David1980

Test efile? Heh. Jan 16th is the first day for efile. Note that they have an early e-file as well which you could say "tests" the system (limited number of returns but they are real returns.) ATX obviously isn't participating in early e-filing. IRS efile calender: (Doesn't have anything about early efile though. I think that starts Jan 9, but doesn't affect us anyway.) http://www.irs.gov/taxpros/providers/artic...=174255,00.html

I'm not sure about California, but the IRS views withholding as paid on time regardless of when it was withheld. So you could have 0 withholding for the first 8 months of the year and then have an employer withhold a really high amount the final 4 months and get away without a penalty.Allows you to do things like check withholding against estimated tax in September and adjust withholding to cover it whereas if you were making estimated payments there would be a penalty. So if I were to guess, I'd guess CA's change would apply to estimated payments only and not withholding.

I like forms view. I would not complain if you gave me the ability to create custom template/worksheets to fill in some of that information. For example I could create a template for a HOH/EIC/Dependents/W-2 and put just the fields I need for that return on my template and then have the template carry it to the right places on the forms. When someone else designs the worksheet it never seems to be something I like. They make design choices that make me wonder... or don't apply to my clients.

I would hope if I had a year I could get myself to almost 0 profit I would consider it a bad year and expect to make more the next. If that were the case, it would probably be more helpful to have deductions in the higher profit year where I might be in a higher tax bracket.

It was my understanding that this product is being done through HR Block bank instead of HSBC. While they are using HSBC for their normal refund bank products. (from their webpage.)

I am to some extent as well. Well, no more than I am of any other software really. But what I mean is that if the primary reason to use some piece of software is that it's open source that's really no reason at all. I need the software to do the job and the licensing doesn't much matter on that. That said, I do use a lot of open source software. Mozilla Firefox is a piece that a lot of people use. I also tend to use Open Office on many of my machines because I don't need MS office or the cost (many avoid the cost by pirating the software which I avoid doing.) I have a file server on Linux. I use peazip for creating zip files (instead of the most commonly "use trial version indefinitely" system my friends use of winzip). So if rchinchilla's group can put out a good piece of software for the 2009 or 2010 or whatever tax year I'll give it a serious look and if it's awesome well, I might use it. The fact that it is or isn't open source isn't a big consideration for me.

The professional software can't even get that one right all the time. And if there's any AMT numbers to carry forward, good luck...

I agree, reminds me of this other tax preparer in the area here who is always going off about how if something is exceedlingly rare the software should assume the most common scenario and allow for adjustment. IE, if 99% of people do not have foreign property tax then just auto-carry it to the standard deduction and allow an adjustment for that 1%. For what it's worth some other software companies went that way, perhaps with a review message to adjust it if the amount does include foreign property tax.

My assumption (which could be wrong) was they already had decided on certain forms and that we were only voting on a list of additional forms they might add. Basically helping to prioritize the "what to add next" list. If I'm wrong and they don't have a 1040 or some other basic forms that would be pretty useless.

I'm more of an efficiency guy. I like the diagnostics as much as the next person but they're limited. Diagnostics just can't possibly predict every "what if" scenario or prepare the return for me, so I have to know taxes either way (and I'm very glad of that, if the software could do it for me I'd be out of a job!) So I put the efficiency a little higher on what matters to me. If I have to spend 3 hours on a basic return to find a certain data entry field I am not a happy person. The software should allow me to quickly and efficiently enter all the information and preferably offer time saving tools (let me keep everything in computer files so I can go paperless and I don't have to waste time shuffling physical papers and folders around the office.)

The 8888 form instructions specifically state "You cannot request a deposit of your refund to an account that is not in your name (such as your tax preparer’s own account)." I think the thought when they created the form was people would use it for putting a portion of their refund into a brokers account or something.

I voted my 10 in the poll. Sch D - Very common Sch E - Very common Sch F - Not common for me, but in farm areas probably common Sch H - Not too common Sch J - Done one once, but probably more common in farm/fishing areas. Sch R - I've never met anyone who's ever been able to use this. 1116 - Not too common since you can avoid filing it most of the time 2106 - Very commonly filled out, (much less often useful since the 2% haircut - but the clients like seeing it.) 2120 - I've never used 4136 - Somewhat common 8396 - I've never used one, had a lot of people ask but it ends up they had normal home mortgage interest and never received a mortgage credit certificate from government unit or agency under a qualified mortgage credit certificate program. A lot of people that ask were under the assumption this was an alternative to taking it on Schedule A and that anyone with a home could use it. 8615 - Somewhat common 8824 - Relatively common 8835 - I've never been able to use it. 8846 - Never used it. 8882 - Never used it. 9465 - Somewhat common 8908 - Never used it. Have used the 5695 not to be confused with the 8908. 6198 - Common. Should be more common. Probably one of the most commonly missed forms for people with investments in partnerships or s-corporations. (I always check prior year return for new clients.) Not required if there really are no amounts not at risk but most of the time there are if it's an investment thing for the taxpayer. 8888 - Not common. I have seen it (ab)used by some in an attempt to do a free "RAC" by depositing preparer fees to preparer bank. Form is not for that... Some of those would differ depending on who your target customer is and where you live (I obviously don't do too many business returns past a C or farmers.) Schedule R though, I'd love to see someone actually manage to get this credit. Are there any stats on the annual number of each form filed with the IRS anywhere?

The bank itself might have a limit on what you can charge as a RAL/RAC fee. Seems to be that Santa Barbara was $40. I don't know anything about Chase though. (The banks also may have a "maximum total fees" as well, think that was somewhere between $500 and $1000. Hopefully anyone with that complex of a return is smart enough to not get a RAL.)

