Catherine

I know many of y'all use ATX, but Drake has a transaction confirmation page that lists the refunds, the bank name, with routing and account numbers. I get a signed copy of those every year from every dirdep client. Then yes, any errors are on them.

The IRS does NOT check who the bank account owner is; if it's a valid account, in it goes. And there is no recourse if it goes to the wrong place. DON'T do it; if the other person gives a wrong digit, the money could well be lost forever. Write 'em a check, send a wire transfer, send 'em Western Union, buy 'em a gift card. Just don't do this. Really.

No problems with Chrome, Firefox, or Dissenter, here.

Warning: Signature Flow support is ENDING as of June 30, 2020. They are instead pushing their secure send product - which ONLY works with Outlook. I am most seriously ticked off about this.

Sometimes the best you can do, is the best you can do. I've done the same, myself. Certainly putting in the note about historical data is a good idea, "calculated from all information available as of date of preparation" is another.

I e-filed one last year where the license was expired! Client (older person) had given up on driving and had nothing else. I figured I'd try it - it went through. Still the same person, just not valid for driving.

Easier said than done, sometimes. It's April 14th; client comes in to sign forms. Goes to take out wallet for credit card... left it at home. Promises a check. Gets distracted and forgets. Client lives (or is traveling for work) and e-signatures are needed; get those but not payment. This client also forgets, once home. Just to say that it's a good rule of thumb, but circumstances crop up. No reason to be suspicious when they are good clients who have always paid. Most of them just plain-old forget and are horribly embarrassed once reminded they owe. But yeah, in most circumstances, payment up-front. I've only lost one client because of my insistence on being paid for that year *and* the prior year before releasing new returns. I wasn't sorry to see her go, either.

I use them, as well - have for years.

Correct, and it will stay that way at least until the IRS figures out how to handle those US citizens who live and work outside the States. For example, my clients in the Czech Republic. They don't have, and can't have, US state drivers' licenses. Passports? Yup - but that's not a choice/option.

We charge about $25 per form, and we do almost all of them online.

We use a portal that comes with our web site (CPA Site Solutions) and it is very easy to use. We can send anything too and fro, and we can set who can see what clients. (The clients only see their own folder, and the "public" folder, where we put a copy of this year's document checklist.) It has two-factor authentication that you can set up, too. Bank-level encryption.

Hi @NECPA in NEBRASKA - your sister (and you!) are in my prayers. I bought a Canon imageClass MF269dw as a multi-function machine. It is a B&W duplex laser printer (among other functions) and it is *lightning* fast printing. I've set it as my default printer, it's so fast and the print quality is so good. And it was pretty inexpensive, to boot!

This happened to my husband when he sold a personal item. He submitted a complaint to ebay and got the money they withheld. Have your client contact ebay.

And one other note: we still have a W-XP machine - an ancient laptop. It's not connected to the internet, and never will be again. But it runs ONE program, that doesn't run well on more-modern operating systems, and for that one program it's worth keeping. (Yes, the program in question has an "upgraded" version - they removed functionality, and added multiple layers of complexity. We tried it, reverted instantly, and will keep the XP machine going as long as possible.)

Those hardware concerns are largely tied to age of motherboard and hard drives. Why put in the money when components get to an age where they mail fail? However, if you know you have a robust machine, and it meets the specs for W10, go for it. Just (as always) keep good backups!

Correct. The interest is taxed in the home-resident-domicile (pick your favorite term) state. Should that OK person have a business in KS - and the business earned the interest - then KS would tax the interest. Think of it this way: OK taxes all income, yes? Even if KS taxes KS-source income, they then have a standard deduction or exemption or tax threshold, before there is any actual tax. Even THEY don't want a gazillion additional tax returns, showing $135 in KS-source interest (let's say it's a big-dollar account), $4,000 exemption, taxable income $0, tax $0.

The lack of jump-to's bothered me for a while, until I realized that I could go to the view mode faster than ATX moved to the jump-to screen. It *is* a transition to make. I was very frustrated for the first week or so, and on occasion I still call support when doing some oddball thing that I can't remember (or have never tried before). Support is great (as others have said) and after a while it gets more intuitive. The input screens for most standardized-ish forms are set up to be as much like the original documents we get from clients as they reasonably can be. That speeds up input considerably.

This one is key! (And leads to representation cases, but put that aside for now.) We have one new company, set up by existing clients. They set up a partnership, they thought. Hey, they're high-tech folks doing engineering, they can figure out these filings and stuff; we don't have to ask about that! Got a bookkeeper who they thought was competent (she's fine for data entry, but in no way a "full charge bookkeeper" which is a profession we really need to see come back). Put both "partners" on payroll. Wanted to be a non-profit "seed technology" (as in, seeding technologies, not little things to put in dirt in spring) source, so they have sourcing "arrangements" with another group. Put in asset funding from this other group (investments for acquiring some expensive tech equipment) as income, 'cuz that's what the "partner" told the bookkeeper, who doesn't know enough to question him. All kinds of little gotchas like that one, and they were in it for a year before they thought to tell us anything. It's going to take us a couple of *years* to fix the mess completely and properly. Step #1: a "partnership" that ends up being taxed as a c-corporation, as that was the only choice left once we got our hands on this mess at tax time last year. Will these people ever blink before checking with us, ever again? Nope; they are good enough engineers to see the mess they made by not asking first. (We hope and pray, and so they say.)

One that's growing, however, is representation work. As the IRS shifts more of its "analysis" to computers and low-end office drones, more returns are going to appeals - which people can't handle themselves. All the folks I know in rep work are busier than one-armed paper hangers, and getting busier.

Happy New Year to everyone here! I started the year with a nasty cold that turned into bronchitis, but that is getting better. All my tax season letters (that go by mail) are out today. The electronic ones will go maybe tomorrow or Saturday. It begins again!

We did something similar last year; a return (finally!!!) ready to e-file after e-file shut down. We sent it in on paper (and I charged the client for the envelope and postage, after taking so &^%$# long to come in to sign I did not want it sitting on their desk for six months and I'd end up with a NYS letter to answer), with the "e-file is shut down" note, and it went through.

That's what I thought!

Well one huge problem here is that we, as tax pros, can tell people "have $X withheld and you'll be fine" but that does NOT translate into anything useful for this new W4. An iterative process - fill it out this way, see what the first paycheck looks like, fill out a NEW W4, see what the 2nd paycheck looks like, is both way more than most folks are willing to do and needlessly work-heavy for the PR dept too. There *should* be a way for a taxpayer to say "$X per paycheck" and be done. My personal feeling is that there should be ZERO withholding, and everyone should just send in quarterly checks. That will make them think *very* carefully about what/who they vote for! Yes, it's hard for some folks (less so under the TCJA). That's part of being a grownup. But it also would get the employers OUT of the tax business and back IN to the business of running a business and dealing with other employee concerns (where they should be active).

We generally tell clients (when they bother to ask) what their annual tax liability was for the past year. We can also help them divvy it up between a married couple, and (barring bonuses, stock options and other perturbations), tell them "tell your employer you want $X withheld for the feds every pay period." The employer can figure out how to do that. I hope!

I have almost entirely given up using my MIT alumni email, since many servers have decided the entire domain is spam; the messages never get through to me OR to my spam filter. They just disappear. Very aggravating; too many online logins are tied to *that* email address. So I set it up to forward all emails to yet another address I have. Grrr! Rant over.