Maribeth

I was quoted $89 when I signed up with Drake. However, I am going to call TTB directly and see what they say. I get the weblibrary every year but I also get the printed manuals so will go with what is the best deal for me.

No, the price was $100 more. The June-July price. The salesman explained their pricing policy and I appreciate it so much more than the Comcast/Intuit model where they get you in with a very low price and then start upping the price every year and adding more fees on.

Went to a Drake sale seminar yesterday. Liked what I saw. Decided it was time to change. Signed up with Drake.

Was a hard decision to make but there is so much about Drake that I like. It is time to move on.

I don't believe that the standard deduction is phased out. Isn't it just itemized deductions? So everyone at least gets the standard.

We almost the same on reg tax and the same on MC tax. Why the difference in AMT? Checked the AMT calculation; it is using the Sch D calculation on Page 2. Exemption of $80,800. Maybe that is wrong?

I plunked your numbers into CFS Tax Tools. I get the same AGI of $497,202.

Standard deduction of $12,000; all the exemptions are lost. Taxable income of $485,002.

Regular tax - $74,858

AMT - 12,165

MC tax - 9,394

Total due - 96,417.

I'm so excited, and I just can't hide it

I'm about to lose control and I think I like it..........

Wishing Ya all a happy and safe weekend..........

Elrod

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h-LbvFckptY

here you go!

It is too early for me to give an answer on the poll. I plan to beta test ATX this summer and that will influence my decision as to staying with them for another year. If I choose to leave ATX, then I will go directly to Drake. For all the reasons that JohnH details above, and because they are a family-owned American business.

Just a thought: show the payment as already made, balance due zero. File the return & have client send the payment in. (can a corporation send in a payment? Doesn't it have to be EFTPS?)

You put the offset as an other expense. Don’t reduce the revenues because they will catch that and send a letter. Put as an other expense and title it something like this: “1099 issued incorrectly – s/b rents” or “Amount properly transferred to Sch E”.

Have done this with every, yes every, incorrect 1099 over the last 20 or so years. No IRS notices. I do not even bother to try to get them corrected, just put it on the return & take it back out again.

Put the $1900 on a Schedule C-EZ. Create a deduction for "1099 reported incorrectly". Then put the $1900 on the Schedule E.

You will not get a CP2000 if you do the return this year.

Well, I only do 5 Louisiana returns a year, for a family that has partnership interests in a LA partnership. Filed 2 Louisiana extensions yesterday; accepted this morning. No problems.

I went to three monitors last year and will never go back. I do not do the return with the client sitting in my office, I only take information at the client interview.

My left hand monitor has all my administrative stuff on it: Time & Chaos, Time & Billing, File in time, etc.

The middle monitor has the application software: ATX, QB, etc

Right hand monitor has the workpapers, client documents, spreadsheets, etc.

I do use the right hand monitor at times to swing it around so that I can review a projection or calculation with a client. So I am thinking that the 4th monitor will be on the wall so that client can look at it and we can discuss a tax projection or financial calculation together.

I don't need bigger monitors, I need MORE monitors!

My IT guy says the preferred method of Firewall is at the router?

Yes, that is right. But my prior IT guy, who I fired for other reasons than this, had Windows Firewall installed on all 3 computers -- the "server" and the two workstations. So everything was slow, slow, slow. Now, the network is free and the router does the firewall. My goodness, it was h&#l. I fired him for other reasons and then afterwards discovered the issue about the firewall. Only confirmed my decision to use another IT person.

I use EaseUS for backups at least once a month. The neat thing about it is that you can set it back up to an external drive and set it to shut off the computer when done. I do it just before retiring for the night or my IT pal can do it remotely. This is the best backup software that I have used in a long time. "Ghost" was wonderful until you had to get the new version for Win 7. We forgot about that in a hurry. I alternate external drives and do it much more often during peak tax season. Not only does it copy and restore your drive, but IT tells me that you can actually open and read files from the backup. He trusts it and I trust him so "Life is Good!"

