joanmcq

You might get a CP2000; but that one is really easy to clear up!

"When an able-bodied person quits working just to get EIC...That is abuse!" Exactly! The EIC was supposed to encourage work & help with payroll tax not encourage someone not to work.

With CA in the mess it is, who knows?

Ok, tax history lesson: the EIC was created to ease the regressive nature of payroll taxes for the working poor. For a single person that qualifies, it pretty much does that. For example try a single SE worker making 5K a year. The EIC will take care of their SE tax, bringing their tax bill to zero. Then someone got the idea of giving bigger refunds to people with kids and it became a form of welfare. For or against? I've done friends' taxes where single mom making 20-30k gets some help, and one of my tenant making less got a bit more. Heck, when I was back in school, I made so little money I even got a little bit one year (no kids and the limit was around 9k so you know I wasn't living on much). But in my job doing audits I see a lot of fraud; borrowing kids of relatives etc. Or someone making a huge amount of money that used bonus depreciation and Sec 179 on a luxury SUV purchase to legally get EIC and add'l child credit (it was a Mercedes by the way) So I'm a bit torn...I can see where it is helping but that last case made me sick to my stomach.

I don't do too much EIC, but I think it filled in some of the questions, but not all, and did not calculate EIC until you did. Look on The Tax Book message board for discussion regarding due diligence EIC audits.

If he has wages of at least 3000, then yes.

Don't know who Glen Beck is. I'm referring to the villagers storming Frankenstein's castle in any and every movie, spoof of movie, etc. It's the least I can do. I'm just thankful I'm on medication that is allowing me to tune out a lot of politics. At least I think its the medication. It may just be my self-preservation instinct kicking in (keeping me from heart attack or stroke when looking at the latest headlines).

I've got mine julie. C'mon over!

I haven't checked ATX's estimate calcs yet. Spidell raised the same questions as the Tax Advocate did regarding withholding. The law was written without addressing the fact that withholding is applied on the same basis as federal. What a mess. Is it time for an armed revolution yet? shall I storm the capitol with torches and pitchforks?

I've already decided to forego my 4th quarter estimate and will have any refund applied to next year's estimates. With the 30/30/20/20 estimate scheme it'd be better to frontload anyways.

Mine was on the packing slip.

I'm going to my Spidell update tomorrow so I guess I'll find out what is up then. Went to a CPE class presented by CA's Taxpayer Advocate and he thought that for CA, withholding could be a problem if not frontloaded; one of the things our oh-so-efficient legislators didn't really think of when they passed this crap. At least I left the presentation with the guy's phone number, so if things get too bad I call call and complain. So far, CA is the only state inane enough to try to cook the books by accellerating estimates. I guess it goes along with considering loans 'revenue' & all the other patches, workarounds, etc they are doing instead of cutting programs and raising taxes.

With a PSC, thats what you should be doing....why do you think the tax rates are so onerous with PSCs?

Happened after the 2008 install & I have about 100 clients. I do have the old files compressed. I ended up stopping the scan and rebooting after it went 5+ days and counting. Haven't re-run it yet. The CPU was running at 100% which happens sometimes, but stopped with the reboot. Opened my return on the new ATX; it was sllloooooowwwwww. Mine is a particularly big file but I hope it doesn't always open returns that slow. My computer is getting old but I'm hoping to get another year or two out of it.

I only have one computer; I can check my email on my iPod Touch, but that & internet is about it. I've always done complete scans & its never been a problem until now; would take a few hours so that's why I'd do it overnight or while I was at work. Just hit 'scan computer' and go. & the first scan I did when I first got rid of Norton & put AVG on went fine & I have ATX files & programs from 1997 to now on the computer. Just not a lot of data files on those early years! Five days is ridiculous! any other ideas as to what might be happening?

Friday I started a virus scan Friday morning before leaving for work. Its still running. This morning it was scanning my 2003 ATX files; last night it was iTunes and was going quickly. the ATX files go very very slow. I've used AVG since November and the scans were normal until this one. The only change has been loading ATX 2008, I think. May have done the iPods since then too. Its been running so long that I'm getting warnings that the antivirus program is not up to date anymore, and I know there was some sort of critical IE patch needed as well. Even when I stopped the scan to check email, the internet ran slow as mud, but I'm not sure if that was related. I gave up and checked the email on my iPod on our wireless network downstairs which was running fine. Anybody got a clue as to what is happening? The only things caught in the scan has been tracking cookies.

Well here in Sacramento its raining, and supposed to rain and rain and rain. Feet of snow in the mountains though. Last week we must've been the only place in the country that didn't get snow. I heard it snowed in New Orleans, Alabama, Las Vegas....we got rain. very cold rain. The lake in my back yard finally dried up, but I guess its coming back. Damn 'lawn' is growing and my lawnmower's been broken. and when everything is mud or underwater I can't mow anyways. I don't miss the cold of Pittsburgh or New York, but it's never seemed like Christmas without snow. I mean, we still have trees with leaves on them!

I've been using simply accounting in my own biz. Like it a lot, and its a real program, not quickbooks.

SP2 is an update to the operating system. It is considered a critical update. If you had your computer set for automatic updates you would have had it years ago. Just go to the microsoft website and download it. You shouldn't have any programs that don't run with it and most if not all should work better. Vista is a different operating system altogether and there have been compatibility problems with older programs.

Yeah, why would a letter from UltraTax cause me concern? If it was from CCH, maybe.

test is easy??? I'm sorry, but I am one of those CPAs that did enough auditing to get the letters and that's it. The audit section was, therefore, a bitch. And you need intensive financial accounting, audit as in FS audit, GAAP, FASBs (none of which I've kept up with in the least), biz law... or are you saying the tax part is easy? Yeah, for a tax pro it would be. Strangely enough though, partnership tax was the section of the whole test I did the worst on, and that includes the managerial accounting part that I took educated guesses on two questions, and blindly filled out bubbles on the rest! got an 80% on random fills somehow....

I call it mouse strain. in fact, while reading that I had to make a conscious effort to bring the mouse towards my body so that my right arm isn't extended. The muscle around my collarbone has been hard as a rock and frozen (and in a lot of pain) lately but if I don't extend it while on the computer, AND remember to stretch, AND do the shoulder rolls my masseuse recommended, and get regular massage it will loosen up. I used to be able to 10 key with either hand after getting really bad tendinitis when I first started using a computer. Should try it again.

Heck I remember Kuka, Fran & Ollie. I think they were on almost as long as Captain Kangaroo. Jeez, now that's stirring up my old brain cells. Of course my back acre is flooded because I can't remember when I turn the water on to irrigate the garden, and it must've been on for a week or so. And my roommate didn't know that, and went out to grade and now I have a backhoe sunk up to its axels in the muck. Sigh.

I lived alone with my cats & dog in a big house for quite a while. I sing all sorts of stuff to them. Constantly. Now that I don't live alone, I warn roommates of this before they move in.

I got all 20, and I am 'only' 48. Of course Superman I saw in reruns, Pepsodent I guessed, I've never seen Dobie Gillis but anyone who knows popular culture should know Maynard G. Krebs, & I know music pretty well (a least anything recorded before I turned 40 and that isn't rap). My laundry day song is "ITS.... laundry dooty time, Its laundry dooty time, lets get out the grime, its laundry dooty time!" Lets all sing along!