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TonyP

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    Golf & More Golf with a little bit of Taxes

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  1. I'm currently a CPA registered to practice in Florida through December 31, 2015. This is my last year to practice as a CPA, I'm kinda retiring, with my client workload projected to diminish from 225 clients to no more than 20 clients next year. Those projected retained clients are mostly "nice little old-ladies" in assisted living or nursing homes; I anticipate that nominal workload to further decrease in future years. Because of my workload decrease, I decided to forgo completing any CPE courses and will let my CPA certification lapse into "retired" status effective 12/31/2015. I assume my status will be as an Unenrolled Practitioner, while in that status what are my options to maintain my EFIN and PTIN for 2016, preparing & e-filing 2015 tax year returns? Will I nevertheless be required to obtain some type of CPE credits?
  2. I switched to Drake, love it. The learning curve isn't that difficult, it's just super-fast compared to ATX-2012. The learning curve is also helped significantly by customer support. Two telephone rings and a real human answers rather than going through a computer-menu. Glad I switched, the view/print manager can be easily configured so the client print sequence rolls-out that way you want, no more shuffling of paper to organize it for presentation. The conversion process from ATX to Drake worked easily, and I paid $1,050 for the product, a couple of hundred less than ATX, who didn't offer any discount following last year's fiasco.
  3. Well I'm and old ATX'er who switched to Drake for the 2013 tax year. Looked at the Form-Based data entry tutorial for 1040s, looks easy to get accustomed-to,... not much different from ATX, if not better. Most of my workload is 1040s with a few 1120Ss & 1041s so it shouldn't be much of a hassle to get acquainted. Has to be better than ATX last year.
  4. Well, got the conversion to work. The problem being for some reason Drake UPS'ed a mailer which included a conversion disk for CCH Prosystem fx rather than just plain o'le ATX to me. I sorta looked at the disc that said "CCH 2013 Conversion Package" thinking it was the ATX conversion disc. After discussing with the Drake support, I noticed that it was for the wrong software. Not sure why Drake did this to me, I downloaded the correct Conversion file from their software support site and all of the files automatically converted. All is well.
  5. I bit the bullet and switched to Drake, I'm now going to convert my 2012 client data from ATX to Drake. I'm trying to find where on my Win7 64-Bit Hard-Drive are my 2012 client return data? I looked at preferences on the 2012 ATX program and found that my back-ups exist in this location: C:ProgramDataCCH Small Firm ServicesATX2012Backup . Is that the location that the Drake conversion should go to or is another location? I used the default settings for all ATX activities when loading their software a year ago. I found a folder in: C:Program Files (x86)CCH Small Firm ServicesATX2012 that contain numerous folders & files along with the ATX 2012 program, but I can't seem to locate the client folder file. Drakes' Conversion program has a default location for the 2012 ATX client files as: C:wfx32client but it can't find any client data on my computer at that location. Any assistance will be greatly appreciated.
  6. Tried to get in the website, most of the time kept getting kicked-out for a time-out error after entering username & password. Got past that a couple of times, and got in, however received another time-out error after clicking-on the "Renew" button. Tried contacting their 1-877 number, but got placed on hold for about 20 minutes, I then gave-up. I'll try next week. Maybe the same folks who designed the Healthcare Website also designed the PTIN Website.
  7. Jack, send me a copy of your report, my email is: [email protected] Thanks, sorry that I'm kinda late with this, but haven't done too much tax work lately.
  8. What's the procedure after August 11th to obtain a tax transcript? Do we Call E-Services 1-866-255-0654, go thru 3 or 4 menus, be on hold waiting for a Human at IRS, FAX the 2848 to the Human and somehow get the transcript. Or do we FAX the transcript to the IRS Human who will then input the 2848 into CAF, wait two weeks or so for CAF to process the 2848, then go into E-Services to get the transcript? Seems a bit cumbersome.
