JohnH

You're OK with the IRS. No penalty for late filing if there's a refund. Of course if he later gets audited and it turns out that he owed at the filing date, there would be a penalty assessed at that time. I don't know about WI.

Pelosi says there's talk of another round of rebates. --> " We will be proceeding with another stimulus package, and we once again hope we will work in a bipartisan way," she said after House Democratic leaders met with a group of economists to discuss the spreading housing crisis and rising energy prices. <--- Is everybody ready to gear up for this? If there are two rounds of rebates in the same tax year, think of all the excitement during this off-season, not to mention Jan 1, 2009 when we're trying to sort this out on the 2008 returns.... http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=206...refer=worldwide

It's been my understanding that once the initial routine checks went out, returns filed on extension would get their rebate within 2-3 weeks after the return was filed. It's nice to see that is apparently how it's happening. Don't you love those who call asking for "just a little help"? If it were a large number I'd probably have a policy about it, but since it's only one or two I often give in and provide the answer. Mostly I just get their email address & email them a link to the answer for whatever they're asking. I have had a few who earned well over $150K and tried to compain that they weren't getting a rebate. I try to figure out polite ways to say "Stop your greedy whining and be grateful that you've been blessed with the income you have." However, in my experience most of the over-$150K crowd seem to understand that there has to be a cutoff somewhere. I also explain to them that the pot of money is only so large, so if more people qualified then the payment per person or per child would have needed to be less. That logic seems to appeal to them, especially if they have married children and/or grandkids. I did have a situation where a parent griped that they were getting $1,200 on their joint return but that their married child was only getting $700 or so on her joint return. I explained that the child (not a client, self-employed, and probably underreporting income) was probably reporting low income, without making any direct comment on my sucspicions about the under-reporting. The parent opened the door when they said if the system were fair it would be the other way around. Being the compassionalte guy I am, I just drove the truck right on through. I suggested that they give $500 to the child and that would set things right according to their idea of fairness, but suddenly the parent decided to change the subject. It's fascinating how often people express what they pretend are profound principles but then aren't willing to back them up with concrete action, even when it's fairly easy to do so.

I notice the volume of stimulus payment complaints has fallen off considerably, since most people who are getting them have received their check by now. However, there will still be some glitches to work out and maybe a few cranky clients who feel cheated, so here's a nice article on the subject. The article is written in layman's language, offers all the contacts & links, and would be ideal for any client for whom you aren't inclined to do some follow-up as a client service. http://biz.yahoo.com/cbsm/080709/93a6f2e84....&.pf=taxes Personally I've found it useful to do the checking myself for most clients, but I'd probably send this to the one-timers or the clients who stay in chronic trouble with the IRS about something or the other and just aren't worth spending any additional time on.

Mel: Same here. Ready to do whatever is needed, whenever you say.

One of my favorite scenes in the old "NYPD Blue" involves a conversation between Detective Andy Sipowicz & Bobby Simone - when Andy is explaining why he is taking some personal time off. His lawyer wife is pregnant and she has a doctor's appointment that afternoon. (My memory of the dialogue may not be exact, but this is close) Andy: "Sylvia asked me if I wanted to go to the appointment with her. Thinking I had a choice, I said 'no'." Bobby: "Bad decision, Andy" Andy: "Yeah, after what she said back to me, I spent the rest of this morning following her around the house like a puppy begging her to let me go along."

Isn't it funny how clients often want to forget past unreported income, but still want to take any possible current period deductions based on those prior years? You could assume that all equipment purchased in the past would have been written off against income in the year purchased via a Sec 179 deduction. On an informal basis, that's essentially what has happened. That would leave you with a cleaner slate for the 2007 year forward. Of course, any equipment purchased in 2007 could be either depeciated going forward or depreciated via a Sec 179 deduction for the 2007 year, provided the client can produce adequate documentation. In any case, I'd be reluctant to do anything to generate depreciation deductions for 2007 & beyond based on something that happened prior to 2007 without knowing that the associated income for the prior years had also been reported. You gotta start somewhere.

Another potential trap can be desginating the majority of the property as farm land in order to reduce property tax assessments on an annual basis over many years, and then trying to reverse that thinking when the property is sold. Of course, in many cases the capital gains tax would be much less than the sum total of property taxes saved over the years, but the taxpayer doesn't want to hear that sort of thing at selling time - they just want you to "do something about the #$%^# tax bill."

