David1980

I've seen it once. And totally missed it (initially). Was on auto-pilot and my mind just skipped that box. Caught it on the second go around, but it was cool since return was a freebie for a friend of a friend and she understood. I like the idea of advance EIC. Then again if I could do it without paying interest or penalties I would wait until the last moment I possibly could to pay any taxes. I always tell people including customers that *my* goal is to owe $1000 each year in my "You need to adjust your withholding so you don't get another $12k refund" speech. Sometimes I convince them to adjust withholding to a refund of "only" a few thousand. I guess it's easier to save money if you're forced to through withholding, even if you're giving up earning interest on it.

Well, passed the third portion today (in about 45 minutes, the prometric gal was impressed though they probably just fake being impressed if you don't take very long. Hey, get your mind out of the gutter!) Now just to send in my $125 and wait.

One doesn't have to agree with all of the tax code (and I doubt you'll find anyone who does!) to enjoy this line of work. And someone who qualifies for EIC would be a fool to turn it down. I do the best I can for my clients. I do not always agree with the tax law but I follow it. As is often said, taxes is not about fairness.

It certainly gives a strong disincentive to earning more money & kids born into poor families are more likely to have poor families of their own. I don't think people truly have kids for the sake of getting money, but at the same time they aren't working their way out of that situation like they might if they didn't have kids & all the benefits that provides. The fact that having kids greatly increases EIC could be one basis for such an opinion. What's it top out for with no kids, 600 or 700? Give it to everyone if that's the purpose.

I'm happy my customers are getting money, but the economics of it does disgust me. It's not just EIC. It reminds me of this guy in my highschool graduating class. Star athlete, good grades, high SATs, student leadership, community service. He was the perfect student. Got something like $120k/year in scholarships and was only attending a $20k/year school so $100k of that went nowhere (I guess they must have had "runner up" people to get it.) Low income parents with kids are the same way. I speak of experience, I grew up in a welfare family. You get section 8 housing, EIC, different welfare programs at the state level, food stamps, food bank, 7 food baskets at christmas (too much turkey!) Basically everyone who creates an assistance program targets you so you get a ton of assistance. Whereas the family making $10,000 more than you lives a lower standard of living because nobody targets them for handouts. Or the single person without kids. What's the result of this? Well, on a long enough timeline rewarding people for reproducing increases the odds of low income people reproducing. Children born to poor families are likely to raise poor families of their own. It's an absolute disaster as far as economic planning.

ATTN: Software Developers, Return Transmitters and Authorized IRS e-file Providers/EROs: We are experiencing a problem with Error Reject Code 0448 rejecting returns in error. The problem is being researched. When the problem has been corrected, we will issue another Quick Alert. Error Reject Code 0448 reads: Form 1040/1040A - If taxpayer age is 70 1/2 at the end of tax year and IRA Deduction of Form 1040 (SEQ 0700) and Form 1040A (SEQ 0626) is significant, taxpayer cannot deduct any contributions to traditional IRA or treat them as nondeductible contributions for they are ineligible for IRA Deduction. ---------- This has been an IRS e-file QuickAlert

You don't need college at all to become an EA. You wouldn't need to go back to college for your CPA if you happened to already have a 4-year degree in accounting & a fifth year of college credits (some states may require a master's in accounting, it's state specific.) So for most people, the college requirement is the big limiter on CPA. You can certainly get started in taxes without being an EA or CPA. I'd suggest putting a year in at a chain type store just for the experience so you know what to expect before going out on your own.

I saw another rejection for the exact same thing, so maybe it's just a bogus reject/IRS issue. Whenever you get an age rejection, with a very limited number of exceptions, it has to do with the date of birth the IRS has on file. Normally birthdates are not transmitted. Exceptions are when using the self select PIN method for 8879 (when you enter prior year AGI), and dependents for EIC (shows on Schedule EIC). Also shows up on an 8839 I think (adoption credit.) However even if one of those applies the rejection is based on IRS files not what you transmit. So either IRS is giving you a bad rejection, or the IRS computers think you're over 70. If it rejects again try calling them, I'd love to know what they have to say about it. :)

Actually the experience requirement for CPA has really fallen. In WA state for example, tax prep is considered qualified experience. Just need 2000 hours (basically 1-year of a regular job. If all you do is taxes that's probably 3 or 4 tax seasons.) The 5-year of college credits & degree in accounting is worse.

