IRS Gives Advice on Tax Breaks

WASHINGTON (AP) - The Internal Revenue Service on Friday advised taxpayers on how to file for deductions passed by Congress too late to be included in 2006 forms.

Nearly 1 million taxpayers may not have their returns processed until early February, the agency warned.

The instructions involve three deductions renewed by Congress just before it adjourned two weeks ago and signed into law by President Bush this week: for state and local sales taxes in states that don't have income taxes, for higher tuition costs and for educator expenses.

The tax agency urged taxpayers seeking the three deductions to file electronically. Software will be updated to include the three tax provisions and taxpayers "will get their refunds faster through e-file," said IRS Commissioner Mark W. Everson. "Even more importantly, e-file will greatly reduce the chances of making an error compared to claiming the deductions on the paper 1040."

The IRS said that some 6 million taxpayers in states without state income taxes who receive Form 1040 will by mid-January get a special mailing of Publication 600, which will include tables and instructions for claiming the sales tax deduction.

Publication 600 was also posted Friday to the IRS web site, http://www.irs.gov/.

Form 1040 will not be updated and the higher education and educator expense deductions cannot be claimed on Form 1040A.

The IRS said the deduction for tuition and fees can be claimed on Form 1040, line 35, "Domestic production activities deduction," by entering "T on the dotted line to the left of that line. Similarly, the educator expense adjustment can be claimed on line 23, "Archer MSA Deduction," by entering "E" on the dotted line to the left of that line entry.

The sales tax deduction was claimed on about 11.2 million tax returns filed for tax year 2005. It applies to nine states: Alaska, Florida, Nevada, New Hampshire, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Washington and Wyoming.

The higher education provision, which allows deductions for up to $4,000 of tuition and fee costs, was claimed on about 4.7 million returns.

The educator expense provision, allowing teachers to deduct up to $250 for personal expenditures on school supplies, was claimed on 3.5 million returns.

The tax agency said it will not be able to process tax returns claiming these deductions until early February. It said that based on filings earlier this year, about 930,000 tax returns claimed any of the three provisions by Feb. 1. This year, the IRS expects to receive about 136 million tax returns.

The three tax breaks expired on Jan. 1 this year, and thus were no longer part of tax law when the main IRS forms went to print in early November.

• IRS Gives Advice on Tax Breaks - Snow Bunny

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All these people, if they were making the BIG BUCKS that they claim to be making, would have absolutely NO TIME WHATSOEVER to be on forum boards posting 24/7.

Most posters embellish and most are full of it!!!

So, yep, I agree totally with your post. 

I think the way it goes is that you must be allowed to take breaks and lunch.  I was an employee for a company that did not care when you worked, as long as you met turnaround time. 

cook breakfast and load the dishwasher.  I work some more and then do some more chores.  Sometimes I do a hobby for about 15 minutes, or I prep dinner, work in the yard if the weather is nice.  It seems like I'm working 12 hours/day that way, but I'm not and I'm getting housework done too, which tended to pile up when I tried working in 4 hour stretches. 

I also try to make a game out of it sometimes.  I reward myself for working 2 hours straight - maybe read, work on hobby, something just for me, not something that needs doing. 

:+

I have been an MT for over 10 years.  I also am getting burnt out, tired of my job, day in day.  However, I do love transcription and make excellent money at it, have grossed over $50,000 per year the last 5 years.  I decided to go back to nursing school and am very happy with my choice.  However, over these 10 years of transcription I have had my ups and downs.  My biggest issue with being at home working is lack of socialization, being home day in and day out with just the kids and the animals really gets to a person, sure hubby is home at night and thinks working from home is the easy life, thus the return to school and boy has my overall enjoyment of life changed once I realized I was the problem, not everyone else and I needed to find myself again.

Anyway, my biggest advice to you three-fold:

1.  Get into counseling for yourself, find out who you are and what your needs are, whether or not you think you need to, I sense you are feeling overwhelmed and need someone other than your family to talk to that can be nonjudgmental to your feelings and needs.

2.  If you're only making $100 after you pay preschool you can either keep doing it and be miserable, or quit because you are lucky enough to have a husband who can support the family without your income. (See how fast his mind changes just by losing the income you do have as to whether your job means anything.)  Or look for a different company or office that you like more and are more productive if you really want to do transcription (lots of fish in the sea as far as companies).

3.  Find a local "mom's" group where you can get out and socialize.  MOPS (mother's of preschoolers) is an excellent one that is nationwide, they have a website.  Also Mom2Mom is in a lot of areas.  They provide a once a week time for moms with kids the same age to get together, socialize, (some offer spirtual guidance some don't) and each week a different mom takes a turn watching everyone else's children at the facility that hosts it so the other moms can talk about things they have in common.  Every stay-at-home and work-from-home mom needs to socialize with adults, without their kids, or they will have a nervous breakdown eventually no matter how much they love their kids.

Sorry so long but it does get better but you have to take the first step at making yourself happy.

