User talk:Belle

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Contents 1 Edits to your page 2 like-kind exchanges 3 Thanks 4 Hijackerer 5 newer, kinder Kevinh5 6 Engagement letter 7 And how was it for you? 8 Drake vs Lacerte 9 my contact info 10 Whew 11 Thank You 12 Thanks (again) 13 Tax Time Help 14 You want great humor? 15 August relaxation levels 16 Test 17 CASEA Wine Country Seminar 18 H&R Block spreadsheet 19 Copiers 20 Location 21 location 22 H & R Block fees 23 Licensing 24 your question 25 Block fee schedule 26 CPA Needed 27 :) 28 Drake 29 H&R Block Schedule 30 HRB's Training. 31 Doing Fine 32 Maybe spam? 33 Ahead of the curve 34 "The Long Spam" 35 Interesting idea 36 E-mail pinging 37 PB & J

Edits to your page

Belle:

See the "history" tab at the top of this page? Just click on that and you'll see every edit made to it. On that page you can see Dusty listed. Just click on his/her name and you'll then be on their page.

- Tim Doyle, TaxAlmanac Moderator - Talk to me 15:51, 28 January 2008 (CST)

Spreadsheet,

Belle, sure I will be glad to share that with you. The price is $1,000,000 but it is deeply discounted this week leaving a net cost of your undying love and admiration! ;-). Keep in mind that it is specific to my client who has some pretty specific tax issues and similary tailored towards GA state. However, it would be a good start that will help you figure out your client information. Shoot me your email addy in my discussion area and I will email it to you. I will also send a good calendar that gave me the idea, which is tailored more generically. I am just a mental case that has to have it in excel spreadsheet form to understand it! 8-)

Michael

like-kind exchanges

Hi Belle. I decided to send you a personal response because I think I would get roundly criticized for the way we decided to approach this.  :) We could not get Lacerte to do this right - it used to be that in an older version you could just check "traded in" and enter the trade in allowance, and it would do all the calcs just right. Now with the wizard, it doesn't give you that category and I just can't get it to work out right for a less than 100% business use vehicle. I also don't want to spend too much time on this and have to bill the client for all my fiddling around in Lacerte.

So what we decided to do is treat the old vehicle as having been sold for no gain or loss, even tho it was traded in at a loss. I took 67% (% business use) of the trade in allowance and applied it to the ending basis of the old (traded in) vehicle. This gave me the loss of approx $2000.

I took 67% of the cost of the new vehicle and added to that amount the loss on the old vehicle of %2000. This gave me my new depreciable basis. But I can't put that in as the original cost of my new vehicle with 100% business use because it won't calculate deprecation with auto limits properly. So I grossed up my depreciable basis so that the depreciable basis would amount to 67% of an original cost for depreciation purposes. I then entered in the new "original cost" of the new vehicle manually, and entered 67% business use. This gave me my correct new depreciable basis.

We decided not to prepare the 8824 even though you are really supposed to do that, only because we couldn't get the beginning basis of the new vehicle on the 8824 to match what we had grossed up our cost to be.

Also, I tried to link the 2 assets in Lacerte using the like-kind wizard, and it did correctly compute the depreciation for the year with the auto limits in place, but it also called my new vehicle "boot", which is not what I wanted it to reflect on the tax return!

So that is our work-around that's probably not totally correct, because of not filing the 8824, but at least we are getting our basis and depreciation right.

Let me know if you are able to come up with a better way to do this. Thanks.

Thanks

Thanks Belle. I've been researching so many returns this year until I am blue in the face, I am two weeks behind. I spend time here to continually update myself. There are things even after 20+ years I don't know. So I spend a couple of hours a day here to keep my mind sharp and I love the friendship even if it is online. At least it's a professional site and not something else. TomTaocpa 11:03, 2 April 2008 (CDT)

Hijackerer

You did hijack my thread and you shouldn't mention stroking when talking to me, you know how I get.

Fsteincpa

newer, kinder Kevinh5

lol. I figured enough was enough. He should have gotten the point without being ridiculed too much. Kevinh5

Engagement letter

Belle, I think you were the one who included a line in your engagement letter about charging an hourly rate for extra stuff you have to do for tax prep (like assist with schedules that the client already should have prepared). What was that wording? I've searched all over this forum, and I can't find it. Natalie 20:01, 18 December 2008 (CST)Natalie

Yeah, that was it. Thank you! Natalie 01:45, 19 December 2008 (CST)Natalie

And how was it for you?

