Register Your Cell Phone # on the National “Do Not Call” List

Cell Phone Numbers Go Public this month. That means you can expect to start receiving those annoying, unsolicited telemarketing calls on your cell phone now OR…

You can call the National “Do Not Call List” number at (888)-382-1222. You must call from the phone you want blocked. Your number will be blocked for 5 years.

You can also register more than one phone number by going the their website at: www.donotcall.gov.

Here Today, Gone … New Year’s Day

You may have heard the expressions “make hay while the sun shines” or “strike while the iron is hot.” These old proverbs are particularly relevant to current tax laws. More and more often, Congress is enacting tax breaks on a temporary basis—creating “limited time only” offers. 

Some of these temporary breaks may eventually be extended by Congress, but others may not be. So, where practical, you may want to take advantage of the breaks while they are available.  

• To help get you started, here are a few breaks that are currently set to expire in 2009. 
• If you claim the standard deduction for 2009, you may also claim an additional deduction for real estate property taxes.
   
• Whether you claim the standard deduction or itemize your deductions for 2009, you can deduct the sales tax you pay on a car or truck purchased by December 31, 2009 (but the deduction is phased out if your income is too high). 
   
• If you itemize your deductions for 2009, you can choose to deduct state and local sales taxes instead of claiming a deduction for state income taxes.
• If you buy a principal residence by December 1, 2009 and haven’t owned a home during the prior three years, you are entitled to a tax credit of up to $8,000 (but again, there is a phase-out if your income is too high).
• If you are age 70 ½ or over and own an IRA, you don’t have to withdraw any funds from your IRA in 2009 unless you wish to.

 There are other breaks scheduled to expire in 2009 and still others will expire in 2010. Click here for a complete list of all 22 Tax Breaks that expire in 2009.

Setting Personal Preferences in Quickbooks

        You can greatly improve your Quickbooks experience by making a few changes to your personal preferences within Quickbooks. The preferences screen is reached by using the EDIT pull-down menu and selecting PREFERENCES. You will be making changes on the MY PREFERENCES page (which only take effect for the current user in Quickbooks). Each user can set up their own personal preferences in Quickbooks. Only the Admin can make changes on the COMPANY PREFERENCES page (which I’ll discuss in a future post).

      After opening Preferences, the first area in the left-hand box you should review is the GENERAL section. I prefer to check mark:

• “Pressing Enter moves between fields”
  • If “Pressing Enter” is unchecked, hitting the Enter key acts like “Save & New”, completing the current transaction & starting a new one. When it’s checked, hitting the Enter key takes you to the next field in your current transaction.
• “Automatically place decimal point”
  • Automatically placing the decimal point saves some typing entering data, but you have to remember that entering “100” will show $1.00, not $100 (I usually enter it as “100.”).

 A couple other items to look at on this page:

• “Automatically remember acct. or trans. Info” – this will remember the expense accts. Associated with vendor’s name
• “Default Date” – If you’re regularly entering transactions for prior dates, use last date entered, instead of today’s date, as default

        Next, let’s take a look at the “Desktop View” in the left-hand box. I like:

• Multiple Windows – allows several Quickbooks windows open on your desktop at the same time
• Don’t Save the Desktop
  • Save When Closing – will open all the same windows in Quickbooks that were open when you last closed the program
  • Save Current Desktop – If there are certain windows you always want open when starting Quickbooks, open just those windows and then select this option
• Other display options include:
  • Home Page – which has icon shortcuts to various parts of Quickbooks
  • Coach window – which assists you with different aspects of Quickbooks
  • Live Community is a direct link to Intuit’s online Quickbooks community website
  • Color Scheme

       One other area of interest is the “CHECKING” page. If you have multiple checking accounts, this is where you can set the default checking account to use for deposits, paying bills and payroll,

         If you’re not sure whether or not to make some of these changes, you can turn them on and try them out. Then go back to Preferences and turn off (uncheck) any you don’t want to use. PLEASE NOTE: If you have multiple Quickbooks companies, you will need to set up My Preferences for each company, as user and company preferences are linked to each company file.