JohnH

Outwest: Excellent recommendations. One of the reasons I started this string is because I'm thinking about going to a dual external hard drive. If you were buying right now would you buy the same one you have, or is there a particular brand/size/etc you'd opt for currently? Medlin: I like your summary. Lots of challenging questions & comments. One little tidbit I could have used a few weeks ago when a power transformer blew on my street. I gathered up some work & went home to finish a few hours of critical work. Had I thought about it, I could have hooked up an extension cord to the power inverter already sitting in my car and finished the project before leaving. (I park right in front of my office). Sometimes the simplest & most elegant solutions escape us. Both of you point out one major lapse in the backup schemes many of us employ - I have not actually done a dry run with my backup drives on a long time. It's time to do that very soon.

This might be a good time to discuss off-site backup practices and what works, especially for small offices. We've had these discussions before and I'm just curious what the latest thinking is, especially since backup hardware & technology gets cheaper by the day. This year I just kept two flash drives on lanyards in my car and would alternate them each day during tax filing season. Once day I'd back up on the flash drive marked "Odd" and the other day I'd back up on the flash drive called "Even". I'd set up a new folder for each day in order to force ATX to back up all client records anew, and then begin deleting the oldest folders when the flash drive began to fill up. It's fast & efficient, and easy to work into the daily routine. Each of the flash drives is password protected and is dedicated only to tax info. I'd like to hear how others handle their off-site backup process in an effort to determine a "best practices" for small offices that don't have huge IT budgets or special computer expertise.

I'm with Gene on this one. While it's in my possession, it would be worth about $4.00 to me personally. That's what I would have to pay to buy a baseball to play catch with my grandsons, which is about the only use I'd have for a baseball. But if I were negotiating with a sucker/buyer, I'd have to contend that it's a valuable collector's item of tremendous sentimental value to me, and it will take hundreds of thousand of dollars to pry it from the hands of this suddenly baseball-crazy fan.

Ken: Nice to see you participating here. I'm sure you will find it helpful and will also see many opportunities to help others. ======================================================= To everyone else: At the seminar, I shared the URL for this Community with others who were in attendance. I also sent emails to several who exchanged business cards and again gave them the link to thes forum with an invitation to join us. ATX has repeatedly stated that they approve of this Community, so they should not mind if we pass this info along at their seminars. I'd suggest that anyone who attends the ATX seminars in the coming weeks make a special effort to tell other participants about this Community & invite them to join us. The more participation we have the better it will be.

I had a business associate like that years ago. (Although if he were here, I'm sure he would say that HE had a business associate like that at one time)

I attended the Charlotte, NC training session today and I thought it was very helpful. No flashes of light or new revelations, but after a couple of years using the program it would have been unusual to have discovered some major unknown feature of the program previously unknown to me. I learned how efficient some keyboard shortcuts can be, and discovered some faster ways to navigate within the program. All in all I consider it to have been worth the investment of time & seminar cost because these tips will help me work faster, assuming I decide to renew this year. The presenter was a TaxWise trainer who is now doing both TaxWise & ATX. She was very knowledgeable and maintained a good pace of instruction, adapting to the knowledge level & interests of the group. In addition to the time spent on shortcuts, she covered all major aspects of the Signature Form rules, customizing the program, customizing forms, templates, passwords, preferences, custom lists & spreadsheets, linking, etc. We spend quite a bit of time on Depreciation & Asset Entry features, which was very helpful (can anyone ever honestly say they know all there is to know about depreciation?). There was no time spent on such basics as how to load the program or other fundamentals - we each had an individual workstation with the program already loaded & ready to go. She spent a reasonable amount of time on e-filing and offered to get into bank products, but no one in our group had any interest in them whatsoever although everyone knew what they were, so we moved on. She did an excellent job of demonstrating the difference between Export/Import and Backup/Restore, reviewing the info carefully to be sure everyone understood when, how, & where each should be used. A couple of very program-specific questions of a somewhat unusual nature came up and she took the time to call Caribou for answers on the spot, so even in those cases where she didn't have the info right at hand, she knew how to get the answers quickly & move on. We had 6 current users and 1 person who is evaluating the program for possible purchase, so there was also plenty of opportunity for us to share our own insights among one another in how to use the program more effectively. So I'll echo what KC said previously - it's worthwhile to use the seminar to go back to some of the basics and maybe pick up some efficiency tips. One thing which was discussed is the idea of making this a 2-day seminar in the future - Day 1 for beginners and Day 2 for experienced/advanced users & continuing instruction for people from Day 1. That seems like a logical way to do things going forward - ATX should consider it for future training. If anyone has questions of a more specific nature about the session, I'll try to answer them.