(sorry for the title!)

From your perspective, what happened? Did you have to retype the answer, or was the move "behind the scenes" from your perspective? I've often wondered if I should wait around a while to make sure nobody's jumped on the question, but I generally just want to get those kinds of questions out of the pro forum as fast as I notice them, so... I've been curious about whether it makes a difference to those who might have been trying to answer.

Trillium 19:34, 3 March 2009 (CST)

Drake vs Lacerte

Yes, I do use Drake. In my prior practice (I sold it 5 or 6 years ago) I used Lacerte. I couldn't justify the price of Lacerte for a brand new practice (the first year I only did 49 returns) so I had plenty of time to learn how to use a cheaper software.

1) Lacerte does more things than Drake: more forms, jump to input from form. I don't remember the additional forms but I've only had one or two returns that I've had to do something manually with this year. One was a state of Ohio return that Drake didn't allow multiple credit forms with. But they told me how to override the calculation with my number once I came up with it. In my practice in Georgia I probably only had one or two clients requiring the extra forms that Lacerte had, but my staff always convinced me that the extra price of the software would be cheaper than learning (during tax season) a different software. If you started doing extensions on Drake now, you'd be well up to speed by January though.

2) Drake gives great software support - you can either email your question (and attach the file if you want) or call them and they get back with you within 12-24 hours. If you phone them you rarely wait more than 4 or 5 minutes to talk with them. They speak English, they are based in North Carolina (about an hour from me, actually).

3) I did not convert any files, but all software companies have conversion software. I would prefer to do the conversion in - house rather than shipping my data off.

hope this helps - let me know if you have other questions. Kevinh5

my contact info

kevinhuston@msn.com

glad to help Kevinh5

Whew

Belle –

Thank you, thank you, thank you. It often surprises me what people get all worked up about – things I write, or others write, that I think are riskily snarky get accepted with good humor and then the most generic blah blah blah sends somebody on the rampage. I was pretty confident I knew which of the two of us was on firmer ground in today’s exchange(s), but it’s always nice to have some outside validation.

Trillium 19:30, 30 June 2009 (CDT)

Thank You

Thanks for taking the time to send me that note. I was starting to feel way out of my league here. But this site does appear to be a great resource. I guess along with developing my tax knowledge, I need to develop some thicker skin as well!

Thanks (again)

Yeah, Kevin zapped the one you're probably thinking about. I saw it in the middle of the night and put a warning on it, but Kevin's right, it's so likely to have been a call for spam, so why even leave it out there. Although JR's response was great, did you see that post? He told the guy that he needed pro help, gave him some hints for the meantime, and pretty effectively diminished the effectiveness of a follow-up spam post, all in about 4 politely worded lines! (respect!)

Following Kevin's lead, I think I'm about to zap that Numia acctg SW spam post that came in at about the same time last night. (Just now realizing that the timing probably wasn't a coincidence...how'd I miss that last night?!) Then I can move that discussion back to BG where it was to start with - it's been parked in the consumer forum for the last 12-14 hours.

Anyway, w/r/t the behind the scenes work: if I didn't have TA to monitor now and then, I might have to do more paying work, and then the $$ might go to my head. However, the site survived for a long while w/o active moderating, and I daresay it'd be okay in the future that way, too. But for now, it seems to be helping, and it's fun. Mostly.

Trillium 17:42, 10 August 2009 (CDT)

Tax Time Help

Belle,

Shoot me an email at FSteinCPA@aol.com.

I have excess staff during tax season and we might be able to work something out if you need help.

Fsteincpa 10:52, 20 August 2009 (CDT)

You want great humor?

Check out the five-part harmony they had going on earlier in the office rental discussion. I don't know how people manage to be that effortlessly witty so early in the morning. Kevin kicked off that one, too.

Trillium 19:10, 24 August 2009 (CDT)

August relaxation levels

Yeah, I take all of what you said and roll it up into: August, and finally relaxed enough to let it fly. (And it's not so risky now, the person on the other end of the internet is less likely to be right on the edge of panic; like you said, watch for that to change in a month or so.)

I'm a sucker for wordplay, always have loved it. Watching those five build on each other's posts just started my day off great!