  9. I'm running ATX on a stand-alone gaming computer, the OS is Win7 Pro with a 3.20 gigahertz Intel Core i7 960 processor along with 12G of RAM. I need all that power to run MS Flight Simulator in an acceptable fashion. Not having a problem with 12.6,.. it still runs slow and back-up takes awhile to finally close, maybe 12.7 will improve it, saw some mixed comments on the ATX board about 12.7 . Might try 12.7 after a few more assessments by others.
  10. Hopefully the beta testers will express an opinion & description of their experiences before the Dec. 1 time-frame. The other factor is cost, if ATX is unwilling to provide a substantive discount to the users of their 2012 software for the pain/suffering encountered, I'll not renew and stick with Drake. Right now it's leaning heavily for me to switch to Drake, my confidence level & trust is very low with ATX.
  11. I learned of Parker by receiving mailer describing their services, I'm tempted but did not subscribe to the mailer. Per the literature received, Parker does not provide a demo but they state a 30-day money back guarantee. I don't subscribe to a research service, I retired from IRS management about 10 years ago. I'm fortunate, having a close associate that served as my Technical Advisor during many of those years, he retired about 2 years ago; so if I run into a technical situation beyond my knowledge level, I give him a call. He usually emails or calls me back within hours or a few days. He also has several contacts within IRS's Chief Counsel Office. Like I said, I'm fortunate to have such a personal contact regarding tax law research and interpretations.
  12. The new version of Klienrock is Parker Tax, started by James Levey, the guy who also started Klienrock. A one-year online subscription can be purchased for $267. A side comment: I decided to opt for Drake which is offering their 2013 program for $1,095 if purchased before June1, 2013. The price increase incrementally to $1,495 if purchased around Nov./Dec. The feature that sold me was seeing Drake demonstrated at a seminar in Orlando and the fact that my $1,095 can be fully refunded if requested before December 1, 2013. So if ATX can miraculously demonstrate that their product as been fixed, and that they can offer their product to past users for less than Drake; I can then re-up with ATX and get my refund from Drake. To I think this can happen, highly probable, they may not.
  13. Today, which is May 16th as I'm writing this post. The seminar presenter, Jarret, said that he had an overflow crowd yesterday in Tampa. The attendance in Orlando was also an overflow, close to 60 attendees. The percentage breakout was about 40% each from Taxworks and CCH/ATX, the remaining being various other software users or new preparers. Pretty good & knowledgeable presentation, Drake is menu based rather than form based like ATX, but seems to work extremely fast when demonstrated on his computer which was on Internet connected to Drake. That made it a little slower, but it was still extremely fast compared to ATX. It's not that difficult or time consuming to switch views from the menu form to that tax return after entering data on the menu form. The presenter (Jarret) sold most of us, including me. Jarret said telephone customer support calls were answered by a human within 15-20 seconds, not sure if that was just sales talk, but someone in the audience who switched during the tax season said that was his experience (don't know if that was a planted Drake user, with a planted response, but if it was, he was a good actor). The price for the full package if purchased before June 1 is $1,095, it goes up either monthly or bi-monthly to $1,495 if purchased around November 2013. But the good news is that you can back-out before December 1, and get your full-refund. That kinda sold me to get on-board with Drake, I can back-out if ATX can somehow convince me that all is well for 2013, and ATX betters Drake's price buy at least $300 before the December 1 cut-off date.. My offer from ATX for 2013 was $1,272 or within a couple of dollars what I paid for the garbage 2012 program.
  14. Hey Jack, I could care less what damn year it is. If the 2011 product was more effective that what we got for the 2012 product, I sure don't mind going back to the 2011 product. You can have all of the "advances in the world" but if they work like a piece of garbage, you can wallow in it. IMHO, ATX was a hell-of-lot better back in the old days, before CCH, than what it is now. If you want to go forward to 2013 with the crap we have, feel free to do so. If it doesn't happen I can adapt,... I can choose a different software.
  15. I'm not considering Taxwise, which I believe is another CCH product, hopefully Drake has the feature to import CSV or Excel files into the 8949. If it doesn't, that would be a large negative to move towards Drake.
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