OT: The secret to doing your taxes is

[patrick conroy]

... have four beers before you start. Then have three more while figuring. And trust in TurboTax.

Dammit - I owe, I owe. Of all the years, I really could'a used a refund...

[Tim Douglass]

Back when he was working as a building contractor my dad used to explain his simple system for avoiding income tax - go into business for yourself, you won't have any income, so no income tax! QED

-- "We need to make a sacrifice to the gods, find me a young virgin... oh, and bring something to kill"

Tim Douglass

[Mark & Juanita]

I've been using TaxCut; Intuit has lost my business with their activation fiasco a couple of years ago with TurboTax (lost sales made them reconsider that nonsense) and their absolute arrogance in sunsetting Quicken functions in order to force people to "upgrade" to a newer version that is lobotomized compared to features that were present in the equivalent grade of the current version.

Now I'm looking for a good replacement for Quicken so I have it available when I need it. Anybody have any experience with MoneyDance?

>Dammit - I owe, I owe.

Shoulda stopped at the second beer. :-)

+--------------------------------------------------------------------------------+ The absence of accidents does not mean the presence of safety Army General Richard Cody +--------------------------------------------------------------------------------+

[Wes Stewart]

I'm still using Quicken 99 Basic version. Still works the same and is entirely adequate for dealing with my meager finances. I gave up Turbotax a couple of years ago when IRS put fillable pdf forms online. I download them and use Acrobat Writer to fill them in. No way am I going to do this stuff online with the breaches reported lately.

A coupla Excel sheets handle the calcs.

Of course it helps to have no job, no business, no mortgage, no cattle feeding tax shelters and no income:-)

[Mark & Juanita]

... snip

I agree with the online stuff. I don't have any desire to use e-file -- I'll continue to use hardcopy as long as possible. The tax programs just make sure I have all the appropriate information in the right places.

+--------------------------------------------------------------------------------+ The absence of accidents does not mean the presence of safety Army General Richard Cody +--------------------------------------------------------------------------------+

[Duane Bozarth]

...

I used the TaxCut freebie for a working copy also...works although klunky interface (but for free, what can you expect? :) ). I'd really not like the interface if I were paying for it, however.

Still (halfheartedly) using Quickbooks 99 for the business/farm although I'm reverting more and more to the old paper books for routine record-keeping and simply transferring gross information into QB--it's faster and more flexible.

[George]

As we know from recent history, it's good to have flexible bookkeeping....

[taxpayer779]

HR 25 (Fair Tax). Does away with turbo tax, quicken, etc. Best of all, it does away with the IRS.

[WillR]

Would that be Enron style or a more worldly communications approach to divulging your finances?

Or, for those in Canada, perhaps a more Liberal approach would be in order -- assuming that you find the Conservative approach too "Scary".

[Duane Bozarth]

Never happen...and it'd be "fair" in name only, anyway...

[taxpayer779]

What's unfair about it?

[Doug Miller]

Unless there are some exemptions built in, the burden of any tax falls disproportionately upon the very poor, some of whom need every dollar they can earn to pay for the basic necessities of life. This is not a problem with the current Federal income tax, but the payroll tax places a heavy burden on those who are least able to afford it. For those whose incomes are not sufficient to permit them to save or invest a portion, but instead must spend it all on simply providing food, shelter, clothing, and transportation, replacing their current situation (7.65% payroll tax, partially offset by a Federal income tax

*credit*) with a value-added tax at a *much* higher rate is intolerable.

Some of that burden, certainly, would be eased by the elimination of the corporate income tax, which should produce a substantial reduction in retail prices. [I'd support eliminating the corporate income tax simply on the grounds that it's a complete fiction anyhow. Corporations don't pay income tax. Their customers pay it. It's just another cost of doing business, like salaries or raw materials, and is incorporated into the price of the product.]

I wonder, though, if that's sufficient to ease the burden on the very poor.

What's presented here

like they've got that figured out (and a few other things as well).

-- Regards, Doug Miller (alphageek at milmac dot com)

Nobody ever left footprints in the sands of time by sitting on his butt. And who wants to leave buttprints in the sands of time?