Trillium 20:01, 24 August 2009 (CDT)

And to answer your latest query, which came in as I clicked preview for this response:

To leave Harry a note, click the edit tab at the top of his talk page, and then go all the way to the end of the existing notes and type your note to him. To put a header at the top of your note so that it's separate from the note before it, format your first line with two equal signs both before and after what you want the note title to say. (Well, that's an awkward description, but you'll see some examples of what that looks like once you've clicked edit on his page, and then you'll go - "oh yeah, I get it now!".) The part of his page that creates the "click here to leave me a message" link got deleted somehow long ago, and when I offered to restore it he said no - since it's missing, it limits the people who can leave him a note to those who master the secret editing technique (ha!).

I think the Toller discussion might be long gone by now - they can be restored for a while after they're deleted, but not sure about days later. I'll check it out.

Trillium 20:01, 24 August 2009 (CDT)

Test

Only a test - a true emergency would require a PBR Belle 20:15, 24 August 2009 (CDT)

CASEA Wine Country Seminar

Nov 9-10, Petaluma CA CASEA North Bay chapter

I am teaching the Ethics Jeopardy session Mon the 9th from 5-7 pm. I found a newsletter online the other day but today I don't find it. I do find other info about it online. Kevinh5

H&R Block spreadsheet

Hi Belle,

Would you please e-mail me the spreadsheet for H&R block. I know it is a little older but I think I am undercharging by a lot.

Thanks,

taxesforu@cox.net

Copiers

Thanks Belle,

Yes, those are the decisions I'm trying to make. 3 separate machines or one. I am also considering getting a printer for each computer and foregoing the network.

There is a machine that a client of mine uses, they have over 50 employees and they have bought 2 or 3 of these machines and have had good luck with them. I found them a few months ago for around $700. I forget the name and model number but I will be calling him after work tonight.

And as for the email, just options and thoughts. It's always good to have people in house, just difficult sometimes.

Fsteincpa 13:53, 9 September 2009 (CDT)

Location

Belle,

I am in Oklahoma.

PatrickA5 17:04, 9 September 2009 (CDT)

location

I'd need to be home by around 5:00 for my kids sports.

PatrickA5 17:19, 9 September 2009 (CDT)

H & R Block fees

A while back you had a post offering to fax H & R Block fee sheet for anyone. If you still have a fee schedule, please fax me a copy at 410-665-9256.

Thanks Bob Wagner````

Licensing

I was surprised myself. Although technically he had a minor point - how are we supposed to know everything about Social Security? Our clients expect us to, but maybe we can't know everything? Somehow our clients expect that we know everything about anything to do with money. Unfortunately, I think that we perpetuate this myth ourselves by trying to find answers to their questions that aren't really tax questions. In this instance, though, I think it is a tax question, and I would have expected an EA to know the answer. I don't have the time to look it up, but I'll bet the answer is in Pub 334. Kevinh5

your question

should you not want to post it, you could email it to me at kevinhuston@msn.com, and I'd give it a shot. But you know that a lot of people don't like my answers. LOL. No, those type of answers are reserved for those who deserve them. You deserve a real answer, and if I know, or know where to look, I'll let you know. Kevinh5

p.s. I still think that 'booby prize' was appropriate. LOL.

Hi Belle,

Thanks for your reply - I searched for the answers in the yellow box, but couldn't find my specific situation. I greatly appreciate anything you find that is more relevant and I will continue to search as well.

Thanks :)

Jenn

Block fee schedule

Hi Belle I've read that you have an old Block fee schedule that you are willing to share. I've pulled annual reports and the works for Block, hewitt, and Liberty and other than their average fee - nothing. As an enrolled agent in a blue collar neighborhood, I would greatly appreciate a copy of your schedule. thanks, Liam in Pa.

p.s. my e-mail is taxmantlc@msn.com

CPA Needed

I have someone who is looking for a CPA in Southern California, preferably in the Southbay area. I was wondering where in Cali are you So I can give this person your contact info. Unfortunately, I do not have any details. I do know it will be dealing with an individual return and possibly a business return..What kind I'm not sure.

Thanks. Genskitty

 :)

Thank you anyway. There are a handful on here that I trust and turn to for advice and you are one of them. Even though we all may not always see eye to eye especially where HR Block is concerned. Well, thank you anyway. See you around on the forum.

Drake

Thanks for the information. I am still thinking about it but will probably stay with Proseries Basic for now and switch to the Professional version next year. Drake is a good value if you use all their tools, but the write-up and planning software leave much to be desired.

H&R Block Schedule

Can you send me that H&R Block schedule as well? Thanks!

Email: specy24@aol.com

HRB's Training.

