Don in Upstate NY

But you cannot file those forms with the IRS because they are not the right color! The 1099-MISC and 1096 sent to the IRS must be RED.

Is the AGI on the return correct ($2,600)?

The question was about EIC. There is no support requirement for EIC. Unless there is something else we don't know about, he qualifies for about $3,400 in EIC.

No. TaxCut is H&R Block. TaxAct is Second Story Software, which was the company founded by many of the old Parsons gang after PTE (Personal Tax Edge?) was bought out.

I would think not, at least for the qualifying children, since there is no requirement that the parent provide ANY support.

The IRS says ... Easements The amount you receive for granting an easement is generally considered to be a sale of an interest in real property. It reduces the basis of the affected part of the property. If the amount received is more than the basis of the part of the property affected by the easement, reduce your basis in that part to zero and treat the excess as a recognized gain. From Pub 551

Maybe I am missing something, but my version of OrrTax (the 2007 Windows version) only has three boxes on the C to check for exemption from SE tax: 1. A minister exempt from SE tax, 2. A former insurance salesman with termination pay exempt from SE tax, or 3. Exempt from SE tax due to filed and approved Form 4029. I see no box related to age (nor to income as a notary or foreign SE income covered by a treaty). Where is it?

TRX markets IntelliTax aka OrrTax. I'm trying it this year. Found several bugs when I converted my 2006 ATX returns to TRX. Things like the 6251 showing an adjustment for AMT depreciation on assets linked to a 2106, and several of the NY forms where dates were apparently hard-coded in previous years instead of being relative to the current tax year. It also uses the Microsoft SQL engine so it can have installation and maintenance problems. On the plus side, they did release the e-file versions of the 1040 and NY before the season started. The knowledge base is very good, and technical support has different people for computer and tax problems.

And they have a multi-year contract to provide TaxWise to a very important customer - the Internal Revenue Service. The IRS uses TaxWise in their walk-in offices and also for their volunteer preparer groups VITA and TCE. Instructions for the use of TaxWise are integrated into the IRS training manuals. See page 1 of Pub 678.

I'm happy with AVG

If only it were so! The regular 1040 program ($395) comes with three states but NO free efiles. The 1040 Office ($595) come with all states and 100 free efiles.

There are actually three different cases to consider: If your client receives a rebate check for LESS than the amount of his 2007 school taxes, and DOES NOT itemize, you do nothing. If your client receives a rebate check for LESS than the amount of his 2007 school taxes, and DOES itemize, you deduct the net school tax on Schedule A. If your client receives a rebate check for MORE than the amount of his 2007 school taxes, you enter the excess as other income on line 21. [Note for non-New Yorkers - the rebate checks mailed out in late 2007 are rebates on the 2007 school taxes. The rebate may exceed the tax paid because multiple (senior, star and veterans) school tax credits often reduce the school tax to zero. The rebate calculation ignores the veterans and senior credits.]

One legitimate deduction that is missing is ammunition for pistol practice if he/she is required to maintain competence.

Roth 1099-R format There are special Roth codes that will appear in box 7 ... Code Q - Qualified Roth distribution. Meets both age and holding period. Code T - Roth distribution that meets age requirement but with unknown holding period. Code J - Non-qualified Roth distribution - does not meet age requirement Code J8 - Correction distribution taxable this year Code JP - Correction distribution taxable prior year Interesting, distributions from a Roth IRA need NOT have the IRA box checked (from 1099-R instructions)

You missed the best part! It wasn't the butler after all. It was the uncle's evil twin brother who had saved his DNA sample in a turkey baster under the false floor of Section 1031.

For this year, do like you'd do for paper - "See attachment" on the Schedule D and then send in the attachment with the 8453. Can not use PIN e-file.