I know this isn't MT-related, but it has gotten me so upset that I can't work, so maybe it is MT-related after all.  Anyway, if anyone has been in this situation, can you please tell me how you successfully handled it?  My son wanted to go away for the weekend and asked to use my credit card to secure a hotel room.  We went online to Hotels.com and found a nice place.  I put in my credit card number and was given a room confirmation.  I then received an e-mail from the hotel telling me there were no rooms available.  I called the hotel and they told me I would have to address it with Hotels.com since they were the ones with my credit card information.  I called Hotels.com and they told me that my card had been swept for the entire amount of the stay ($276.00!) but since there were no rooms available, the money would be credited back to my account.  I got my credit card statement yesterday and they only credited back $71.00 of my money, causing me to incur and over-the -limit fee of another $29.00.  I don't know where to turn to get this problem resolved.  Do I call Hotels.com and ask them to reimburse my over the limit fee?  Do I call my credit card company and tell them that it was Hotel.com's fault for hitting my account for the whole amount when they said they weren't going to?  If anyone has been through this kind of thing before, I would really appreciate your input.  Needless to say, I will NEVER use Hotels.com ever again!!  Thanks in advance for your help!

I just wanted to see if anyone had any advice to give.....I have been debating changing jobs.  I currently make $15 an hour doing transcription in office.  The delima I am having is that the whole reason I started doing transcription was so that I could work from home.  I have been doing transcription for 4 years and my job is really easy and I am happy with the money, there are however other down falls with the company and I am not able to have the flexability of working at home, therefore dealing with the stress of not being able to always be there for "home" things.  I have three school age kids, and they are all very active.  My question is....Do I have a chance of finding anything else working at home or do I just try and suck it up where I am at???   I really have not started looking, so I am not sure what is actually out there.  I hate changing jobs, but I also don't want to settle. 

Just need some outside help and opinions! Thanks, KL

Want opinions about something which has come up at work and need some advice. I am the lead Transcriptionist in a department with three other people.

Last year, one of our physicians in the practice was fired and rejoined another practice in town. He currently has a lawsuit against the company about the firing.

Today, I saw letters typed by one of the girls in the my department for this particular doctor. (because this patient switched physician groups). Apparently she has been working for him on the side since October of 2004. I am not sure if she is still typing for him or not.

My question is this, would this be something you would bring to the manager's attention, talk to my coworker, or just let it go.

On one hand I feel she is being dishonest and not loyal to our current company. I do not know if she is saying anything about our practice to the other doctor or not. Also at looking at the letters, she set them up exactly the same way we do. Isn't this considered a conflict of interest?

Any advice or help would be greatly appreciated!

I worked for a multispecialty medical center for 6 years that shut down and sent all transcription out to a service.  I got a job with spheris.  I love the company itself, they are great.  But the problem is money. This is my first experience with production pay. To make what I made by the hour, I would have to produce 1500 lines a day. I am now producing about 1000 a day more or less, depending on how much research I need to do, if my cable or power goes out or if their server goes down or is slow.-- I do ER, consults, admit and discharge summaries,  no operative reports. Cant really use a lot of expansions, only for simple phrases or individual words,  no macros, mostly straight typing. I figured once I got used to their system and compiled all my provider samples and got my Expander glossaries pretty much built  I would improve, which I have, but I really cant see myself ever doing much more than 1200 a day, and that would be with no "P" breaks. I am still having to stop multiple times during the day to enter drug names in my drug glossary so I dont have to look them up all the time to see if they are generic or brand names-their spell-check doesnt have automatic caps, which is another problem for me because I am having a hard time training myself to hit that shift key, I am constantly entering text into my expander.  The terminology is not a problem for me.

I am reading that a lot of you guys are doing 400 lines an hour.!!!  My previous job didnt have a word expander, so I know I need to utilize that better. How do you do it, what am I doing wrong, what can I do to improve, do I need to just forget it and apply at Home Depot? I LOVE transcription!!!!

This advice is given too late, but for future reference...

When you have a new program, just send the information out.

Telling people a month in advance that you are going to send the information out is just upsetting.  Calling people on the phone to tell them they will get information next month but you cannot answer any questions just makes everyone more agitated.

If you think you were offering a teaser to get people excited, I am sorry to say that it backfired. As you can see from reading this board, everyone is just nervous and upset. Some people are out looking for other jobs because they think they are going to lose their SE position.

Big mistake......

Wanting to change from Hospital to working at home and a little confused about what some services are looking for as far as experience like what is basic 4 experience? 

What is so deranged about Barney?  You guys attacking right off the bat are making it less likely for people to post because of their fear of being attacked.  I don't get it.  Why don't you just let BARNEY alone and move on.  If people want to respond let them, because if you can pull up a post that Barney is attacking, being nasty, threatening, or being down right obscene, then please share it with us. 

If we all are going to be compared to Zipper and MQLOVER and so on, then you are going to see less and less responses from people and that will be thanks to you MQx4.