Odd answer to question to tax preparers
joyfulguy
5 years ago
last modified: 5 years ago
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Preparing Bulbs For Potting - Part 2
Comments (24)Thank you, everyone! I am very pleased that many are able to take away some good information and ideas from my shared photo series! I clean my small paintbrushes with anti-bacterial dishsoap, and I scrub pots and saucers prior to using them. In the interest of space and time, the more small and obvious details have been left out. The small paintbrushes usually come in packages of 3 or 4 different sizes... perfect for use with the different powders I apply when potting bulbs. Any chemical, no matter how harmless, should be used with care. It goes without saying that you should be careful when applying anti-fungal powders or liquids, or any rooting hormone powders. Always read the directions prior to use, as with any product you'd use for household or garden. Read labels carefully, and decide for yourself if these are products you can handle. As with anything else, proper use and clean-up is important after you are finished using products. These things go without saying to most of us, who are seasoned gardeners, or who at least have handled household and/or garden products before. If you wanted to get really technical, you could ask the manufacturer of garden products to send you a copy of the Material Safety Data Sheet, or MSDS, for the product in question. Personally, I don't find the need to go overboard... I simply take precautions, and use common sense when handling certain products. Hazmat is short for hazardous material... it's one of the endorsements on my CDL. Since Captan and other anti-fungal products are sold retail at garden centers everywhere, I find them no more hazardous than any other chemical sold for use by private citizens. Again, simply employ common sense, and there will be no problems. This particular forum is my home on the internet, too, and most of the inhabitants are my online family! I came here to ask a few questions about my large Minerva bulb, and everyone was so nice and helpful, I kept coming back. I think it would be very difficult to find a better group of gardeners, or a nicer group of people! :-) One of the things I've been experimenting with since beginning bulb collecting is finding the perfect medium for my environment. I need a medium that will drain quickly and dry out in a decent amount of time. I grow indoors, but I have the changing temperatures, sunlight, and humidity of the changing seasons to contend with. I have found that a more inorganic approach works best for me. My favorite medium consists of pine bark fines, turface, perlite, and a few other minor additions. It's very close to a bonsai medium sold by a company on the east coast... New England Bonsai Gardens. The small bags of medium they sell are rather expensive, and they don't contain enough medium for my needs. I've been searching for the main ingredients in bulk, so I can mix my own. Maria, it would be wonderful to see the Amaryllis Society of America make a comeback! It would even be nice to see a new society formed... whatever it takes to bring good information and a seed and pollen bank to the people. Certainly, there is a need for such a specialized society... there seems to be a good amount of interest, and a goodly number of growers these days! Interest in Hippeastrum growing as a hobby seems to be on the rise! Getting back to the 3 bulbs I just prepared and potted... I'd like to follow their growth through a series of pictorial threads, which will hopefully help our newest hobby growers to understand the cycles of these bulbs. I'm a fairly experienced grower now, and I'm also a frequent poster... if I can help by exploring all the aspects of Hippeastrum bulbs and their home culture through small pictorial threads, I'd like to. Stay tuned for more, then! It's not yet spring, and the year is young!...See Moretax software discrepancies
Comments (21)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....See MoreTax Cut Question
Comments (9)My background is that I am a CPA who worked for H&R Block for 18 years. This is my first year not working for them so I have no personal interest in answering your question. Over the years I have had to handle many widows and widowers who had no idea how to handle their taxes. Very often they brought in every document they had EXCEPT the one I needed. I think that your money would be very well spent by going to Block at least for the first year. The Tax Cut program is Blocks and they can import the data from the prior year so they know what they are looking for from the prior year. Bring in the last two years of returns and have them check them for you as they may find errors and can amend them for you. I almost always found errors that got people a bigger refund than what they had to pay me in fees. If you do decide to do it yourself, I'd suggest that you bring the finished return and your source documents to a local Block office and have it checked. I never charged for this and you may get lucky and find a like-minded preparer. In either case, I would suggest calling and making an appointment. ALWAYS avoid the last week of Jan and the first week of Feb as that is their busiest time of the season. If you can wait until March it is the slowest time. I'd ask for the most experienced preparer in the office. Good luck!...See MoreAny real estate folks here, answer a heating question?
Comments (33)Just about the only thing that makes that happen is a very good and recent sale in the "neighborhood" of a house comparable to the one being appraised. Sometimes you'll have a buyer come in with cash (as from an inheritance or divorce settlement) who doesn't bother to get an appraisal. That sale can set a new high---although it is usually used as a fourth comparable since that doesn't represent the "typical" buyer. Strictly defined, a "neighborhood" is the either in the same subdivision or within one mile of the subject. Ideally the sale should have occurred within the previous six months. However, in rapidly changing market conditions some lenders ask for comps within three months. There are all kinds of exceptions to this guidline; for example, when you are in a subdivision that covers several miles and the only comps are within the s/d but beyond a mile. And a comp in the same s/d is better even if it is a mile or two away than a house just outside the s/d boundaries that is only a half-mile away. Things like s/d amenities that would attach to the subject but not the comp "outside the gates" so to speak, even if those gates are only metaphorical. When you have semi-rural properties or areas with no subdivisions it is permissible to go further away and farther back in time for comparable sales. It's very possible that someone bought a house a few miles from you that was in some way very like your house---and bought it within a few months of your own purchase. It's all about group behavior and not individual actions... you look at trends in sales and what other people have bought recently in the same area, try to find sales that match your subject best. When you have no subdivision, or you're in a rural area or dealing with unique properties, often the most difficult task is to identify the most important feature of a home---the number of bedrooms? the tennis court? the five-car garage? the finished basement media room? That's why Realtors are such wonderful resources for appraisers---if they will use their knowledge. They know what is selling houses in their area. Sometimes it is a school district---I've seen people pay $300K for a two-two in a highly desirable elementary school district. That's what makes the business interesting, there is something different with every assignment....See MoreC Marlin
5 years agoElmer J Fudd
5 years agolast modified: 5 years agoC Marlin
5 years agoElmer J Fudd
5 years agolast modified: 5 years agojoyfulguy
5 years agoC Marlin
5 years agojoyfulguy
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Elmer J Fudd