Lion EA

Look around at several HRB locations. They have night courses and Saturday courses and maybe even Sunday courses. It's now broken down into shorter sections or Building Blocks. Go to HRBlock.com in the late spring or summer or even fall and look for Income Tax Course, then it'll ask you for your zip code and how far you're willing to travel. Good luck.

And, here in pricey Fairfield County, CT.

You don't want her to return to you next year. And, you definitely don't want her friends to come to you. Spend your time on the clients you do want to keep. And, go out in the back and yell.

I've already told Mel that I'd invest right now &/or pay right NOW for one or two year's worth of the future tax software. Hope he takes us up on our offers when he needs to capitalize his business. Maybe I'm returning to my 60's college days, but Mel in Hawaii makes me think of mellow; how about Mellow Tax? Would our clients be less stressed if they knew we were using Mellow Tax? Would we? Maybe Mel can run a naming contest with entry fees to raise money. Or sell the naming rights like those big stadiums. He could run an online auction like SnapNames or someone just did to auction off popular domain names.

Well, if she's really, really sure...she must have some other clients that didn't send her 1099s, so use the amount she claims she earned, and have her sign your engagement letter. If she and you think her amount is right, you won't be raising any red flags if her total is as much or more than the total of all the 1099s she does receive. Is her total income per her the same as her total bank deposits for the year? And, did you ask her if she received any reimbursed expenses, repayments of out-of-pocket costs, etc.? I've had clients that knew how much the project paid, but forgot that their total payments from a client(s) were higher due to reimbursements on top of the project cost. She needs to report the full amounts she received, because she'll be deducting her expenses, including reimbursed expenses, on her own schedule C.

I get crop shares AND cash rent. I've been putting the cash rent on E and the crop shares on 4835. Is that right? I also need drainage tiles. Can I 179? I live in CT; the IL farm was passed down from my grandfather.

I like the new look. Very business like. Now my assistant doesn't think I'm just chatting on chat boards! We can handle formatting changes that help keep this board up and running. Thank you for all your hard work.

But, what is cook?

From CCH's decision point of view? The fact that TaxWise has a contract with the IRS. That TaxWise's largest customer is the IRS. 50,000 individuals wanting 50,000 individual things from you vs. 1 really big client to serve. Of course, if these were the only two products CCH had, then multiple clients are better. But CCH has other product lines including other tax programs at higher price points, so how they make the decision re their low end product will include how much money they can make for how little in resourses it will cost them. We've already seen which technical support center survived.

Maybe the tax payer asked his preparer for a mortgage letter and was turned down. So, he went to another firm and gave them "enhanced" info, received returns, but never filed them. Where do YOU fit in this story? Are you at the CPA firm? The mortgage company? I met a realtor, of all people, who told me (long before I was a tax preparer) that he'd "kept" his net income low for a few years, and then was turned down for a loan when he tried to buy a house! Why was he surprised?!

And, HRB bought TaxWorks.

What I really loved about Max was that it had everything in one package. Every tax return and other returns, like sales & use, and 1099s, and efiling, and.... You never know what a customer will need in March 2009 when you're ordering in May 2008. Or, that client who says, "By the way, I never sent out any W-2s for 2005." And, my clients keep starting new companies. CT is a small state, so it's not unusual to need NY returns and RI and MA and NJ and PA, and people keep moving here from CA and WI...

When I worked at HRB, we input every return on the same screens as if it were a 1040. Ultimately, the program printed the appropriate form -- 1040, 1040A, or 1040EZ -- and priced accordingly. But, we didn't have to worry about where something went, what line #, or anything, for three separate forms; just learned the one form, the 1040. And, I'm very interested in Mel's new venture. Please keep me posted.

With what I'm putting out for a top tier software and an assistant and...I see anything up to $1,000 as small. I'd invest $1,000 in stock, probably $2,500 with Mel and names I've known and loved. I'd also pay $1,000 NOW to reserve my software which won't be available for a couple years. It's a different world now. You can have telecommuters easily. (I'd personally like to move to Hawaii, but you don't need any of my talents!) And, as far as big bucks necessary for advertising, less so now. We get our information and leads from boards like these. I get trade journals, like NAEA, but read message boards twice daily. If someone on this or one of my boards mentioned a new software and gave me a link to their website, I'd check it out that minute. I like Tom's business plan. We'd be spreading the word as production progressed to make that second (and future) stock sales a reality. Keep thinking.

I like that blue scheme, Cliff.

Lila, great sites! Now we know your computer and software skills, too...

And, Terry's, too! I should add the Salvation Army Valuation Guide to my links.

