I thought they can only audit you or send you a tax bill 2 years prior. It is now 2006 - the 2 year

• IRS says I owe $$$ for self-employment tax (sm) - need some moral support until I call
  • be armed with knowledge and documentation - msbeanctr
  • You an IC, statutory employee or employee? - Anon
  • check your old tax returns - all that jazz
  • So... what ya'll are telling me in a schizo kinda way is... - OP (thanks for info to all)
    • See an accountant. I'm sure you saved your old income tax - statements. Hang in there.
    • fishy - msbeantr
      • Oh, please. Now I've heard it all! nm - MT/ME
        • yep - msbeanctr
    • You have your W2 showing very clearly those taxes were paid. MQ is responsible for those taxes - MQ2
  • If you had an accountant do your taxes, contact him or her. nm - Taxi payer
  • yikes - msbeanctr
  • I thought they can only audit you or send you a tax bill 2 years prior. It is now 2006 - the 2 year - Thinking here
    • No, they can audit much farther out. Been there, - MT/ME
      • Yep, my sis was just audited last month for 2003. - nm
      • I know it used to be 5-10 years back, but the laws changed within the last 2 years. They can only g - Thinking here
  • Taxes - Patti
    • what did national send to IRS - msbeanctr
    • correcto - msbeanctr
  • Sorry, but if the IRS says you owe it, you owe - MT/ME
    • You have got to be kidding. I never saw so many errors with the IRS. A SE does not owe or - MQ2
      • talk to my hand...it took me 1-1/2 years to get IRS - off my back on SE issue
      • I understand what an SE is. I am saying that if the - MT/ME
        • uh uh - msbeanctr
        • Again SE do not owe self employment tax. nm - MQ2
          • SE has to pay part of the SS tax, which is - SE
  • Your national is liable for SS and Medicare tax not you. They thinkyou are self employed. nm - MQ2

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I started MTg in 1984 and by 1997 I opened up my own little MTSO business.  I believe the level of self confidence plays a huge part.  All I did was make up business cards and I went and solicited myself in medical centers weekly.  I also brought a resume just in case they wanted to see one (that was rare that they wanted to see a resume in my experience).  I only solicited the fields I was very familiar with and got a pediatric and adult neurosurgeon, 2 plastic surgeons, and 2 neurologists right off the bat.  I keep ledgers and used to do microsoft Excel (which I no longer do the latter). 

Regardless of what the other poster said, I do print for the private MDs, sometimes on my plain Xerox paper, other times on their letterhead, and I give them free paper and free delivery.  Most MDs want to see something for free.  I give them their headers for free as it's only 2 Keystrokes for me on a 5-line header.  I have kept my doctors for 10 years now and they appear very happy to me.  I give them 24-48 hour TAT (turnaround time) without fail.  When I go on vacation (early autumn) they usually go at the same time.  I never have to farm my work out, I simply juggle my days around.

And to cap it off, I then moonlight for a national for 3-day weekends!!  I love that too because it's always a NEW learning experience for me and I polish up my knowledge of all the other fields that I do not do during the week.

BEST OF LUCK.  If I could do it and be a success, I believe most self-confident people can do the same!! 

was at the same company for 8 years.  I left company #1 because they lost the account to MQ and the company only had clinic work after that and I do acute care and didn't want to do clinic.  While searching for another job I tested and was offered positions by 6 companies.  I took PT positions with 3 of them.   I had been using a C-phone with a small local and really had no clue about other companies.   One job I kept for 1 year until they got rid of my account because they were such a pain.   I quit one after 4 months. 

I know someone who had 7 jobs in 1 year and that was only about 8 months into the year.   She was a CMT and wanted the whole world to know it and treat her special, but the quality of her work was very poor.  I don't know if she voluntarily left all those positions or was let go.   When I was testing I was trying to get a feel for what was out there and thinking that company #2 might offer me better than what company #1 was paying.   While this wasn't that long ago, it was when you could still get a decent line rate and I never heard of offshoring.  