Correct. Starting in January the 8453 will only be used as a transmittal cover letter for certain attachments. It will NOT be signed by anyone. See http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-dft/f8453--dft.pdf

And that is certainly a good way to make sure all the carry-overs carry over. And you can also run a tape to make sure that all the arithmetic calculations shown on the form are correct. You could even do the return manually, and then use the IRS fill-in .pdf forms to print it out (like I'm doing right now for a 990) Then compose your client letter using Word and you're done. You could do all these things, and you SHOULD do all these things, if you're not confident that your chosen software has done them correctly. The challenge in using MAX, or ANY software, is knowing what it does and doesn't do correctly. Since no software is perfect, bring information about limitations or problem areas to light is actually a service to current and potential users. The more comprehensive and automatic your program is, and the more you rely on that program, the harder it is to achieve the confidence that all is done correctly. A simple example -- the optional sales tax deduction on Schedule A. In TaxWise this is a manual operation. The program calculates the total income and then you go to the printed tables in the Instructions for Schedule A to select the deduction for your state, family size and sometimes county. It's a pain, but you have the correct number. On the other extreme is OrrTax. You enter your state and the local rate and the program gives you the number. Automatic, easy, and WRONG for much of New York State, because NY has different tables for different countries, even though their tax rate is the same. ATX is also automatic and asks which NY table to use. Automatic, almost as easy, and (after you verify a few) confidently correct for NY. But how do you trust it for all states without checking? A FUNDAMENTAL confidence problem I see in almost all software is the inability to verify that the numbers on the printed return correspond to the numbers in the electronic return. Drake is/was probably the best in this area because they were creating their .IRS files directly from the .pdf files of the printed return. ATX had problems in this area several years ago when some of the e-file numbers were taken from worksheets that didn't necessarily correspond to the printed final results. (One that caught me was using a negative number on the charitable contributions worksheet for value received on a college football luxury box donation. No error message, but the printed and e-file totals were different.) Given that you cannot verify what is actually sent in on an e-file, and rejecting the "well then don't e-file" response as rather unrealistic for a long term solution, it seems that you must ultimately rely on the reputation and perceived level of quality control exercised by your software vendor. Making that decision in an unemotional business manner seems to be beyond most of us.

The link (at least for 1040s) is on the IRS site at http://www.irs.gov/efile/article/0,,id=166050,00.html third item down.

Your other option is to hand carry them to the Buffalo walk-in office along with a cover sheet listing all the individual returns. Have them receipt stamp the cover sheet for your records. NY works the same way. (At least they did in Syracuse with a six year stack of unfiled returns.)

The link seems to be keyed to each individual user, and apparently won't work after a response is submitted. If you want to try, my link was https://ask17.synovate.net/mrIWeb/mrIWeb.dl...password=944951

Yes. I looks like a harmless marketing survey. Asking for general opinions and feelings on ATX and other major software vendors. Very little substance IMHO.

Or maybe it's simply because the old instructions (Use Form 4137, cross out the word TIPS and write in WAGES) weren't compatible with e-file.

And those users include all the IRS walk-in offices, and the IRS TCE and VITA volunteers. In fact the IRS textbook for teaching the volunteers how to prepare taxes (Pub 678) is filled with TaxWise screen shots. I predict that TaxWise will continue to exist in its present form longer than ATX will, given that both of them serve the small preparer market and both were acquired by CCH last season.

One product that's been mentioned before is OrrTax (aka IntelliTax) Forms oriented, form on right, list of forms on left, drill down to worksheets. If you buy directly from OrrTax ( http://www.orrtax.com/ ) it's priced roughly the same as MAX. However they also sell thru distributors and resellers who put their own logo on the product.[1] One of these is Tax Refund Xpress ( http://www.trxalliance.com/ ) who is selling the whole package including unlimited e-file for $299 + $39 s/h. I signed up, and have been playing with the 2006 product. My initial impression is positive. They have a conversion from ATX, and it worked well - including the depreciation which came across correctly. There are some things that OrrTax does better - the EIN database, a zip-code database, the smooth handling of the various NY pension exclusions. Some things are poorer - tax exempt dividends which are also partially state exempt. Some thing are just dead wrong - AMT depreciation adjustment for assets used on a 2106. I haven't had the occasion to call customer support because OrrTax has a great on-line knowledge base that solved all my technical problems. As a matter of fact, the Tax Refund Xpress tech rep called me this week to see how I was doing. All in all it looks like a package I can live with at a price much less than ATX. I guess only time will tell[2]. Don [1] Back in the olden days, ATX licensed their entity programs to the TaxCut for Business product line. Th box said TaxCut but the help files and error messages still said ATX. [2] I actually used the DOS version of OrrTax about ten years ago in a store-front RAL environment. It was a solid product then, but limited to 1040 returns. The conversion to Windows and entity returns was a disaster. Fortunately they continued to also distribute the DOS version under the name 'OrrTax Classic'