Lee B

Just got off the phone with my long time ATX Sales Rep, where he told me that staff has repeatedly asked ATX top management to communicate with ATX users with a detailed response addressing all the problems that users had during this past tax season and specifically what is going to be done to fix those problems. According to my long time Sales Rep, "Nothing has happened." Which is exactly why I decided not to renew with ATX !

Since the IRS Budget has been cut by Congress for the last 5 years in a row and 11,000 fewer employees work there, most of whom are retiring baby boomers who were their most experienced employees, I seriously doubt it. 1. According to the IRS statistics, there has been a significant drop in successful identity theft filed tax returns. 2. The giant horsefly in the ointment is that Congress is currently pushing for the passage of a bill that would require a "Mini- Audit" of every tax return claiming the EIC, which would totally strangle tax return processing by the IRS. 3. Did anyone else notice the IRS news release where the IRS announced that they were committed to pushing ahead with replacing phone calls with employees with interactive app bots ? It's going to be a whole new world!

An excerpt from an long article by Bloomberg News: "In early March, they said, Equifax began notifying a small number of outsiders and banking customers that it had suffered a breach and was bringing in a security firm to help investigate. The company's outside counsel, Atlanta-based law firm King & Spalding, first engaged Mandiant at about that time. While it's not clear how long the Mandiant and Equifax security teams conducted that probe, one person said there are indications it began to wrap up in May. Equifax has yet to disclose that March breach to the public " Now it turns out that the same intruders hacked Equifax back in March and they never disclosed or acknowledged the hack. In addition they chose not to implement the software patch that they knew would fix the problem. This company deserves the death sentence !

Under heavy pressure, Equifax has decided to waive the fees for freezing your credit. Of course they still insist that the 3 officers that sold Equifax stock had no idea about the hack which was announced 2 days later. LOL Unfortunately even if you freeze your credit, they can still sell and make huge profits with your personal info to other financial firms.

Now the attorneys smell blood, supposedly 50 different action lawsuits have been filed. The attorneys will become multimillionaires and we will each get a check for $ 10.

Perhaps it's done through changing your CAF information ?

NEW YORK — Equifax says its chief information officer and chief security officer are leaving the company, following the enormous breach of 143 million Americans' personal information. The credit data company said Friday that Susan Mauldin, who had been the top security officer, and David Webb, the chief technology officer, are retiring from Equifax immediately. Mauldin, a college music major, had come under media scrutiny for her qualifications in security. Equifax did not say in its statement what retirement packages the executives would receivEquifax disclosed last week that hackers accessed or stole the Social Security numbers, birthdates and other information. It also presented Friday a litany of security efforts it made after noticing suspicious network traffic on July 29. It said it believes the access occurred from May 13 through July 30. You couldn't make this up - the Chief Security Officer was music major in college .

According to this article, Equifax knew about the software flaw, but also knew that there was a software patch available well before the hack started and did nothing. Equifax is not only greedy, it is stupid and incompetent and doesn't care that identity theft cost Americans 16 Billion Dollars last year ! The CEO and other officials should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law ! NEW YORK (AP) -- Credit agency Equifax traced the theft of sensitive information about 143 million Americans to a software flaw that could have been fixed well before the burglary occurred, further undermining its credibility as the guardian of personal data that can easily be used for identity theft. Equifax identified a weakness in an open-source software package called Apache Struts as the technological crack that allowed hackers to heist Social Security numbers, birthdates, addresses and full legal names from a massive database maintained primarily for lenders. SECURITY FOR DUMMIES The patch was released shortly afterward. Equifax said the database intrusion began in May and continued until July. Security experts said Equifax had more than enough opportunity to block intruders by sealing the security hole. "There is no excuse for not following basic cybersecurity hygiene," said Nate Fick, CEO of the security firm Endgame. "Some heads should definitely roll for this; it's only a question of how many." The company didn't respond to inquiries on Thursday

In the dim corners of my mind, it seems to me that is is considered to be an "association" which ends up filing a Form 1120. Of course I could be wrong, it wouldn't be the first time ?

Just like facebook, this company is in the data brokerage business and congress will not protect us.

Today the U S banned the use of Kaspersky Labs security software at all federal agencies. Actually, I am very surprised this took so long, since the founder and CEO of Kaspersky learned his craft while working for the KGB. According to U S Intelligence Agencies, Kaspersky still has very close ties to the Kremlin. The U S is so gullible, we don't realize the opposition is playing for keeps !

Yes, it's not free, you have to give them a debit or credit card and you have to go all three services. You can do a 90 day fraud alert for free.

