Another photo from my grand aunt Latisha Vanderpool's photo album.
Tuesday, February 11, 2014
Saturday, February 8, 2014
IRS is Working on Identity Theft
There has been a lot of talk about the social security death index being used for identity theft and yet it is actually a tool that can be used to stop identity theft. I have read several blogs and all of them keep saying the IRS should be doing more to stop it.
Well as a tax preparer I know that for years a tax was rejected from E-Filing if the date of death of a spouse stated on the income tax was wrong, so I knew that the IRS was checking the death index for the death of a spouse, but as far as I could tell a death of a child was not being checked.
In 2010 the IRS started using a new computer system to handle income taxes, the old system was so old that they had to hire retired programmers each year to do updates on that old system, new programmers do not get taught the programming language those computers used. The new system was to be much faster, they told us preparers that they would eventually be able to get refunds back to the taxpayers in three days, but what I liked was the turn around time for returns I had sent in electronically dropped from one day to less than an hour. That first year they only processed about half of the returns filed electronically, and most of them were the simpler forms, but in 2011 all the returns went through the new system, and the turn around time for us was slower than the previous year, but still a lot faster than using the old computer and refunds were a little slower that year.
One seminar I went to this year taught by an IRS agent he said that the IRS now has more than 1000 agents just working on identity theft, and that number seems to be growing even though the IRS has been reducing total staff due to budget cuts from Congress.
Each tax season we get a list of reject codes from our software, and this year is no different, but the list this year has a few new codes for us, and guess what number one on our list of new codes is?
Well as a tax preparer I know that for years a tax was rejected from E-Filing if the date of death of a spouse stated on the income tax was wrong, so I knew that the IRS was checking the death index for the death of a spouse, but as far as I could tell a death of a child was not being checked.
In 2010 the IRS started using a new computer system to handle income taxes, the old system was so old that they had to hire retired programmers each year to do updates on that old system, new programmers do not get taught the programming language those computers used. The new system was to be much faster, they told us preparers that they would eventually be able to get refunds back to the taxpayers in three days, but what I liked was the turn around time for returns I had sent in electronically dropped from one day to less than an hour. That first year they only processed about half of the returns filed electronically, and most of them were the simpler forms, but in 2011 all the returns went through the new system, and the turn around time for us was slower than the previous year, but still a lot faster than using the old computer and refunds were a little slower that year.
One seminar I went to this year taught by an IRS agent he said that the IRS now has more than 1000 agents just working on identity theft, and that number seems to be growing even though the IRS has been reducing total staff due to budget cuts from Congress.
Each tax season we get a list of reject codes from our software, and this year is no different, but the list this year has a few new codes for us, and guess what number one on our list of new codes is?
Situation: The return is rejected due to one of the SSNs used in that return being “systemically locked”
Examples shown below; this is not the full list
IND-941
IRS reject -- The Spouse SSN in the Return Header has been locked
because Social Security Administration records indicate the number
belongs to a deceased individual.
Being locked means that social security number can not be used on an electronically filed tax return ever again, and I will bet a paper return using that number will get special attention from one of those 1000+ IRS agents that are working on identity theft. I just hope it does not slow down an income tax from a surviving spouse that is filing a return after the death of the other spouse.
So the IRS is working on stopping identity theft and lets hope they can stop it without further hindering genealogists from using the SSDI.
Wednesday, February 5, 2014
Wordless Wednesday Ladies and Aprons
Another photo from my grand aunt Latisha Vanderpool's photo album.
Saturday, February 1, 2014
Saturday Night Fun Super Bowl 48
Your mission, should you decide to accept it (cue the Mission Impossible! music) is to:
1) The Super Bowl is on Sunday, 2 February 2014 in the USA. The Denver Broncos are playing the Seattle Seahawks for the National football League championship. The winners get to go to Disney World.
2) Predict the score for this game. You have to predict the winning team and the closest to the actual score (point differential summed for both teams) to be the winner. The winner of this contest gets announced next week in a Genea-Musings blog post.
3) Tell a story about your experiences playing football or watching professional football games. Did you go to football games? Who in your family was the real fan of the game? What were the pre-game routines? How do you, or your family, react to good plays or bad plays, or wins or losses?