Marilyn: If you're having trouble deciding which one to choose and they are both equally desirable as a client, why not tell them they must decide which one will continue with you? If they refuse, then tell them the only way you can prepare both their returns would be if both of them are present at all meetings or discussions, and both will be a party to any advice you give the other. I'll bet that requirement will cause one of them or both of them to go somewhere else. Whatever they decide, you win, because you're better off with either: 1) one of them or 2) neither of them.

After firing from the hip with my last post, I began to migrate towards the idea that this was what you had in mind. And I agree completely. I remember attending a real estate continuing ed seminar dealing with home mortgage financing a few years back. (Maybe more than a few years, since it was shortly after FICO scoring became the norm). The presenter discussed various programs which were coming on line to bridge the gap between the sales price and the first mortgage, essentially enabling people to buy with little or no money down. It covered the range from 80-20 loans to grants & gift programs, combined with ARM's or interest-only loans. The presenter focused on first-time buyers and credit rehabilitation cases, but it was made clear that the rules were pretty loose and that many others, including investors, could get in on many of the programs with a little creative thinking. At the time I kept asking myself "Where's the risk that will encourage the borrower to hang on if times get tough?" One attendee asked if this idea of counting on increases in the value of the underlying property or future ability to refinance at similar or lower rates to take them out of a bad decision wasn't just a classic application of the "greater fool" theory but all he got was a non-answer. I thought this was just an aberration that the lenders would quickly put out of its misery. Wow, was I wrong.

I have to agree with you concerning the ultimate result (derivative & hedge fund failures potentially wiping out pension fund investments), but I disagree with the conclusion that the homeowners buying beyond their means is a lie. That is where the problem originated. Everything else which constructed this financial house of cards was built on shaky borrowing. One can certainly argue that the poor, financially ignorant borrowers would not have taken out the loans unless the lenders were willing to lend them money, but personal responsibility has to enter into the equation at some point. People need to be responsible for their own decisions, and if I'm foolish enough to jeopardize my financial future just because someone else is foolish enough to lend me more than I can reasonably repay, then we both need to accept responsibility for our actions.

Interesting article and a possible warning of what may be imminent on the international finance scene. Arnaud gets a little worked up at times and I prefer to read him when he's talking about events in the Middle East, but he may be onto something here with his "Neutron Loans" article.. I especially liked this phrase: "A symbiotic relationship between banks and mortgage companies erected beautiful monetary sand castles on the world's financial beaches, just out of range of high tide. They hadn't reckoned on a subprime mortgage rip tide that flattened them." Here's the link: http://www.washingtontimes.com/apps/pbcs.d.../109130001/1012

Same here. I'm still evaluating other software and have taken steps to convert 2006 to a competitor's software. Haven't toally made up my mind because ATX has lots of features & benefits I like, but I'm thinking long-term.

>>> BTW, ATX sales said the reason why they stopped the atx community website was because their customers set up their own. Don't you love the logic of politics <<< Interesting that they would spin it that way. I don't call that politics - I call it lying to get a sale.

Cancel the question. I found the answer. I'm putting up the link so I can find it here if (or when) I forget again. http://www.irs.gov/retirement/article/0,,id=111419,00.html#8 The year of the contribution does not count in the 5-year qualifying period. It's 3 out of the 5 PRECEDING years. In my example the employee is excluded unless the employer wants to shorten the qualifying period.

