Amend or Wait?

[Justataxguy]

Downloaded Drake trial software today and entered information from my own return as a trial. It came out with a bigger refund than I had calculated with my current software. After double checking everything I discovered I had transposed figures for the wife's 1099R federal tax withheld. Really felt kind of stupid screwing up my own return, but I suppose that's better than a client's. If I understand things correctly, the IRS should catch this when comparing 1040 info with submitted 1099's, W-2's, etc., and issue a check for the extra amount?

And on the trial software, really not impressed with the way Drake worked. As I only do 1040's I will probably stay with what I am familiar and comfortable with. It does have some features though that I would like to see in my software.

[Gary2]

I can't say that I've ever seen the IRS fix things that way. They will when it's clearer, e.g. getting the estimated tax or withholding wrong. But in this case, I wouldn't put it past them to issue a CP-2000 saying "It's great you reported the $4321 income for which we never got a 1099, but you omitted the $1234 1099 that we got, and you have to pay tax on that, too."

And since they won't make much progress on the comparisons for several months, why wait? You should get it sooner by amending as soon as you receive your original refund.

[BP.]

FIT w/h misstated

transposed figures for the wife's 1099R federal tax withheld . . . IRS should catch this

you reported the $4321 income for which we never got a 1099, but you omitted the $1234 1099

I do think it is likely they would correct anyway, since it was the FIT withholding that was in error, and not a misstatement of income.

[ATSMAN]

Downloaded Drake trial software today and entered information from my own return as a trial. It came out with a bigger refund than I had calculated with my current software. After double checking everything I discovered I had transposed figures for the wife's 1099R federal tax withheld. Really felt kind of stupid screwing up my own return, but I suppose that's better than a client's. If I understand things correctly, the IRS should catch this when comparing 1040 info with submitted 1099's, W-2's, etc., and issue a check for the extra amount?

And on the trial software, really not impressed with the way Drake worked. As I only do 1040's I will probably stay with what I am familiar and comfortable with. It does have some features though that I would like to see in my software.

I would wait until you get the refund and then do the 1040X if necessary. I don't think this situation calls for a CP2000 because additional taxes are not due.

[JohnH]

I'd wait until the existing refund is processed.
Then amend if they didn't correct the withholding.

As for Drake, I'd like to make a comment or two about it. I switched to Drake in late January, 2013 after realizing that ATX was not likely to fix their huge problems during that filing season. As it turns out, that was the best thing I've done with respect to software in the past 10 years. Drake is different for sure, although I had used Microvision many years ago and didn't have much trouble with the input screen concept. Still, it took some time to get familiar with the input screens and how to navigate in Drake. By Sept 2013 I was fairly proficient with Drake and beginning to reach some level of software transparency.

Then 2014 rolled around. I've been amazed at how fast I've become, now that I'm more accustomed to Drake and all of my basic client info had been entered & verified last year. Once a Drake user becomes comfortable with the software, it becomes obvious that the trade-off is speed. Updates, backups, time to boot up, etc are vastly different in Drake - it is lightning fast when compared to anything I've run across, and it doesn't hog resources.

Since time is money in our business, anyone who converts to Drake will eventually realize that the ultimate result is they will make more money using Drake. Settling for anything less (no matter how many bells & whistles if provides) is settling for less income for the same amount of time expended.

[ATSMAN]

JohnH is absolutely correct on the speed of Drake. Once you get used to the data entry screens compared to entering data directly on the line # of a form you will be amazed how much faster you can get through a tax prep session. I have timed myself doing a straight 1040 std deduction with 2 states that included 2 W2 3 1099-int and 2 1099-div is less than 15 minutes! If I added a sch A with local/property taxes, mortgage interest and some charitable deduction add another 15 minutes.

After data entry is done you click on view and in a few seconds you have the complete return ready to view or print. Amazing.

I used Taxworks before and it would take 5 minutes to load all the forms!