MTs generally don't give a RIP about AAMT? I doubt seriously that this will entice MTs anymore than if they just left that ridiculous blurb out.  I, frankly, think AAMT is an embarassment to the MT industry.  Sharon (Ace) Ventura

This has only happened once, and I had my check cut same day.  This is business and I will not beg someone to give me my money.  I simply stated it as a fact. 

Now it seems, I'm just scraping by, juggling the utility bills and paying whichever one has sent me the 24-hour disconnect notice this month; it's become a grim miserable job compared to what it was.  I'm nearing retirement age, but I doubt retirement is going to be in my future for a very long time.

The single worst thing that ever happened to us was going from the gross line count to the character count, and not adjusting the line rate upward to parity -- not to mention the adjustments that should have been made to accommodate all the extra time spent struggling to make sense of huge increase in ESL dictations that has occurred over the last 15 years, and of course there should have been COLAs as well, which we all know has not happened.

In the 1980s, with the advent of powerful and affordable PCs, free lance transcription became much more common.  So if you were experienced, disciplined and organized, you could be much better off economically by working for yourself -- although there were definitely advantages to working in-hospital.  There were great benefits and the salary was indeed enough to support a small family (albeit very modestly.) 

For a number of years during that time, many of us worked part time in the hospital for benefits, but made our real money at home.

But in my case, the time came when it just made no economic sense to work in-housel, I was better buying off buying private insurance for major medical care, tax-deferred annuities, and self-insuring the little stuff. 

I would just pick up tapes from the hospital every morning, and drop off the work (which I printed out) from the day before.

I usually had 24 hours to transcribe tapes which I did during school hours, when things were peaceful and quiet. 

I transcribed a couple thousand GROSS lines day.  Every single character line counted, so by taking advantage of headers/footers, creative macros, word expansions, etc., I really boosted my productivity far beyond to what I could do in-house on the self-correcting Selectric, Wang or Mag Card, or whatever 10-years behind technology was currently being used, plus all the office distractions and politics, and I definitely did not to have to work 24/7 to earn a good living. (Oh how I loved WP5.1!)

In fact, 2000 gross lines a day, 5 days a week at 10 cents a line (courier 10-pitch font, one-inch margins) was very very do-able for an experienced productive acute-care MT, provided she had good equipment, good reference books, and stayed focused.  It would take about 5-6 hours a day to get that amount of work done.  So figure the math out for yourselves, that's just a tad under $50,000 a year, certainly not a high standard of living in those days but adequate when it meant you could stay home and be actually be a full time parent when your children were home from school, and very comfortable, if you were married with a working spouse, or had rerliable child support, or social security for your children (if you were widowed.)

If you chose to work some weekends and evenings, it was not that all that difficult to hit that $75,000 a year mark, which I did for a couple of years so I was able to pay the tuition at a good boarding school -- and cruelly thwarted my teen-aged son's only ambition in life, which was to become a high school drop-out.

Things have gotten bad, no doubt about that, and the worst part of it is, is that most of the big MTSOs are still charging the hospitals as much as we used to earn, and sometimes even more, but the MT is no longer earning it, and often can't get enough work to meet the line counts required by the MTSOs for benefits (although the cost of those benefits are reflected in the cost charged to the hospital.) 

I don't know what the answer is, as the electronic immigrant is such a huge threat.

It's pretty darn awful, and I feel very very bad for those of you starting out in this field, and I do hope things change for you (and that someday soon I can retire.)

And the point that the person made is that that she was worth $75,000 a year, not necessarily that she was getting it or could get it, and I absolutely agree with her.  This is a hard tough job if it's done right -- it's mentally tiring, it's hard on your back, your hands, your neck (and your behind.)

It requires a lot of time -- it requires focus, you must stay alert, and must give 100% of your attention to what you are doing 100% of the time, it takes education and brains -- and now a word of truth which my 35+ years experience gives me the right to say aloud -- it's not fulfilling, wonderful, lovable and enjoyable, it's often as repetitious and tedious as an assembly line but infinitely more frustrating.

