FAQ: How this board works

Key tips and advice the working tax pro can use.
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Site Admin
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Reminder: This site is for tax and accounting professionals only. While we value our customers highly, this is not the place for non-professionals to ask questions about tax preparation. There are many reasons for this, not the least of which is that for someone to take a position on a tax issue they really need to have a provider-client relationship with that person. There are liability issues involved that do not lend themselves to this site catering to consumer questions.

For folks new to a phpbb bulletin board system, here are a few simple things you should know:

Registration and your first post

  1. Use the registration link up above to register a new account. That process is pretty simple, you answer a few questions and submit. The key thing here is to use a valid email address. The system will send you an activation link that you must click before your registration is complete. This is to prevent spam 'bots' from dialing in mass registrations.
  2. Once your account has been activated (by you clicking on that link in the email), you can log in at this site. You will see more functionality once logged in, including the ability to post to an existing topic, or to start a new topic.
  3. Your very first post at this site will be put into a moderation queue, so the admin here or one of the site moderators can review it to make sure that (a) you are not a consumer asking a "how to" question about taxes and (b) you are not a spammer. Typically this review will happen quickly but generally you should assume up to 24 hours for approval.
  4. Once your first post has been approved, your account will be automatically placed in "standard access" mode and you may continue to make posts or start discussion threads with no further admin or moderator approval needed.

Subscription services

If you are viewing any forums here, or if you are viewing a topic within a forum -- take a look down near the bottom of the page and you will see a "subscribe" link. This is a nice way to stay apprised of any updates to a forum you are interested in, or any topics you are interested in. The system will send you an email notifying you of updates. You may unsubscribe at any time.

Similarly, if you are viewing a forum there is a link at the bottom for "subscribe to forum". This will alert you via email, of any new topics that are created within that forum.

User control panel

The user control panel and private messaging system at this site is fairly powerful:

  • You can customize certain aspects of your user profile, for example you can change the indicators regarding your professional accreditation, as needed.
  • You can create a signature that will be appended at the bottom of each of your posts.
  • You can set your timezone.
  • You can change your password or your email address (note, as a safety device this action will inactivate your account, and send a confirming email so you can re-activate)
  • You can see statistics about your posting activity here, and easily get a list of all the posts you have made.

It is highly recommended that you set the choice "Pop up window on private messages" to 'yes'. This can be found under the Board Preferences->Edit Global Settings tab.

The private messaging system allows you to send a "PM" to any registered member of this board, but we do request that for Q&A exchanges that you do use the topics in the forums for that type of dialog -- since it is always helpful for the audience who reads this site to learn from the questions and answers that happen.

Including Links in a post

Most links will cleanly paste in to your post. Some links that include special characters, like parentheses, may not paste correctly. It is always best to use the URL code from the editor menu to enclose any links you paste in. For example:

Code: Select all
[url]https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/26/301.7701(b)-4[/url]

This will assure that the link is rendered correctly when your post is made.

Bookmarked Topics

If you are logged in, you will see a "Bookmarked Topics" link up at the top of the forum listing on the main board page. This is a great way to keep tabs on important topics. While viewing any topic look down near the footer of the page and you will see a "Bookmark Topic" link. You can see a list of those topics that you have bookmarked by clicking that "Bookmarked Topics" link at the top of the page.

Mobile Device Theme

The forums are auto-enabled for mobile devices. If you are using a smartphone it will automatically render using the mobile theme.

If you are on a tablet, it will come up in 'desktop' mode. You can hit the link at the bottom of the page to go to the mobile version if you want to.
 

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