[Bob G.]

truthful I liked thier old DOS based programs a lot more then I did the "Winders" versions...but I never could hold them responsible for that ...

On the HOME Financial software ....Call be an antique if you will but I have been using MYM ( Managing your Money) since the 80's ...just simple to use ...and works for me...

I lost my original program disks a few years ago & could not install in on my new computer... and went into a near panic and had to use Quicken for a month or two... Gosh what a royal pain to use...

Found a set of original MYM disks on E-bay I called the seller and gave him 50 bucks for them when the auction price was only 50 cents.... He ended the auction and sent me the disks... Personally it was worth the 50 bucks ....I honestly would have paid more...

I was smart this time...I made duplicates of the originals and store them in a safe deposit box...

That said... I filed my taxes Saturday and they were accepted and I just finished printing out the PAYMENT vouchers to send along with my check... I will not write the checks until Friday.....

Bob Griffiths

[J. Clarke]

Same as any other tax--it hurts one group worse than it hurts another. HR25 would hurts the people who are barely getting buy--under the current system they don't pay much if any income tax, but they'd pay a higher percentage of their income in sales tax than would someone who is well off, and it might make the difference between "making it" and going broke.

In this case they try to correct that by giving each person a monthly rebate in the amount of the tax rate times the poverty level. How well that will work I have no idea, but it looks like almost as big a boondoggle as the IRS itself.

It is not possible to develop a fair tax code--anyone who thinks that any given tax code is fair is deluding himself.

[Edwin Pawlowski]

Oh, one of my favorite hot buttons. Idiots think they are being spared because business is being taxed. Your representatives (federal, state, local, does not matter) want money for a favorite project. If they say they want to increase taxes, people revolt. If they say they are going to tax businesses, they are all in favor of it.

Second hot button. The town wants a new school. Town can't afford it. We can't pay the property taxes. Oh, wait, the state is going to fund 82% of it. Yay, we get a school that only cost us 18% of the real cost. The rest is FREE from the state. Not once do these morons stop to think where the state is getting the money.

We need major tax reform. We need to eliminate the present income tax in favor of a flat tax (exempting the poor) or some sort of Federal sales tax.

We also have to cut government spending at every level. Congress does not have the balls to try it. Ed

[Charles Spitzer]

what makes you think that prices will go down if business taxes go away? did gas prices at the pump go down significantly when oil prices went down in the last dip?

[Edwin Pawlowski]

You may find this hard to believe, but I do have some faith in most (but not all) companies that they will do the right thing. After raising prices three times this year, we just notified out customers of a reduction. Yes, it truly does happen.

I'm not naive enough to think that some companies will grab what they can, but those companies are already doing it. If Burger King cuts the cheeseburger 5¢, McD is not going to be far behind. Coke/Pepsi, same deal. They take turns at being 89¢ each week.

Most companies try to turn a fair and honest profit, support local charities and are good neighbors in the community. They are the ones not on the 11 o'clock news.

[Fly-by-Night CC]

What do you guys mean by "activation fiasco" and the "sunsetted" Quicken functions?

[Tom Watson]

Well, I only hope that the experience did not leave you entirely bereft of liquid assets.

Tom Watson - WoodDorker tjwatson1ATcomcastDOTnet (email)

(website)

[Tim Douglass]

Actually, a graduated income tax is probably the least harmful at every economic level. That doesn't make it "fair" since the rich pay more as a percentage, but in many ways it is the most fair of any proposal, certainly much more so than a flat tax or a sales tax (which works like an inverse graduated income tax).

This, of course, is the real issue. What should they be cutting, though? No one wants the services that they use to be jeopardized, so the elected representative don't act in order to preserve their voter base. I really don't know where we can cut government services without creating a bigger economic burden somewhere else. The old cry of "trim the fat" just won't yield any useful reductions.

If there was a good answer someone would have done it. All the answers are bad in one way or another, so decide what you want to deal with and lean that way.

-- "We need to make a sacrifice to the gods, find me a young virgin... oh, and bring something to kill"

Tim Douglass