PS: I recall one of my colleagues from those early years of my career, now gone from this earth, telling me that the 1960s were really the "fat" years, that things actually began to decline salary-wise, in real dollars, in the 1970s. 

drink that tells you if you are or are not an alcohol.  Unfortunately, many people don't realize their disease until it is too late and many people drink "socially" so who is to know what is and what is not going to happen in the future?  As far as AIDS being 100% preventable, I will agree to the point that protected sex is most certainly the responsibility of the individual, but how many people have protecetd sex with their longterm partners not expecting them to be unfaithful or someone who has contracted an illness in ways where they were not resposible?fever

Unfortunately, it is people who judge that keep people who are sick from getting help.  Of course, that does not apply to everyone and mental illness also plays a part in many illnesses, but as a recovering alcoholic I can say that I graduated with an MBA, PTA President for many years, and had no hereditary factors in my life to foresee the possibility of alcoholism to prevent it.  Fortunately for me, I was made aware of my disease and have done everything to prevent a relapse - something I have been successful at for 12 years.  However, I do believe that when people are judge as harshly as you seem to judge, they will more than likely succumb to the label you have given them. 

May God bless you!

The link is not working for me, you can access it at:

www.presstelegram.com/news/ci/_12022094

 Previously I had posted on this board  as my fiance and I were trying to figure out how to handle letting people know that we don't want any wedding gifts (we each have a house and don't need material things as we're giving away tons of stuff with merging the home) but had chosen a charity for anyone who would like to make a donation in our honor.

 My maid of honor and a couple of friends decided to host a party for us and on the invitations put on there that in lieu of gifts that we were requesting donations to a children's charity that we chose because of the reputation of spending the money wisely  and being well known for its work.  

This has gone over very well with the invitees.  I've had many of them call and e-mail me or my fiance saying that they thought this was a wonderful way for us to help others less fortunate and yet celebrate our upcoming marriage.   The charity  agreed prior to our announcement to not pester these people afterwards with mailings and is simply sending those that send a donation a thank you card, and then they're sending me a weekly list showing who made a donation and their address, but not the dollar amount as I don't care to know what they gave. 

So... for future brides that don't want gifts  I suggest doing what we did - it's a win for the charity and lets the family/friends that wanted to do something special do this in a way that we chose (and we aren't stuck with household items we don't want or need!)

From Wikipedia, searching the term Oriental. See what I have bolded and underlined.

Perceptions and connotations

[edit] American English

Controversy surrounds connotations of the term in American English. (See also American and British English differences.) According to Abdurrahman R. Squires, "politically correct terms have taken the place of the word 'Orientalism'".^[2]

While a number of reference works used in the United States describe Oriental as pejorative, antiquated or offensive in some instances, the American Heritage Book of English Usage notes that

It is worth remembering, though, that Oriental is not an ethnic slur to be avoided in all situations. It is most objectionable in contemporary contexts and when used as a noun, as in the appointment of an Oriental to head the commission. In these cases Asian (or a more specific term such as Vietnamese, Korean, or Asian American, if appropriate) is the only acceptable term. But in certain historical contexts, or when its exotic connotations are integral to the topic, Oriental remains a useful term.^[3]

Random House's Guide to Sensitive Language states "Other words (e.g., Oriental, colored) are outdated or inaccurate." This Guide to Sensitive Language suggests the use of "Asian or more specific designation such as Pacific Islander, Chinese American, [or] Korean." ^[4] Merriam-Webster describes the term as "sometimes offensive,"^[5] Encarta states when the term is used as a noun it is considered "a highly offensive term for somebody from East Asia." ^[6]

it's going up to $6.15 in Florida this year I read......still not nearly enough in my opinion.....*tsk tsk*

But happy that the states may be taking it over....*S*