The article didn't address that question either, but I'm guessing the answer is "no".

This always throws me. I've seen it discussed before (maybe on the old board), but can't find it now. When using a 3-year qualifying period for a SEP IRA contribution, does the year of the contribution count? For example, if the employee has earnings in 2006, can he be excluded if he had earnings in 2004 & 2005 but no earnings in 2001, 2002, & 2003? (This all assumes the employee was over the age limit and earnings exceeded the applicable amounts for all years in question)

That is an interesting question. This was a news article and it didn't get into the technicalities, although it did say they were ordered to forfeit property bought with the proceeds and were facing a $100,000 fine, plus jail time. This wasn't a small matter - they got $250,000 in the settlement, which worked out to $150,000 after paying the lawyers.

I was double-checking to be sure a payment to a client under the Fen-Phen/Redux settlement was non-taxable and ran into an unusual set of circumstances. I noticed an article that said two people who lied in claiming they took the drugs and received settlements were charged with failing to report the income on their tax returns. My first reaction was that these payments were non-taxable, so how could the recipients be taxed on the payment? The article went on to explain that the nature of the payment changes to taxable income since it was obtained through fraud. Not really looking for answers here and I don't have any clients filing fraudulent claims as far as I know, but I found it to be an interesting twist.

Pardon my cynicism, but I think this survey is just another one of those feel-good PR stunts that they teach in business school. Probably no real purpose to it other than to make people think they "care", when in fact it's little more than window dressing with maybe a little marketing info being garnered from the responses. I guess it's because I've spent too many years dealing with these wet-behind-the-ears marketing whiz kids who know lots about posturing and almost nothing about their constituents. Reminds me of the answering machine messages that start out with "Please be assued that your call is very important to me" and then ends with "Leave a message and I'll return your call AT MY EARLIEST CONVENIENCE."

You'll both be in my prayers KC.

Maybe they decided to "redeploy" the $1,000 to a more constructive purpose - namely the last-minute toaster & microwave offer. It breaks down like this: Toaster..........................................................$ 30.00 Microwave.................................................... $ 89.00 Bonus to marketing-genius executive who came up with the idea.............................$ 842.00

Would you like to have it? I'm waiting for a copy of the restitution agreement. I'm also waiting for the copies of the bank statements for the year of the "diversion". I've been told their receipts were under $25K but you know how what we are told tends to escalate once we start getting the actual data. All we need now is to find out that there was a requirement to file in a year when there was an "Excess Benefit Transaction". After the penalty notices come rolling in, it will be a constant stream of apologies to try and get them waived. And don't even talk to me about interest - I certainly hope that isn't in the agreement. As I understand it, even thought his becomes a balance sheet item once the receivable is booked, the repayments still have to be dragged through line 11 (or line 8 of the EZ), each year. It can't just be posted to the balance sheet account in the same manner as a principal payment in a corporate return. Given the amount of the payments and other issues involved, this thing is going to dog them for years to come, which also means I need to get it right from the outset since I'm guessing someone will just copy my work each year once I get disentangled from this (or IF I get disentangled).

I see that it: 1) "is sent to a small percentage of our population on a rotating basis; " 2) "helps determine how more than $300 billion per year is distributed;" If they will promise to send me $300 billion, I'll volunteer to fill it out...

Funny how politics is like that. Two equally valid explanations can be ascribed to a given action. More or less like the "I voted for it before I voted against it" response. That actually begins to make perfect sense when one looks at it from the politician's point of view.

You're right. I shouldn't have used the word "populist". Apparently it's more basic. The assumption must be that there are enough wealthy people not paying their government guaranteed loans to make it worthwhile to buy their votes.

Any possibility this is because it's such a populist issue and there's an election coming up? Nah, probably just a coincidence since nobody in the US has noticed the issue until recently.