Lion EA

Do you have enough pasture land to accommodate your tax practice?!

Use your OCD. Clean and organize your office, schedule courses, touch base with all your biz clients to remind them of deadlines, tackle payroll taxes. Especially this year, use your tax projector software to do a "check-up" on your individual clients. Are they withholding enough under the new tables, or will they have unexpected balances due or lower refunds for 2018. Create new Forms W-4 for your clients. Schedule an appointment (in person or phone or...) with each client to talk about the new tax laws specific to each, such as W-4 withholding, 20% biz passthrough deduction, anything that your clients need to know about their own situations, personal and biz. And, schedule yourself personally, not just business/courses/appointments, but schedule your doctor/dentist/eye appointments and exercise times and holidays/vacations, including shopping to be ready for holidays/vacations and time to try something new to see if it works for you (could be yoga or running that actual marathon). And, schedule a day/time each week to check in here to report on your progress. Have a calendar with the right amount of activity for you, well scheduled in advance, so you can feel comfortable and prepared looking at it and not have gaps to cause panic, only gaps you scheduled for a purpose. I read that Martha Stewart would sit on a plane every 1 January returning from her holidays and schedule all her doctor appointments for the year. Don't know how that worked from a plane on a holiday, but at least she had her working list ready to go! And, my daughter had six months scheduled out when she started training for a half marathon by joining a training group that included scheduled runs and group meetings and individual appointments with the physical trainer, etc.

All Greats!

Read the instructions: https://www.irs.gov/instructions/i2848 Revocation by taxpayer. If you want to revoke a previously executed power of attorney and do not want to name a new representative, you must write "REVOKE" across the top of the first page with a current signature and date below this annotation. Then, you must mail or fax a copy of the power of attorney with the revocation annotation to the IRS, using the Where To File Chart, or if the power of attorney is for a specific matter, to the IRS office handling the matter. If you do not have a copy of the power of attorney you want to revoke, you must send the IRS a statement of revocation that indicates the authority of the power of attorney is revoked, lists the matters and years/periods, and lists the name and address of each recognized representative whose authority is revoked. You must sign and date this statement. If you are completely revoking authority, write "remove all years/periods" instead of listing the specific matters and years/periods.

I have lots of clients on extension and some year-round biz clients. But, I do get lethargic after the April deadline. I usually get to PA to spoil my granddaughter Avery. Prior to Avery's existence, we'd hit a beach hotel or B&B in Madison, CT, for me to unwind. This year, it's fitting in all the postponed doctors' appointments and trying to get a consensus re my pain. It's looking like a hip replacement is in my near future with all the rehab that entails. So, that will replace my Appalachia Service Project trip and maybe our family reunion on The Cape and even my usual CCH User Conference, this year in Miami. I guess that'll give me 2019 trips to look forward to with a new hip! And, we'll have to FaceTime or something Rita's BBQ. Today, I'm catching up on paying bills for my church and need to get some laundry done. Client is picking up her tax folder and bringing me a check after Church tomorrow. Client who moved to CA is in town Monday, so we're going to Westport Country Playhouse and having dinner. Payroll taxes. A funeral next Saturday. I never run out of things to do. I do run out of energy to do them after coming down off that adrenaline high of preparing as many returns as possible by the deadline while being egged on by anxious clients!

When I enter total miles and biz miles, the program does the math re the car tax.

If I'd had a missing chocolate bar, my whole office would be organized and clean until I found it !!

Earlier this afternoon, NAEA alerted members to technical difficulties with IRS' electronic filing and online payment systems. NAEA confirmed with IRS earlier this evening that these systems are fixed and are operational again. According to the Service: Individuals and businesses with a filing or payment due date of April 17 will now have until midnight on Wednesday, April 18. Taxpayers do not need to do anything to receive this extra time. More details are available in IRS' news release, IR-2018-100. Should new information become available, NAEA will update the full membership.

Earlier this afternoon, NAEA alerted members to technical difficulties with IRS' electronic filing and online payment systems. NAEA confirmed with IRS earlier this evening that these systems are fixed and are operational again. According to the Service: Individuals and businesses with a filing or payment due date of April 17 will now have until midnight on Wednesday, April 18. Taxpayers do not need to do anything to receive this extra time. More details are available in IRS' news release, IR-2018-100. Should new information become available, NAEA will update the full membership.