) Our online classes are through CCH you might want to look into that. I would still send them to Block. They just don't want you to files tax returns with another company while you are filing tax returns with them. If you work for them that is. We do have a lot people who do take the classes for the tax knowledge. Just because someone takes the course and is able to get an interview does not mean they will be hired. I say, if you want to still send them to Blocks Basic class. It is $149 per person.

We have lawyers, people who are accounts, I think a CPA or two (can't remember for sure though.In fact, we have two lawyers in my district who works with Block, one of them works year round. We do have quite a few people who are in accounting who works with Block as well.

Unfortunately, there are a lot of incompetent tax preparers all over. They are the ones that give the good ones a bad name.

Just want to also let you know that the Block has changed the way tax pro's are certified now is really good. It does hold the tax pro's more accountable. At one time a person was able to test out of a course, but not any more. Even the instructors must take a test now and I believe the EA's as well. It is tougher. Because of the certification changes, I dropped two certification levels. I am grandfathered in as a Tax Adviser I, I was a Tax Adviser III. I am working my but off to get back to TA III, but I seriously doubt that I will before December. I might not even make it to TA II by December. With the old certification, we were able to take any classes in any order. All we had to do is meet our 30 hours for certification and we were certified. Now, starting with this tax seaon, we have to take all of the courses under a certification level, pass each individual course and then take an assessment Exam for that certification level. If we fail the first time, we can take the assessment test two more times. We cannot skip a certification level assessment test to take a higher exam. And if we do not pass it by the third time, we have to wait till next year to retake the exam.

A lot of people do not like this, because they were grandfathered in at their paid certification level, not their actual certification level. I do not mind and with the tax preparer penalites and stricter accountability, I actually prefer it this way.

One last thing in case if you did not know, but Block is an authorized sponsor of CPE credits with the IRS. So any Tax Training courses that focus primarily on tax theory do qualify for EA credit. But we are not at the moment an authorized sponsor of CPE with NASBA so each CPA will have to contact their NASBA to see if a particular course qualifies for CPE with them.

Did not mean to ramble on like this. Maybe, I should post this on the forum as well. Not sure if I should or not though.

Doing Fine

Thanks for asking! Fortunately, I didn't get flooded. The worst of it hit to the West of the city. The only good thing to come from it will be that a lot of out of work contractors will have some work to do.CrowJD 20:08, 23 September 2009 (CDT)

Thanks for the welcome Belle.

I just read the post you gave me a link to. Laughing so hard my husband wants to know what the heck it is. Thanks for sharing!

Hope I'm gonna do the tilde thing right this time LOL!

KathiJud 20:29, 26 September 2009 (CDT)

Cool - thanks for the spreadsheet!!! florida-cpa@hotmail.com

)

Floridacpa 00:17, 29 September 2009 (CDT)

Maybe spam?

Hi, Belle –

Yeah, I guess ResearchSales could be seen as spam – although it wasn’t accompanied by any of the usual spammy website links, and the name doesn’t lead you back to one research product over another, either. I almost wonder if it was one of the regulars having a go at the guy, under a “fake” ID…

I’ll put the standard “no spam or advertising” note on RS’s talk page, just in case. Let’s see what Kevin thinks in the morning – maybe he’ll delete the post if he also thinks it’s spammy. Or you can delete it, you know!

Really: you should feel free to go ahead and edit out any post you suspect shouldn’t be allowed. You can always ask Kevin and/or me for confirmation after the fact if you want a second opinion, and the post can be replaced if it turns out nobody agrees with you (kidding – that’s pretty unlikely!). You know what goes on around here, what flies and what doesn’t, and other than maybe missing a few of Crow’s alter egos (which happened to me just the other day – I sent one of his jokey posts to the consumer forum for lack of noticing what he was up to under new IDs!!), I doubt if you’d be wrong.

When I’m not absolutely sure it’s spam, I’ll leave some or all of the “suspect” post (e.g., all but the website link, or the non-spammy part of whatever was written) and add a note in brackets that the rest has been removed “on suspicion of not following TaxAlmanac guidelines” or something like that – just to kind of hedge things in case it turns out to be fine once you ask around. Anything any of us does can be undone if need be; there’s a safety net.

Trillium 00:35, 10 October 2009 (CDT)

Ahead of the curve

I was just anticipating... it should have been in chat all along IMO, but nobody moved it when it was active, either originally or when it was last bumped. I tend to leave the ones like this (i.e., not political, and at least tangentially about tax) wherever they were started while they're "hot" and try to remember to go back later and move 'em if they seem to be in the wrong place. But then, I don't always make great notes about the stuff I mean to do later. So I took your linking to it as a reminder, aka opportunity, to move it before it got bumped to the top of the page.