In spite of my disappointment with what I see as repeated stumbles by ATX in their marketing & customer relations, I have to compliment them on the technical aspects of the software. I had a positive experience with ATX this week that I'd like to share. I experienced a problem about a week ago during a power failure which caused my main operating computer to fail. Even after having a technician to work some magic to enable me to restart it, the system remained unstable, which forced me to replace it (with a really nice system, BTW). Today I started up the new computer and the first thing I did was to install the 2007 ATX1040 program. Next I ran the program updates, shut down & restarted, then ran the forms updates for Fed and all states. The entire updating process took less than 30 minutes. Following that, I popped my backup flash disk in and ran into a slight problem. I called ATX tech service and within 10 minutes the tech had identified my error (my mistake, not the program), and all my 2007 client data was installed on the new system within another 20 minutes or so. I especially liked this since about 30 of the clients are on extension - sure would have hated to have to re-enter all that info. There's nothing like a total system failure to focus your attention on your software, your backup process, and your overall procedures. Thanks to many of the excellent suggestions on this forum regarding how to maintain multiple backups, I was reasonably certain I was prepared for a situation like this. It was nice to see things work pretty much as planned. It was also nice to see the ATX program perform flawlessly during this tense period. So thanks to ATX for a technically sound program and thanks to everyone on this forum who has so generously offered their expertise on how to maintain an effective & reliable backup process.

Mel: Reminds me of the story about a US president (Roosevelt, I think) who was so bored standing in a reception line repeating the same old geetings that he decided to have a little fun by making nonsensical statements & watching for the reaction. After several people passed by without even noticing his comments, he said to the British ambassador "I shot my mother in law today" as the ambassador passed by shaking hands. In typical British fashion, the ambassador paused, reached back to grasp both of Roosevelt's hands in his, replied "And I'm sure she deserved it Mr President", and moved on.

Do you really want to voluntarily ump into the middle of a domestic dispute? Police officers (who carry handcuffs, guns & mace as a standard item of personal protection) will tell you that this is one of the most dangerous types of situations they face on a daily basis.

You seem to be basing your assumptions on the fact that you prepared the returns correctly, but are you taking into account there may be a filing you don't know about? I've already heard of a couple of situations in which the taxpayer, a family member, or a friend separately filed a stimulus return when the taxpayer was not entitled to receive the payment. This could easily have been done without your knowledge, and maybe even without the taxpayer fully understanding what was done on their behalf by a well-meaning but uninformed friend.

The IRS web site says the stimulus payment will be reduced by any taxes owed, but I'm sure there are situations where the system misses a beat & fails to detect an outstanding balance somewhere. In any case, if the client owes money and it is not deducted from the stimulus payment as expected, they still owe the money and somewhere along the way there will be a bill. I've received feedback from a few clients who owed monwy on the 2007 return and they chose to short-pay the balance, expecting the rebate to offset against the remainder (plus a little bit of accrued interest). So far that's what has happened with each of them. I also have one who has an installment agreement in place with a balance in excess of $20K. The installment agreement is current. They have a $2,000 refund on their 2007 return and also a $1,200 rebate coming. I told them to expect the entire $3,200 to be offset against their balance due, but if for some reason they received any of the money from either teh refund or the rebate, they should remember that they will still owe an equal amount on the balance due on the installment agreement. The math really isn't that complex - it's a matter of pay them now or pay them later, plus interest & penalties.

I'm thinking about trying a Mac as well. Microsoft sometimes begins to look & act like IBM back in the 1970's & 80's. Just knew they owed the market and then got their head handed to them.

Yes, I know. Fortunately CA allows an exception for out-of-state preparers, so my one CA return is still a paper filing. If they ever require me to efile, I'll have a nice referral for a preparer located near Walnut Creek, CA.

I'll have to give you a definite answer next year when we find out if those 2 or 3 come back...

So who do you blame if you use efile and still have a problem? I only prepared about 200 returns last year and had 2 or 3 issues to come up which would have been caught in advance had I been using efile. That's professional enough for me, and apparently it is for my clients. Your mileage may vary.

