not had such a tiny company in-house before and knew only that it wasn't require to be sent with the return.)

The answer is the same, but the FMV would be different. Why? Because facts and circumstances are different. In one, we have a situation where the scrap dealer is willing to fetch but at a lower price/FMV. In the other, the situation is that the seller is willing to haul. That means the value is different - the scrap dealer then has to contend with the chance the seller goes elsewhere, and the dealer has no costs associated with his purchase. So the FMV goes up. But in this second circumstance, we have a $600 sale with $100 expense of sale. Basis TBD depending on if it was income-producing, or personal, property inherited.

On another forum, the standard advice was to double their bill every year until they left or you were happy. One guy wrote back, saying he'd inherited a "problem client" (acctg and tax) who drove him NUTS always calling with questions. Annual fee was $1250. So he double it to $2500. Still drove him nuts. Doubled again to $5,000 and they were still annoying. Doubled it yet *again* to $10,000 - and now they're some of his favorite clients, with whom he is always happy to chat! The fee just wasn't commensurate with what they needed and wanted. How many times do we put up with stuff we should be charging for, and resent it, when clients might be happy to pay more? (Or walk away, with us waving energetically behind them to hurry them along.) Make sure the ones you are firing are really PITA's that you don't want at any price. Else try hiking the price to the level they annoy you, and see. One guy said some years ago that if you double your price and lose half the clients, you're making the same money for half the work.

Your government at play! *What* a pack of idiots. Sigh.

It IS there, Naveen. However please note that (at least for MA) Drake does NOT provide the state form. However, in MA that's a dead-simple one-page form that takes about five minutes with a pdf editor to fill in.

And make sure to take them OFF the list for new season client organizers!

Hard enough for him to remember his name!

If you want to keep them, then tell them right now that they ARE going on extension and that your fee will be substantially more due to the state-to-state interactions. And to make an estimated payment or two, to avoid underpaying.

Maybe we should make a recording and set it on a loop. Clients start to complain, hit the "play" button and sit back.

Par for the course!

We got a notice - I forget for what - from the IRS for a deceased client some years ago, over something resolved years earlier than that. Yakking about non-response (ignoring letters we'd sent about the resolved situation) and threatening to do something. I sent the new address - cemetery name, address, and plot number - as the forwarding address. Never heard back...

I figured it was auto-UNcorrect! That's certainly caught me more than a couple of times.

I do the opposite - I have the client keep tax years utterly separate. Even when it means getting a refund and sending a separate check in for nearly the same amount. Why? Because if something is amiss and the IRS changes the refund amount, now you have dragged another tax year into the mess. The year that did not get the expected refund, and the year that did not get the expected estimate tax payments. Neither is wrong, just a difference in style. But to my mind, keeping the years separate is worth the slight extra hassle.

Congratulations! Please keep stopping by to chat with us. I sold 85% of my practice last December to some folks I've known for years. Most of the "client" stories I've told this year are from that batch. I've been working with my friends to make sure the transition goes well. Plus I dove in to help (at their request) when two people came down with the flu in March. All I kept were family, some close friends, and a few elderly clients (who, sad to say, are *not* a long-term concern) for whom a transition would have been difficult. Retirement doesn't mean you have to go away from your friends here. Heaven will still be a while off...

When that happens with our clients, we include a copy of the letter with the re-filed return. Hoping (probably futilely) that whoever sees that will at chagrined, not that anything will change. Those letters (e-file acks too) can come in handy, especially to refute penalty assessments for non-filing.