Catherine

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.

Very true to both! Not that we don't appreciate you, Jack - but you've been open with us, therefore we know more about you than perhaps you wanted us to know. I have also avoided W10 and will continue to do so on my machines for as long as I can. My practice has always been to delay installing updates until plenty of other people have done so and there have been no sudden screeches about system instability or printer drivers suddenly ceasing to function (always around April 8th, of course).

jack wants to bank where you do!

The day the IRS (or any large bureaucracy of any kind) operates in a sensible fashion, I will need smelling salts. I remember the tale, and sympathize! I have also eaten the time and effort to fix quite a number of errors over the years.

Never heard of VirusTotal - I'll have to look that up. Thanks, @Medlin Software!

that's the truth!

Gee, I've been saying this since the new tables came out. It was obvious that the new amounts were too low. The cynical side of my brain says it's deliberate, so that next April people will be angry about a tax cut. Because who - outside of my clients, who are drilled and drilled and drilled on "how much they get to keep" on Line 60-whatever - notices the total tax? They just want to know the refund amount. "Whaddya mean I owe! I *always* get refunds!" will be the cry across the land next year, except for people who asked us (as in tax pros, not my company) what to do and then followed our instructions on withholdings.

A good idea regardless of what software is used. I should think that all vendors have those download pages (I know that Drake does).

You can pass a TAX to affect the entirety of the current year. Increase or decrease. What is NOT allowable is to enforce penalties on entities for not making payments towards a tax that did not yet exist. Probably includes the interest, as well, but I would not swear to that.

I see a class action lawsuit based on it being against both the US Constitution and (to my knowledge) all state constitutions that ex post facto (after the fact) laws are NOT allowed. The feds/states may NOT treat as transgressions actions that were legal at the time made.

Ain't it just!

Ain't Judy just the BEST?!

While refunds older than 3 years are forfeit, on occasion they will apply those amounts to later-year taxes due. It doesn't hurt to ask.