I'm running one wth XP and another with Vista. It isn't a problem to switch from one to the other, but I'm amazed at how sluggish the Vista computer is. It literally acts like the guy in the Mac commercial - dozing off in the middle of a conversation. Sometimes in the middle of an operation in Excel it will just side into a suspended state more or less lik it's meditating. I have learned to notice it and I just turn & do something else for anywhere from 30 seconds to a couple of minutes. Eventually I'll notice that the cursor is back so I return to what I was doing. The computer was sold to me by Office Depot with Vista installed, so one would think you could expect it to work normally. My computer guy says he's going to install additional memory and we'll see if that makes a difference. In the meantime, my experience has told me that Vista is a dud.

I didn't know that. I thought that anyone who has an installment agreement in place would still see their refund confiscated to pay down the debt, even if the installment agreement is current. Doesn't the installment agreement include a right of offset for any refunds due?

You know, I hear this frequently about how clients don't want to pay for IRS errors, but that hasn't been my experience. If I make a mistake, I fix it and I don't bill for it. If IRS makes a mistake, I charge for the time to fix the error and most clients have never complained (maybe some just left without complaining - who knows?). But most clients have enough common sense to understand where the responsibility lies if it's just explained to them properly. If they don't have enough judgement to figure that out or enough trust in me to accept my explanation, then I probably don't want their business. I'm not really criticizing eflinging or the people who do it, I'm just saying it isn't for everybody and the IRS has no business trying to force anyone to use it if they dont' want to.

On the one hand I don't disagree with either of you, but on the other hand why stop with the IRS end? True client service would include verifying things such as W2 forms and home mortgage interest statements, since those are usually the two major items on the average return. Maybe have the client bring in all their check stubs to be sure the employer's data entry people didn't make a mistake somewhere along the way in preparing the W-2. Maybe get a copy of their home mortgage note and copies of mortgage payment checks & run the math to verify that the lender's data entry people entered everything properly for interest and property taxes. Church financial secretries make a lot of mistakes, so maybe it' a goo idea to add up all the conribution checks to be sure they're on the contribution statement. I know I'm still being petty according to jainen's reasoning, but in all honesty I think I'll do my job as I see it and let everyone else in the process do theirs.

There are many reasons I don't efile, having more to do with the way I operate my business than with any specific benefit to the client. I've discussed this with many of my clients and they don't care whether or not I efile since the majority of them owe money anyhow. Basically, they and I agree that my job is not to be a data input clerk for the IRS. But what KC just posted has always been a significant factor for me. I recognize the administrative and processing benefits offered by efiling, but I just don't have any desire to voluntarily turn over the power to shut me down to the whims of a bureaucrat or a computer glitch, and I have seen that happen to others.

Excellent point, but I wouldn't exactly call it EARLY retirement.

The article says they propose to exempt preparers who file under 50 returns, with additional exceptions for people who opt out voluntarily. Looks like I'll be raising my rates again next year to try and drive off a few more clients - and maybe charge an extra $100 for anyone who wants to efile (unless they want to sign an opt-out wavier).

Since the topic of this string is dog jokes, I thought it wouild be a good place to tell about Sniffer the Labrador: A man is sitting in an airliner, which is about to take off when another man with a Labrador Retriever occupies the 2 empty seats beside him. The Lab is situated in the middle, and the first man is looking quizzically at the dog when the second man explains that they work for the airline. The airline rep said, "Don't mind Sniffer; he is a sniffing dog, the best there is; I'll show you once we get airborne when I put him to work." The plane takes off and levels out when the handler says to the first man,"Watch this." He tells the dog, "Sniffer, search." Sniffer jumps down, walks along the aisle, and sits next to a woman for a few seconds. It then returns to its seat and puts one paw on the handler's arm He says "Good boy." The airline rep turns to the first man and says, "That woman is in possession of marijuana, so I'm making a note of this and her seat number for the police who will apprehend her on arrival." "Fantastic!" replies the first man. Once again he sends Sniffer to search the aisles. The Lab sniffs about, sits down beside a man for a few seconds, returns to its seat, and places two paws on the handler's arm. The airline rep says, "That man is carrying cocaine, so again I'm making a note of this and the seat number." "I like it!" says the first man. A third time the rep sends Sniffer to search the aisles. Sniffer goes up and down the plane and after a while sits down next to someone. He then comes racing back, jumps up onto his seat, and poops all over the place. The first man is really grossed out by this behavior from a supposedly well-trained sniffing dog and asks, "What's going on?" The handler nervously replies, "He just found somebody with a bomb"!