Saturday, March 26, 2016

California Franchise Tax Board Needs 130 Days to Answer A Letter



  How long does a state department need to respond to a letter of inquiry?

  14 days?

  30 days?

  How about of 130 days for the California Franchise Tax Board.

   In November 2015, I inquired about assets not received, (for the third time) following the completion of the 2014 tax returns. The California Franchise Tax Board needed 4 months and 9 days to identify which department they intercepted funds on behalf of.

  I should consider myself lucky however. In March 2016, the California Franchise Tax Board requested $30 million in funding to enable them to meet service standards. The request was made based on their policy for the timely processing of correspondence within thirty (30) days, but they acknowledge that the average turn around time has been eight (8) months, (Page 14) with 70,000 items of correspondence unaddressed.  This is further complicated by the inability of consumers to speak to a representative when they telephone.

  Is it any wonder that businesses are leaving California for other states like Texas?

  I wonder how forgiving the State of California would be on April 15 if I delayed the filing of my tax return by 130 days? 



  

Saturday, March 19, 2016

Recovering Passwords; A Writers Workshop



  Have you ever tried to log in on a device and not been able to remember your password?

  Have you ever tried recovering your password where all your emails are connected through your cell phone?

  Welcome to a Writers Workshop, Recovering Passwords. You could write a novel based on the password recovery process these days.

  Long gone are the "what is you mothers maiden name" insert the answer and welcome back to your account. Now, it's cell phone codes, what was the last password you remember, send an email to your recovery email account (assuming you can remember the password to that account - which I didn't) answer the Captcha symbol where certain numbers always look like a letter but the Google images makes me think that my own street address numbers will eventually show up, reset your password, would you like to add another email account in case you can't back in like you just have (no thank you), confirm your new password, add a safety image so that when you do log back in the image you have selected will identify that you are not at a phishing site, reconfirm, please log out to ensure that the changes are made, log back in on the cell phone - laptop - tablet - desktop - the work computer - the work laptop, answer all the "your password was changed on another device notification and did you authorize such password change" question on each of the devices, and reload the web page.

  I forgot why I was going into the email anyway.

  Got my 30 minutes writing completed for today.

 

Saturday, March 12, 2016

All Is Good



  The major project - back on the query trail.

  Another anthology book has accepted one of my stories.

  The local newspaper is looking at my articles again.

  All is good within the writing world.