So the estate's tax year started in 2007 and ended in 2008 right? For that, you want to file a 2007 tax return (but make sure to put in correct fiscal year info on the top.) The information is available in the 1041 instructions http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/i1041.pdf page 9 left column right where it talks about "Period covered." So you are in the right year tax software. Business returns have something like til the end of the year. I don't see why an estate return would be different, but I don't konw. Do you know what the reject error code you got was?

I think TRX is having to deal with the same support people at TaxWise the rest of the people have to deal with unfortunately. They were doing product conversions to TRX right up to the announcement by IntelliTax so I doubt they had much time to plan for the change. Though they were offering TaxWise for the 2008 tax year for a long time so the staff should be pretty well trained on the product at least. I think once you get past the administration problems between TRX and UTS it'll end up working out pretty good.

The initial install CD is basically worthless without the updates. As far as I know IntelliTax never sent out archive CDs unless you specifically asked your sales person for one. Since it was available on the website or by calling support for something like 10 years prior it wasn't a big deal. I don't know if TRX sent out something more in prior years or not. Really the safest bet is to get prior year TaxWise software and do any amendments or returns in that, as the support for IntelliTax just doesn't look very good. What you might consider doing for all your IntelliTax returns in prior years is to print all of them to PDF, including worksheets (depreciation, etc.) The PDF archive at least doesn't depend on specific software and odds are you're not going to find prior year IntelliTax software easily. And if it breaks you're SOL.

The only thing on the letter that would be of interest is the fact IntelliTax users were not given ATX as an option, but everyone should know that by now. ATX is closer to IntelliTax than TaxWise, so it would have made more sense for a smoother transition of those customers unless there's some reason they don't want to expand their ATX base. It is kind of expensive maintaining two products that do the same thing in the eyes of corporate bigwigs. Get everyone on TaxWise and you basically cut your dev team in 1/2 and can reduce support or hire (or outsource) to cheaper labor as they do not need to know as much. As far as product enhancements, if it is true that they're pushing everyone to TaxWise the sales is probably more in tune with what the improvements are on TaxWise. It would be interesting to call and ask what the improvements to TaxWise are and see if they're more knowledgeable on that. On the K-1 carry over, in the programs that had it you often had to go in and manually fix things. For example an item on the K-1 that could go to multiple locations depending upon the nature of that item is not likely to get where it needs to go correctly without a manual adjustment and it's easy to overlook that when the program is "doing it for you" automatically.

Assuming it's an individual return you can't efile either year. Basically last day to efile individual returns is October 15th (+5 days for returns you transmit and reject and need to be fixed to go through.) Eventually when modernized efile takes over we'll all be able to efile something like 3 years of returns. But that's not til 2010 or later. :(

The reason most mobile home parks don't market it as a tax write off is because it's just nonredeemable ground rent, and not redeemable ground rent. Redeemable is an important word. Basically it's called a rent but is really more like a vehicle lease in that there's a provision in the agreement to buy the land for a set price after some period. I think B3's requirement that the right must exist "by virtue of State or local law" rules out most all states and localities since it's not required by law in most places. Here's the definition from the section.

This "credit" is probably not going to hurt too much in 2009 on 2008 tax returns (other than the abuse, probably will end up having lots of fraud like EIC does, but that shouldn't affect preparers too much.) It will become a greater issue in future years, especially when you have a new client come in during the repayment period and they don't mention being in repayment. Or the client sells their home without consulting the preparer and then can't afford to pay back the balance of the credit. I imagine lots of IRS letters and refund adjustments will happen. It will sure be a joy when they call asking "How come my refund is $500 less than you said!"

I know some of the common depreciation things that conversion have problems with in general are AMT prior year depreciation, state depreciation if different, 150DB or SL methods (sometimes gets converted over as 200DB), MQ vs HY, listed property. There may be other issues as well depending what you're converting from. I'd assume you are doing TRX OrrTax to TaxWise (only thing that makes sense for this forum). Probably you would see problems with things like depreciation for an OIH on Form 2106 (since it's not the most common item and was changed in the 2007 software.) Might also check prior year depreciation on items when using/not using the "Calculate prior year depreciation" feature in TRX OrrTax. Oh, and prior year depreciation for vehicles where some years were standard miles. I'd just do a check on a few items as far as dates and amounts to satisfy myself it's coming over properly. Then when preparing the 2008 returns any "weird" items that could be considered uncommon (amortization?) I'd check at that point. Someone who's done a TRX/OrrTax conversion to TaxWise would have a better idea of the specific issues for that conversion. For sure see if there's a report or help file showing what is supported in the conversion. As far as I know almost noone converts information for the AMT credit for example so it would be nice to know what all is expected to convert so that you know what you need to do manually if it existed on the 2007 return.

Dustin of TRX already replied to both the other thread on this part and also the thread in the TRX forum.

They're definitely getting pushed to TaxWise. ATX has only been mentioned in customer communications in a "Hey this company also owns ATX". Here's an excerpt of an email I received today as a customer. As a side note, it's interesting to note Drake also sent out an email today, probably went to all prospects, including information about CCH buying IntelliTax and of course suggesting they go with Drake for 2008. Excerpt from IntelliTax email:

If you mean IntelliTax, yes. Basically UTS bought IntelliTax's customers - the software development ceased and nothing will be released in 2008 so none of the employees are needed.

See thread at http://www.atxcommunity.com/index.php?showtopic=3399 Probably all TRX/IntelliTax customers wills simply get TaxWise instead. Err, topic is misleading. TRX did not sell to UTS. TRX however sold IntelliTax software and IntelliTax is sold to UTS.