Because you knew from experience.. You were our canary in the mine!

Possi, don't you deal with a lot of military folks? The military clients I have had, have had POAs in place for the non-military spouses. If your couple is in two different states, perhaps your friend gave his wife a POA that includes allowing her to sign tax returns. If she filed their MFJ tax return (or even her MFS tax return claiming their dependent) then they already would have the reject if their child claimed his own dependency.

This is my virtual water cooler.

Use those artificial tears type of drops (probably a saline solution). Close your eyes. Sleep. Blink. There are apps for your computer/phone/smartwatch that you can set to remind you to blink. When staring at a computer screen we blink less often. A lot less often. So, use an app. And, if it continued into today, please call your eye doctor and get in immediately.

Let the lawyers fight it out. They get the big bucks. Tax preparers are a little busy 12 April. Their agreement might require them to trade tax returns. But, it can't tell you how to prepare tax returns. Make notes/save emails from your client describing her situation and your choice of filing status. Good luck!

You cannot discuss your client with the ex-spouse.

Sorry for the rant. The best of luck to you, NE, with hopes for a quick fix!

Nice hearing from you, Tabby. Enjoy your retirement. Don't worry; be happy!

Oh, no. I have a bunch of clients with MS. In fact, out broker moved to MS during 2017.

My hard drive was sending signals to Dell that it was in imminent danger of failing. Due to my huge payments to Dell, they sent a new hard drive and a techie to install it, but I postponed the appointment knowing I had to "clone" my old hard drive to the new or face a long spell of restoring backups. My personal techie quit (apparently a feud with my 37-year-old son who hasn't lived here since he was 17, so why am I punished? I think biblically, it's supposed to go the other way!). Dell techie, an IC, was willing to work with me on the side. It took him two visits and him purchasing some new software, but he got me up and running last Thursday morning at 3 a.m.! Closing down is incredibly slow, so I still worry. And, I've been getting that red screen in Chrome. Thought it was under control with Abby's directions, but it returned this morning. The first thing I did was e-file extensions for every client left. Then I got back to preparing returns. Just had an email from a family where I really needed to compute payments, but didn't; so need to get to that this afternoon. We had an out-of-state funeral the weekend before Easter, then Holy Week/Easter. I even took off Easter Sunday, thinking I was on schedule. But, the computer gods have a wicked sense of humor! I also lost internet on Easter, and three days later Optimum was still telling me it was my computer (which sounded plausible, because that was before the new hard drive). So, unable to update my software or e-file returns, I gave in and booked the techie to install the new Dell drive. But, a patient Optimum tech worked out the Optimum issues and got me back online before the new hard drive. We did get a new router and probably need a new modem, as we've been bumped offline since then, but for shorter times. And, I'm postponing my hip replacement until after tax season! But that means I won't be preparing any returns for a while. Yeah, computers are a great help and time savers when everything works right. But, when they go bad, they are huge time wasters. Rant over. Gotta compute those extension payments. And, I have a few 2014 amendments to bang out today/tomorrow. I'm fried.

A good math lesson, Rita!

Bacon would help me think. Or, at least, it would make me happier.

We're all human and make mistakes. There was only one perfect human, and we crucified him. You owned your mistake, and that's the human thing to do. Then, forgive yourself. But, yeah, it really hurts. Been there; done that. We still respect your work, under deadlines and pressure and lack of sleep and almost perfection. When college visiting with my son, I saw a poster on a professor's door: Strive for excellence, not perfection. So true for so many reasons. And, you, Tom, are excellent.

How about MFJ, EIC, and do the worksheets to confirm or deny dependency?

Thank you, NE. I'm going to do that. It's worth a try!

Were you using Chrome? I got a red screen also. Figured it was marketing at best and fishing at worst, so closed down using Task Master and restarted. After a hard drive slow down and fail, a techie quitting, and not able to connect to the internet for a few days, I really can't handle another computer issue! How do I clear my cache?