My IT guy really loves the EaseUS also. Had Ghost before and this certainly is more user friendly, works all by itself with little human attention. Had the other Norton applications in the past and will never use Norton again. I do not believe that there are any human beings at Norton; it is just one big computer in the sky that ignores humans and does what it wants.

Maribeth have you noticed any appreciable difference in speed with the SSD drive?

Yes and no. Installing software goes much faster. Opening QB data files across the network, still really slow. ATX is working much faster.

We have some human time savings because we no longer have to do the weekly housekeeping that we used to do with the old drives -- defragging, error checking. So that gave us a little lift because those items came off of the to do list.

Other than that, really not much change. But I have to give a caveat on that. I fired my IT guy in April 2012 for several reasons and went to a new IT guy. It seems like the old IT guy has set the firewalls up on each workstation. Consequently, our entire network was slow, slow, slow, especially ATX 2011. The new IT guy got rid of the network firewalls and fine-tuned the system even more, so that this tax season was much faster than any of our previous tax seasons. Some of that increased speed was because of that fine-tuning and some of it was because of the SSD's.

Elrod, now you have one.

I do not really know what the friends function does either. Someone enlighten us?

We did that during this tax season. We went with 250G. Used EaseUS to backup (or whatever he did) the original drive; restored it to the SSD. Took a few hours to do the backup but he did it overnight. Slicker than snot.

Kept the original (non SSD) drive and now have a full system backup done every day at 12:30 to augment our other backup procedures.

On Chaos , you buy the version. I am currently on version 3 and have had several free updates to the program. They currently have a new version, version 4, that I will have to pay for when I upgrade to that version. Have not had to do so and have not paid any more money since I bought the original product. (so I guess the answer to your question is that no, unlike QB, ATX and darn near every other software in the Universe, you do not have an annual update fee)

Yes, you can use it as a mail manager. We sent out periodic newsletters to different types of clients and use the software for that.

I recommend it highly. To me it is more functional than Outlook, easier to handle, you call support and you get a real person with real technical knowledge.

Years ago, KC mentioned Time & Chaos. It has since morphed on to Intellect which will also handle emal. Our office went to this software because Outlook just couldn't handle our needs on the network. The software is completely networkable, it's usable and I would recommend it. http://www.chaossoftware.com/

It has a time & billing module also but I didn't care for it so for time & billing we use TPS Software.

For project managed, File in Time.

Wish all of those 3 programs were all in one but they are not. If there is such a thing, I would like to know about it also!

Jack, yes, I efiled all the returns and checked the 8879 against the return before I created the efile. We only created efiles on the server, only rolled over on the server, only updated on the server. The two workstations prepared returns but all the "admin" functions were done on the server. And yes, again, I made sure the signed 8879 agreed to the return before I created the efile.

We have a complete review process and the 8879 should be correct. I am not expecting CP2000's because of ATX issues but if I do start getting them, I will let you know.

And thanks once again for the heads up on the backup issues. I have exported returns ever since

Stephen Drake has contacted me over the years regarding his software. He called this morning and I spoke with him about Drake's plans and my plans. He assures me that they have no plans of selling out to another vendor and they handle all of the tax forms that ATX has except for the 5500. I have a demo on the way. Am going to set it up on the network and see how I like it this year.

I am in a quandry however. I did not have the problems that others did during tax season with ATX. Did not have crashes or roll over problems. My biggest problem was the instability of the return manager and its not holding return status correctly. Other than that, we did okay.

Have not yet had an email from ATX or a phone call from whoever my account exec is. So do I stay with ATX? Do I have Drake as a fall back?? The only thing I know for sure is that I will not use another Intuit product

It might not be as bad as it appears. Have you seen the contract? On an installment sale, all of the depreciation recapture is reported in the first year; and then the ordinary income comes next, with the capital gains being reported last. It might be okay, if you look at the structure of the sale.

Isn't it supposed to be "and no cigar?"

so what happened to 12.14? Is that already out?