Oh, Billy, I really like your site!

Thanx for the compliment, Tom. They provide a group of new newsletters the first of every month. I can uncheck any I don't want posted right now. This month, one was on EITC for which I have no clients, so I unchecked that. I can also choose past newsletters from their archives; think I have one about business receipts from their archives. Their newsletters can appear first; right now I have my own at the top of the page (first season out on my own), so everything down to the Dollars & Sense newsletter is mine and everything below is theirs. (Cut and paste, really simple to post.) Most of the other pages come with default paragraphs, introducing your client-friendly company blah blah, and the salesman wrote some blurbs and inserted all my contact info. I've been rewriting a few intros and printed out their cheat sheet on HTML so I can add bullet points, bold, etc. The calendar (I customize company info) and calculators and a bunch of links (MSNBC, tax refund status, IRS, etc.) and tax forms and publications are all built in. I dropped a couple of their links and added some client and miscellaneous links. I'm saving the firm profile page to get more specific once I think HRB won't chase me down! But, I do have some personal profile info buried in the contacts page under my name. Even the overall design and color scheme are just check the box and can be changed at any time. So, the site is starting to be more me, as I have time. But, I started with all them to get it up and running before tax season and was perfectly happy with it that way. The major change is they had a lot of text paragraphs, so it looked a little gray; now I'm adding bullets and bold and stuff and a little less passive voice and third person to let my personality show. If I had a logo, I could upload it for an additional charge. Everything you see is the basic charge only. It sometimes misbehaves under Mozilla's FireFox, but always works under Internet Explorer. A very helpful techie Chris said they all love and use FireFox, so they're working on the different way Java functions under FireFox.

DollarsSense.com and, yes, I paid the big bucks when I bought ProSystem fx software. Glad I did; never would've gotten it up and running before tax season. I had DollarsSense.biz for years and years with absolutely nothing on it; just used it to have my domain name for email. When I was able to buy the .com version, I wanted to get a web site up before tax season. The salesman did everything. I've been changing it page by page when I have a minute, posting newsletters, etc. The site provides a new set of newsletters the first of every month. Tech support has been excellent.

...and Danielle's baby refusing to go out in the cold! Again, congratulations and good health to all the new residents of Maine and their proud parents.

My picture was too big as a picture but was OK as an avatar. I don't understand, but I now have a picture with my messages! It's my stepdaughter Alex with the University of Connecticut Marching Band. Must've been freshman year when she played flute; sophomore was piccolo, and junior is baritone horn. They went to the Meineke Car Care Bowl in Charlotte, NC. The football team lost but the band was amazing... Happy New Year everyone.

Now wait a minute. Just how many ATX employees and ex-employees and temps are having babies, anyway?! Isn't there anything else to do up in Caribou, Maine? That's the opposite of death and taxes. How do the conception dates coordinate with the closing of the tax forum? Or, the buyout? Or, any other significant (to us customers, of course) event? Did all that sex have anything to do with the price increases? Or, the layoffs? (I think there's a joke in that one, someplace, but I'm not going any further.) Anyway, congratulations to all the new parents.

Off to the kitchen to eat some chocolate. Think I'm going to like working from home this season!

In a treasurers' seminar I attended in my diocese of the Episcopal Church, they did recommend fewer rather than more bank accounts for control purposes. More accounts with volunteers elected annually can have signature cards out of date. Some accounts -- specifically mentioned were clergy discretionary accounts -- might be a bit too well hidden for audit purposes. And, speaking of audits, our church audits must cover ALL bank accounts; so to keep the audit cost and time down, the speaker recommended fewer accounts. It also makes more efficient use of volunteers when you're trying to have someone reconcile accounts who isn't a signer or even a depositor on those accounts.... You get the idea. Speaker was pushing for one account, running everything through. We did consolidate some accounts and are down to three: one operating, one nursery school (which has their own board and fund raising but operates under the church's tax ID, and one for capital funds that has a higher interest rate for funds not drawn on often. Churches and other not for profits need to use their funds for their stated mission and not excessively for one or a few individuals. That can be a problem for a small church with a highly paid pastor. I've seen examples of how the percentage of budgets can add up with items on different lines (rectory expenses, pension, salary, health premiums, etc.) to be a bit lopsided to the clergy and a bit skimpy to mission. Maybe those folks remember the example numbers more than they remember the principal behind the numbers. And, yeah, I can't get our church to save the envelopes, either! Wish they would. Had a heck of a time getting the nursery school to store their payroll records with the church's instead of at some one's house! Have the parishioners list the items of concern. Help them prioritize. Then tackle a couple of items each year.