Surprise, Surprise, I have just been notified that September is my Official ATX Anniversary Month ! Therefore, I can still renew before October 1st and receive my May Renewal Discount. Woah, who knew that ATX had Official Anniversary Months.

It's a race to the bottom with Equifax. At this rate they will pass Comcast on the way down. I must say that after 20 years with ATX, I have finally decided to throw in the towel and switch to Drake.

After also doing a google search, almost all of the information out there is from the websites of firms promoting and selling these trusts. These promoters also charge an annual fee as a % of the trust assets. They seem to heavily marketed to attorneys and financial advisers.

A local financial adviser has been actively promoting "Deferred Sales Trusts" as a way to minimize taxes from the sale of capital assets. Since I have never heard of these trusts, are they legitimate or ?

This is a copy of the official IRS news release explaining the change dated February 8, 2017: "A new revision of the Instructions for Form 7004, updated in the last few days and available at IRS.gov/LatestForms, correctly reflects that calendar year C corporations are eligible for an automatic 6-month extension. Although Internal Revenue Code section 6081(b) provides a 5-month automatic extension period for calendar year C Corporations, the IRS is granting a 6-month automatic extension under section 6081(a) instead. This change is reflected in the new revision of the Instructions for Form 7004. We have posted this article because the IRS wants to reassure the tax professional community that the information is correct in the Form 7004 instructions regarding the automatic 6-month extension and explain that the reason it's correct is section 6081(a). Information regarding Form 7004 and its instructions is always available at IRS.gov/form7004."

According to the Equifax website, neither my wife or I had our information exposed. Yea ! On the other hand, I just downloaded my free credit report from Trans Union and I noticed that in the last eight months at least 8 different financial institutions that I have never heard of have requested credit information about me. So now I get it, if you are a supposedly legitimate financial institution, you can just buy someone's personal credit info from one of the big 3 credit reporting services who are more than happy to sell it to them, since they are very profitable businesses. This is the dark side of free enterprise. Everything is for sale ! #*#*#*

This is a copy of a AICPA chart footnote: "Law provided for a Sept. 15 due date. But, according to the new Form 7004 instructions and IRS website, the IRS has used its authority to permit an automatic six-month extension to Oct. 15." Yeah, this is confusing, supposedly the IRS announced this change in February. I was planning based on an OSCPA Tax Update Class that I took in January, so I now have an extra 30 days to finish my one C Corporation return that is still on extension.

ATLANTA (AP) -- Credit monitoring company Equifax says a breach exposed social security numbers and other data from about 143 million Americans. The Atlanta-based company said Thursday that "criminals" exploited a U.S. website application to access files between mid-May and July of this year. It said consumers' names, Social Security numbers, birth dates, addresses and, in some cases, driver's license numbers were exposed. Credit card numbers for about 209,000 U.S. consumers were also accessed. The company said hackers also accessed some "limited personal information" from British and Canadian residents. Wow, if Equifax can get hacked, no one's information is safe ! Maybe I should go offgrid and deal in cash only !

ATX programs have always been a major resource hog. When the ATX program is installed, it sets up 4 different database servers on both standalone and networked systems. IMHO the program starts and tries to access the servers before the servers have spun up which generates the error messages, which is just bad programming. Earlier this year when I would get this message, I would wait a minute and it would always start up on the second try. Since I have installed a SSD hard drive on my Win 7 Pro 64 bit system with 6 Gigs of Ram, this error has not happened. By the way, since I have installed the SSD, my system is ready to go from a cold boot in less than 1 Minute.

I am fairly sure that if you have a gun store and a firing range that you will have employees !

1. If capital invested, time actively involved etc are disproportionate, you can do special allocations of profit, loss and any of the other tax items specifically listed on the K - 1s. 2. If real estate is held inside a corporation it's distribution is at FMV, whiich may trigger unwanted gains. 3. Corporations are required to have annual Board Meetings and minutes while LLC are not. The best of both worlds is to set up an LLC and elect to be taxed as an S Corporation. Conversely, LLC case law is still a work in progress, so incorporating gives more certainty as far as risk and asset protection.

The only way that kind of money could be saved would be to pay an "unreasonably low salary" ! The only other avenue would be a Regular C Corp, maxing out all the fringe benefits.

Actually, some payroll processers have the ability to generate the ACH direct deposit information, which you then trnamit to your own bank to push the deposits to your employees bank accounts at the end of the same day as your paychecks are issued, in this case Friday Of course most banks that can do this will charge a fee for doing it. This eliminates the third party lag.