Hey, second opinion request - is that e-mail address about halfway down the front page disrupting the formatting of the Tax Forum for you? It's only sorta messing it up for me, and I use narrow windows, so I figured it wasn't bad enough to replace the discussion with a new one. The strange thing is, right after he posted the discussion, the guy created a new user ID (T4Tax), so I thought he'd realized what he'd done and would post again with the new ID... but since then, no activity from either ID.

Speaking of strangeness, did you notice that I restored that Toller/Hercules discussion you were wanting to see? I thought you might have been aware of that at the time it got restored, since Kevin and I exchanged notes about it, and you might also have seen the restoration on the activity log. But in case not, and if you're still interested in seeing it, look at the prior activity for Toller. I know, it's old news - probably a month since the discussion happened and at least a couple of weeks since the restore. But I'd been meaning to tell you. (That forgetting thing again.)

Trillium 19:25, 14 October 2009 (CDT)

"The Long Spam"

Kind of like the long con? Sawyer, I mean Pomcor, sets us up to spam ourselves by getting someone else to recommend consulting a company just like his? (If not, don't you have to wonder how his company asserts leadership in this area without knowing how to actually get the real estate out of the companies they buy?)

Trillium 14:40, 23 October 2009 (CDT)

Interesting idea

Re: verification via an e-mail address. I could see how this would help in two ways: (1) the fly-by poster who has also posted to "ask yahoo" and tax sites across the spectrum, and (2) the repeat non-tax "website spammers" that come through overnight. Both of those groups probably wouldn't want to be bothered to set up a fake e-mail just to receive and verify. On the other hand, somebody who wants to troll and just generally be a pest can set up a hotmail account in about two minutes.

I imagine that Kevin and I wouldn't have access to whatever e-mail address had been used to establish the user as valid (a real domain vs yahoo or hotmail), which is a shame, because it would be one more thing to consider when trying to determine pro/nonpro, "prolific helpful article-writer"/"shameless self-linking advertiser" and on and on - all the things we determine on the fly every day. We make mistakes along the way all the time - sometimes Type I (e.g., a pro gets shifted to the consumer forum or a valid link gets deleted) and sometimes type II (e.g., a DIY gets left in the pro forum, or a spammer or troll is allowed to continue posting). In the end you hope for a reasonable balance and a pleasant-enough place for people to visit, and be thankful it's a wiki and anything we do can be undone!

Thx for the info on DaveF - wish he had put some of what you and Tim Kelly conveyed onto his user page, might have been useful when I was trying to figure out whether he was "prolific helpful article-writer" or "shameless self-linking advertiser" or somewhere in between - I have to admit the blank profile was part of my decision process, offset by the great contribution history. I had more thoughts on this, but I find I'm rambling, so I'll leave it at that. And we'll see what happens.

Trillium

E-mail pinging

I think there are ways that verification of valid users via an e-mail address could be set up automatically. For example, Intuit already has an auto-response thing right now for people who have lost a TA password and want it reset; if they had previously provided an e-mail address, they (theoretically) get a reset password right away. So that makes me think that the underlying system can handle sending and receiving e-mail on its own. On the other hand, there are quite a few posts in the feedback forum from people reporting problems getting their e-mail addresses verified by the site, so maybe all auto-systems have their glitches. Kind of outside my area of expertise!

Anyway, I like the idea if it'd help cut back even a little on the clean-up (so maybe I wouldn't be looking for problems where there aren't any).

You could post the idea to the Feedback forum - that would put it out there where Tim would see it and also might produce some additional ideas on implementation or alternatives. And if I have a chance to talk with Tim again about possible future programming improvements, I'll ask about it.

Trillium

Hi Belle, Re the fed tax deposits, where are you located? I'm in NJ and haven't heard of our banks not accepting check deposits but it's probably only a matter of time. I use EFTPS for most of my clients. Paul Brush Toms River NJ

PB & J

Can you believe I never made the connection with PBinNJ. Now I'm going to think of PB&J everytime I see it thanks to you :) I love EPTPS also and found out the hard way that you have to pay at lease one day in advance. Great system though. In 2001, my wife and I took a business trip to SF. We toured wine country and had lunch in Saucelito (probably butchered the name). Beautiful place. Tried to get into the French Laundry but they would not hear it. Really beautiful part of the country. Loved SF, too. Paul