Well, maybe, Jim. Someone emailed this morning to thank me and tell me they thought the audience was really 'engaged.' Otoh, I also volunteered to design a flyer for the rose show for this person so it's entirely possible they are just buttering my bread. The slide show lasted about 45 minutes; there was some oohing and aahing over the pictures and people were tickled that the polyantha pictures were from gardens in so many places around the US. I think people were interested to hear how floribundas developed and what a polyantha is. To some I think it was a shock to hear that roses existed prior to the arrival of box stores. One sweet guy, a WW2 veteran, was really taken with 'Verdun' and its appearance in 1918. He enjoyed telling me a story or two about the city of Verdun and its importance in WWI. His wife won one of the polys and I was glad about that. I think I'll root a cutting of that rose for him. It really seemed to me though that the people most interested in the polys were also the ones that were most taken by the vase of very fragrant once bloomers I'd also brought. I think I'll root some polys and donate them to the club plant sales and see if anyone buys them. My open garden is in a few weeks; maybe some will come to it and ask about them then. I thought about Pam's suggestion that people take the cuttings and root them. I almost mentioned it, but I don't think anyone roots anything because they mostly only know roses as grafted. Maybe over time they'll become interested in antique roses. I have another opportunity in October to do another program; maybe I'll do it on the history of roses. I really enjoy putting the talks together so I'll have fun with it and they get cheap entertainment. Gean

Do you have a flexible saving account for dependant care? Child & Dependent Care Credit - Limit with ER Benefits Although there are expenses in excess of the $5,000 of dependent care benefits, there is no credit when the dependent care benefit exceeds $3,000. The reason for this is that the maximum allowable expenses that can be used for the credit is $3,000. You have actually received a tax benefit for a total of $5,000 in expenses by using the dependent care benefit. Therefore, there is no expense that remains allowable for the credit. The amount of the dependent care benefit disqualifies you from the child tax credit. Lines 28 - 32 of the Form 2441 will show this. If you have, for example, a dependent care benefit amount of $2,000 with the $7,169 of expenses, only $1,000 would be allowed for the calculation of the credit. The IRS does not allow the maximum dependent care benefit of $5,000 plus an addition of the maximum credit amount of $3,000 for the child. The dollars used for the benefit and the credit are overlapping. Generally speaking, depending on the level of your income, the $5,000 in dependent care benefit is a better deal for an individual than the credit.

Yes, we are all human and we all make mistakes. If you pay a preparer to do your taxes, your return should be done correctly. You should have a guarantee that the return is done correctly. The preparer should pay penalities and interest if there is a mistake on your return and the IRS sends you a bill. Most of the people who use paid preparers are too lazy to do their own returns, don't want to spend the time to do their return themselves, are totally confused by tax law or want that guarantee in case the return is done incorrectly. Personally, I don't think you should be able to graduate from high school without knowing how to complete a return with wages, dependents, interest, dividends, and Schedule A. That isn't that difficult. It is important to remember that the paid preparer is only as good as the information that person has. If you fail to bring a W-2 or a 1099 Misc or a 1099 Int, the preparer has NO way of know that information is missing. A good portion of the mistakes preparers make are due to a lack of infomation or poor information provided by the client. We just had a case where a client got a letter from the IRS because he had forgotten to claim $17,000 in income on a Schedule C. In the IRS statistics, that goes down as a paid preparer mistake even though we had no way of knowing he had recieved that income in addition to the other income he had on his Schedule C. Some errors that end up on the preparer side of the ledger are a result of taxpayers lying about being married and whether or not a child has lived with them a full year. I've seen self prepared returns that a taxpayer claimed the Hope Credit and the Lifetime Learning Credit and the Tuition and Fees deduction for the same student for the same tuition paid. Clearly this was a mistake. The software gave him a warning, but the taxpayer ignored the message, printed the return and mailed it in anyway. Mr. Taxpayer got a letter from the IRS a year or so later. When I talked to the taxpayer, his response was "The software asked the questions and I answered it". If Mr. taxpayer had spent 15 minutes doing some research to figure out why the software said his return was incorrect, he would have saved himself the terror of a letter from the IRS and a bunch of money. If you do your return yourself and use two different tax prep programs and get two different answers, you really need to figure out why the answers are different. I'm not trying to start a fight, but simply let the OP know that he/she should have figured out why there was a difference before filing.

turbo tax 30902 adjusted gross 16922 taxable income 1903 tax 1342 payments 14 penalty 575 tax due (oops - off on my orig post) taxact 30992 adjusted gross 17019 taxable income 1918 tax 1342 payments 36 penalty 612 tax due h&r block 28231 adjusted gross 14214 taxable income 1498 tax 1152 payments 356 tax due Don't know why it's different - I put in the same income the only thing that kept confusing me were her quarterly payments - the way they ask the questions. Actually H&R block was the only one that has you put the dates and amounts in of when the payments were made -so I don't know? And on the NJ side - I don't know if Taxact (since it came up with her owning $149) doesn't have all of the correct calculations to transer over. My Mom hasn't had to pay in NJ for the past years - so I knew that one wasn't right. I didn't ours with Taxact - with a refund - and now may "redo" the IRS in H&R Block just for fun.