2) Seahawks 28 Broncos 24
3) Well I did not play much football, in junior high we played football in PE class, and by then most all my classmates had started to grow a lot and I was still small. When I started high school I was 4 feet tall and 100 pounds as a sophomore, most of the kids were a foot or more taller and 50 to 75 pounds heavier than I was, so I did not play football except in PE class and I was very poor at that. I did play clarinet in the band and we played at all the football games and marched at halftime for the "home" games. We got in for free by wearing our band uniforms, the uniforms were heavy wool and since I was small my uniform was pretty loose so I could put on a lot of layers under the uniform to keep warm.
No one in my family was a real fan of football, we did watch the Seahawks if we were not busy doing something else, but never dropped everything to watch them. I guess not being a football fan in high school carried over to adult life.
Tuesday, January 28, 2014
Saturday, January 25, 2014
Saturday Night Fun Long Staying Ancestors
Your mission, should you decide to accept it (cue the Mission Impossible! music) is to:
1) Which family surname line (of identified ancestors) of yours stayed the longest in one U.S. state or other country province/shire since, say, 1600? For example, in the USA, my Seaver line was in Massachusetts from 1634 to 1940. For England, my Vaux line was in Somerset from the late 1500s to 1840. For Canada, my Kemp line was there from 1785 to 1902.
* List the generations for one or two of your long-staying-in-one-locality surname lines. (Yes, I know that some countries used patronymics - follow the father's line back in time).
Well for the longest of any I have, from the Clan Forsyth group that they think my Forsyths moved to North Ireland from Scotland in the 1300 or 1400s and stayed there till my ancestors came to Pennsylvania in the mid 1750s, there William Forsyth built a house on the Monongahela River in 1775, and it was still owned by a Joseph Forsyth in 1985. I don't know if it is still in the Forsyth family. My part of that family moved into Kentucky and eventually Illinois in the 1800s.
For my Hansen family which because of Patronymics changed names each generation in Denmark, I found records back to the late 1600s and my grandfather left in 1887. My grandfathers dad died in 1892 but I know there are still some of the family in Humble Parish, Svendborg County, in Denmark.
When my grandfather married in Illinois his wife was from an old New England family the Dillinghams. Edward Dillingham b. 1595 in England and d. 1667 in Massachusetts came to Boston in 1632, settled in Lynn, Massachusetts. My branch of the family moved north into what is today Maine and stayed there till after the Civil War, but many of the Dillingham family are still in both Maine and Massachusetts today.
Edwards grandfather was born in Deane, Bedfordshire, England in 1548 and I found out they were there even earlier, but my family left in 1632 for Boston.
1) Which family surname line (of identified ancestors) of yours stayed the longest in one U.S. state or other country province/shire since, say, 1600? For example, in the USA, my Seaver line was in Massachusetts from 1634 to 1940. For England, my Vaux line was in Somerset from the late 1500s to 1840. For Canada, my Kemp line was there from 1785 to 1902.
* List the generations for one or two of your long-staying-in-one-locality surname lines. (Yes, I know that some countries used patronymics - follow the father's line back in time).
Well for the longest of any I have, from the Clan Forsyth group that they think my Forsyths moved to North Ireland from Scotland in the 1300 or 1400s and stayed there till my ancestors came to Pennsylvania in the mid 1750s, there William Forsyth built a house on the Monongahela River in 1775, and it was still owned by a Joseph Forsyth in 1985. I don't know if it is still in the Forsyth family. My part of that family moved into Kentucky and eventually Illinois in the 1800s.
For my Hansen family which because of Patronymics changed names each generation in Denmark, I found records back to the late 1600s and my grandfather left in 1887. My grandfathers dad died in 1892 but I know there are still some of the family in Humble Parish, Svendborg County, in Denmark.
When my grandfather married in Illinois his wife was from an old New England family the Dillinghams. Edward Dillingham b. 1595 in England and d. 1667 in Massachusetts came to Boston in 1632, settled in Lynn, Massachusetts. My branch of the family moved north into what is today Maine and stayed there till after the Civil War, but many of the Dillingham family are still in both Maine and Massachusetts today.
Edwards grandfather was born in Deane, Bedfordshire, England in 1548 and I found out they were there even earlier, but my family left in 1632 for Boston.
Tuesday, January 21, 2014
Wordless Wednesday Sweeping the Snow
Another photo from my grand aunt Latisha Vanderpool's photo album.
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