Catherine

Technically, you are not allowed even to admit the person is your client without a signed/dated Section 7216 Disclosure Authorization. You also have to be careful *who* you talk to for other reasons. One of my elderly clients has 3 kids; 1 close, 1 relatively nearby, and 1 several states away. The one who's close also has a history of verbal abuse! It's the one several states away who is my contact (with S7216 etc). The relatively nearby one just has no head for numbers, but at least is not verbally abusive. Did I know any of this before the S7216? Nope. Just names/addresses that were needed for a gift return some years earlier.

Maybe. I can neither confirm nor deny...

I'm not convinced they ever do anything with 941X forms. Any 941X I've ever sent in for any client was ignored totally. I think when they see the X, they ceremonially burn them without reading further than the EIN, and then send tax due notices.

Even more wonderful, because yesterday I learned that a long time friend had passed on; his heart problems caught up with him. Yesterday was a bad day, and I wandered around in a fog all day doing things poorly and eventually gave up on trying to accomplish anything.

I still have the text file; maybe tomorrow I'll have a chance to log in and run AccuWage and grab a screenshot of the error for you. I literally only have a couple of W2s and it took me a whopping five minutes to do them by hand.

Warning with BackBlaze: some colleagues near me use it, and it failed to make any backups for two weeks and never notified them of the failures. How'd they find out? Looking for a backup copy of something accidentally deleted, that was less than two weeks old. They were seriously not pleased.

@Medlin Software first error was indeed the phone number, which I fixed. Then it said something about too many characters on a line or something else. Didn't want to muck with the file and maybe really mess it up, so I just did 'em manually.

Baby granddaughter at just over 8 months old, has her first little toofie. So exciting!

You need a Section 7216 Disclosure Authorization to talk to anyone else about their taxes. It's actually a pretty fine line to tread with our elderly clients. I try to have them come in (or meet me with) a family member - use an excuse, such as "making sure someone understands new technology" or something they'll accept. Once the client has freely spoken to you with that family member present, you can also ask about "should there be trouble in the future, may I speak to X?" to start the discussion.

You could make yourself a 2nd preparer, using (or dropping) a middle initial.

Keep in mind, folks, that while local hard drive backup is good and cheap and reliable, you have to take the drives home with you every night - or one break-in, broken pipe, or fire could destroy all your records including all your backups!

An amazingly wonderful peaty single malt Scotch whiskey. Think Laphroaig with a little less bite.

If there are no sales/redemptions, then there is no taxable item to report.

I was recognized but had to upload W2s by hand rather than in a text file. AccuWage kept finding "errors" in Medlin's files and I didn't want to chance it. Fortunately I only had a handful to do - filling them out by hand, online, was faster than fighting their submission system. Not complaining about Medlin, either - most likely some oddball glitch.

Someone once said that if you can't stand in front of is and defend it, it's not yours. I will go back to green ledger paper before I put data on the cloud (except as second backup).

I use Acronis to back up on-site, and iDrive to back up to the cloud. Acronis does an incremental backup nightly and full backup weekly. iDrive backs up all new files to the cloud nightly. Carbonite requires you to choose each and every folder you want backed up. Both Acronis and iDrive default to all folders, but allow you to choose any you don't want backed up (mostly temp files). At some point I may switch to using Acronis' online backup system, just to have it all the same, but I've been very happy with iDrive. Some years ago I used Mozy and that was also set as a daily backup. Strange thing was, sometimes it only took a minute or two, and other times it took hours and did slow my computer down on those occasions. They could never explain the difference, and I did not like that. They may well have changed since then, so I would not discount them because of my experience over 5 years ago. Hope this helps.

Trusts are usually "residents" (the term is "situs") in the state where it was originated and signed. Not required to be the same state as any trustee, or any business activity. Sounds like an Illinois trust with IL situs. Also sounds like filing is required in Georgia for the business activity there.

How could I have forgotten the chocolate?!?!

I keep on top of small everyday shredding in the office. Fro the big once or twice a year purge, I pack it into boxes and call Ship'N'Shred. They pick up, shred, and send me a Certificate of Destruction the next day. They will also do hard drives and other media, too, but I've never tried those.

I sent them to my employee as a pdf, because there's no wall here to hold them. It's either windows, bookcases, or file cabinets.

None of the online backup services should slow down your computer, if you set up for once (or even twice) a day backup, rather than continual. PC Magazine gives high ratings to Mozy. iDrive. Acronis. OneBackup.

Whether correct or not, at least we can be reasonably sure they won't disagree with it! Whereas if their figures are wrong, we all know we'll be the ones having to prove to the service that they are wrong. Ugh. Ibuprofen, acetaminophen, CBD tincture, red wine, and a brand-new bottle of Lagavulin 16 year. That's what it's going to take!

More than they already squeal, about anything and everything.

Congratulations, Terry! I used to be an NAEA (and state affiliate) member but let them lapse after dithering for some years. Should have let them lapse earlier. Networking was nice enough for some years but overall rather limited. Never felt I got my money's worth from the membership. Verifyle Pro is a free benefit - but I can buy it for 1/3 the price of the NAEA. Try it with the discount for a year and see if you like it. If not, then drop it. I've found NATP has some excellent discounts including their CPE. Also if you want to do any representation, Tax Rep LLC (Eric Green's group) does frequent free 1-and 2-hour online classes. I'll be doing a freebie on innocent spouse issues with them this Friday. (Highly recommended to anyone who does any representation.) I also used Gleim for prep, back in the day. 2003, I think it was. Maybe 2004 (not later than that). Two days, paper only, once a year only. I studied for six weeks, passed all four first try. Yeah, got a bit freaked when some others said it was their 3rd or 4th try. Best things about Gleim were 1. Learning not to re-think: answer once, move on, don't look back - that 2nd answer is usually wrong. 2. Recognizing the questions where answers would not be presented properly (multiples were right, none were right, too poorly worded to determine a right answer, etc). Maybe those are fixed now.

Just heard from a friend tonight who called about his 2019 refund (not received). Filed on paper just as all the craziness was hitting. His return is in they system, and the agent could see it. Apparently one page's scan didn't go quite right but all info was there (super simple return, a 1099-R and a 1099-INT; refund less than $60) but she could not release the refund for some reason he did not understand but had to do with two departments trading the return back and forth between them, electronically. I mean, really?