indyscott

I just came from assisting a client make some adjusting entries for their year end to prepare for another accountant to come do the 1120S. The other accountant, who did last year's return, had created a asset Loan to Shareholder account to hold the excess of amounts they took as dividend distributions that exceeded their earnings for the year. He'd told them that negative retained earnings would be a "red flag" to the IRS. But, he also had prepared a reversing entry on Jan 1, 2007 to shift the debit balances back to the owner's distribution accounts in the equity section. The owner was asking me if this was the "right way" to handle this. I told him to ask the other accountant who did it to begin with. I also told him I would go back to my office and "hob-nob with my fellow wizards" to see what kind of ideas they had about it. So, fellow wizards, what do you think of it? :scratch_head:

If you import your custom mini organizer, does that one then replace the regular ATX organizer?

We can't efile a 2006 1040 return anymore, right?

Yes, I'm well aware that this board is a volunteer effort, and I appreciate it greatly. I'm sure I don't know all the effort that went into setting it up, & goes into maintaining it. I was just as shocked as anyone when CCH decided to kill the old message board. My thanks to the people who organized this, and who maintain it. There's a lot of legitimate dissatisfaction expressed here on this board, and I simply wanted to say that I'm pretty pleased with the package overall.

I came to ATX from Intuit's ProSeries when the prices got too high. I've been very pleased with the ATX product. All the forms it does is impressive. All the payroll taxes, sales taxes, property taxes, etc. The only forms I've not been able to use it for are a few local Food & Beverage Tax forms. Obviously, the tech support service has been worse this year than when ATX had their own. But, this is a transition year for CCH. It's their first year with it. And between the message board, and the the ATX website I've been able to resolve the few issues I've had. It's affordable for me, I think it's a very good value. I hope to not have to make a change. There's no guarantee that Drake won't be the next one acquired by some some inept giant, and be having the same issues that ATX has had this year. If all the ATX users switch to Drake, they might be overwhelmed by the increased volume, and have problems from that.

I don't see how a girlfriend can be a Qualifying Person for HOH status, regardless of what income sources she has.

Margaret, I generally use the "Update" feature in the Return Manager. Is there a reason I should not do this? Should I be doing the updates from the ATX website instead?

Jack, Thanks. When I opened that spreadsheet, I got a warning about macros. Is there anything I s/ know about that? And, the sheet has data in it. I assume I can just zero out and replace the data. Your idea of a "simple spreadsheet" is a little different.... some of the formulas in there look not so simple to me. But, it does appear to work. thanks!

I believe that an "estate" is created for a decedent upon death. Income earned by the taxpayer T while he's alive goes on his final 1040. Income or loss earned after death goes on the estate return. It' not that hard. You can do it! ..plus you get to bill for two returns. :)

Kiplinger & TurboTax published a list of 11 most commonly overlooked tax deductions, and on their list was the add-back to basis of reinvested dividends to reduce the gain on the sale of securities. They admitted, that it wasn't exactly a "deduction", but it still fit in as a way to reduce your taxes. Anyhow, they mentioned that TurboTax has a cool automatic calculator that recomputes basis from an exact purchase date w/ reinvestment of dividends. I don't think that my slightly higher priced professional tax software from ATX has any such feature. Am I right? Is there any free web site that will perform this calculation? Scott Indy

ok, ... I got it figured out.. I had previously chosen to enter an SBBT product and I had that tab still in the return. When I deleted that tab, the efile got created fine.. The problem may have developed initially because although I'd registered for FeeCollect, I hadn't gone into the Bank Products tab in the main menu yet to push all the buttons to make the stuff appear in returns.. anyway it looks like it works now.

I think I'm getting it figured out now sort of.. I got to the FeeCollect place on the Payments/refunds tab, but I'm getting an error that I have to "decide between forms: Fee Collect and Bank SBBT Ral." .. still haven't figured out where to do that..

My office assistant got me signed up for this, and I now have a client who wants to use it, but I can't figure out how. Can someone provide or point me to some specific instructions? I have the return complete, and I can create an efile, but how do I do this FeeCollect thing?

My Client Mail slip has my firm name at the top and the client/addressee name & address in the correct spot for the two window 8.5 x 11 envelope, but my name & address for the return address spot (1st window) does not print. Can someone tell me how to get my firm name/address in the return address window spot? thanks