One of the many frustrations in dealing with the tax system in this country is the propensity for our rulers to continuously tinker with it.  To say that it is a constantly moving target is quite the understatement.  

To add to the already mind boggling level of complexity is the fact that so many of the minute details of the tax code have different expiration dates.  These are meant to give our rulers an opportunity to revisit those issues on a perpetual basis and renew them for a few more years, or just allow them to die off.

Thanks to Tom Herman at the Wall Street Journal for the link to this recently published 18 page pdf list of the various tax provisions expiring for each year from 2004 through 2014. Most of them are esoteric items that few regular people ever encounter; but some are very important, such as an end to the reduced capital gain rates at the end of 2008.

Of course, this entire list is subject to change at the whim of our rulers, especially if the tax reform panel does anything.

I was intrigued by the new low cost Apple Mac mini that was just introduced because we have long had a few clients who use Macs for their QuickBooks and  it has been impossible for me to work with their data files, as I do with clients using Windows versions of QB.  The conversion feature in the Mac version of QB, which is supposed to allow data files to be accessed by Windows users, has never worked for any of our clients, so I have been stuck having to rely on printed reports and write out journal entries for the clients to enter themselves.

I was actually starting to order one of these new computers from Apple, as well as a KVM switch and USB keyboard from Tiger, when I thought I should check to see if the Mac version of QB was among the dozen or so discs that I was sent a few months back as part of the 2005 product release.  It had been my understanding that we QuickBooks Pro Advisors were supplied with every version of the program so that we could service our QB using clients.

After a lengthy wait on hold, and a discussion with the Pro Advisor contact, I learned that I would have to actually buy a copy of the QB for Mac at the new user price of almost $300 for the cheapest version.  The fact that I have been using QuickBooks since it first came out in the DOS and Windows formats, and have been a Pro Advisor since that program was started, don’t mean anything to them.  I’m obviously a little disappointed in this attitude by the powers that be at Intuit.  We Pro Advisors are provided with free copies of the useless Online and Simple Start versions; but not the Mac, which I would be more likely to actually use.

I told the QB rep that if they want to enlarge their user base among Macs, they would need to support us Pro Advisors in that format.  She said that there are currently so few Mac users of the program that they don’t care about them and don’t see any need to help Pro Advisors with those users.  It seems like we have a classic “chicken or egg” scenario here that Steve Jobs may want to look into if he is serious about expanding Apple’s market share beyond its current three percent.

For now, I’m holding off on buying one of the new Mac minis and will continue to work with print-outs for those clients using QB for Mac.

IRS’s warnings on fraudulent tax preparers