I've passed the first two tests (the individual & business portions). If you've been doing taxes for any period of time it's probably going to be a cakewalk for you. Would of course be a good idea to get a book of some kind and do practice tests, but it's not really that complex if you understand the tax theory. Going to take third (final) test this week, which from all accounts is easiest. But it's also the most boring as near I can tell! Hard to motivate myself to study. Hopefully I can multiple guess my way through that one. Other than getting a couple letters on my business cards I'm not sure if I'll ever get any use out of it. But it's not exactly expensive and some customers might see it as a reason to stick with me instead of changing preparers.

I primarily dislike the DIY ads that basically say that now you too can preparer a complex business return without knowing a thing about taxes. Kind of implies that what we all do is plug numbers in and charge hundreds of dollars like evil money grubby devils.

Apply it to 2009 taxes & adjust withholding to compensate IMO. Who knows when they'll get the refund, this way they get the credit for it towards 2009 and can have less withheld over the year.

Be sure to tell your Sales person/whoever next time you talk to them about how awesome Ashley was. A lot of the time temp employees become perm employees through that sort of thing.

A lot of mine don't own a house though.

First question for me would be can the person be claimed as a dependent. After that, I would want to have soemthing more to verify the wages. It meets the classic EIC fraud scenario so I think 8867 due diligence would require asking more questions. Would be nice to see a bank statement or voided checks received or something. If it's like people I've known they'll claim it was all received in cash and they spent it as soon as they got it and cannot get any records from the payers. You could also look into what kind of business she does to see if the expenses (or lack thereof) make sense. Also questions to that end could verify that the income existed. If she's just a contractor for one person they would have a 1099-MISC requirement which would serve nicely (even though 1099-MISC are easily printed.) Ask enough questions and you'll scare her off if she's bogus. In fact ask any questions at all and she'll probably just find someone else willing to do it.

IntelliTax did have SQL problems. Though now that IntelliTax is dead (I think liberty still uses a form of it from years past) it should be OK. TRX offers a potentially cheaper way to get TaxWise if you want that, and recent posts indicate ATX too (but appears to have minimum # bank products.) I would say support is questionable especially if you went ATX, but can it really be any worse than CCH? :)

Does PDF factory actually encrypt anything or does it just generate a PDF? If it does encrypt, how does the recipient unencrypt the email?

Two thoughts on that. One, if you're doing something "weird" that front line support, many of which are lowly paid temps, do not have experience with it's often easier to give an answer, any answer, than to worry about finding the truth out. After all, you're probably the only guy who'll ask that question this year. If they claim it's a bank rule ask them to cite it. Where does it say that you can't? Etc. Also make clear you're willing to take a callback on it. If the impression is you need an answer and you need it now, you'll get an answer and you'll get it now (but it won't necessarily be accurate.) Finally, it could simply be that they won't support it.

I know other software lets people transmit returns sooner and then just "stores" them til the IRS is ready. I think storefront stores operate the same, get it onto a file center and then once the IRS is ready they "flood" the IRS with returns. The downside for software companies is in product training - get people transmitting early and if they're doing a RAL they want to know why the heck it isn't in yet when the IRS isn't even processing returns for a week. Where if you prevent the EF in the first place it makes annoyances for people who want to use it the way it could be but eliminates the complaints of return status inquiries before EF is even open.

Yeah, banks don't always check names. I would hope they're a bit picker when it comes to a direct debit though. As for 8888, one possibility is it was aimed at "forced bank products" when you went to a storefront store and were crazy enough to use their IRA product. I would put it as a low priority form, I've never used one. I've had married couples in-process-of-divorce ask about it, but they quickly decide not to bother when they realize if the full refund isn't funded whoever is first on the form gets more of the refund.

OK, who's the wise guy who voted Schedule R? :)

Well, that would depend. At one of my former jobs when things got tight the boss changed the schedule so that instead of working 40 hours a week we ended up working just 4 days each or 32 hours a week. Made the same rate per hour, but it resulted in lower paychecks. So one question I guess you could ask is with the company being less profitable is it taking less of the owners time as well?

Apparently some HP printers don't work as there's around 15 on the printers not recommended list.

It's been years... but it seems like zone alarm used to have the ability to setup different zones. If it's still that way, you would probably need to make a "trusted" zone for your local network and then zone alarm could protect against traffic to/from the internet.

I think one area for expansion would be to partner with the tax software companies themselves. Not sure how open they are to that. If you became a preferred support partner willing to do the tech jobs the company wasn't you could get into a nice position if they were willing to send people your way. Of course the companies would probably prefer just the opposite. Instead of telling customers the benefits of someone else's software pretend it didn't exist. Then again, maybe the software companies are not willing to get into that sort of agreement anyway in which case it wouldn't matter.