NY filers BEWARE

[tgatax]

NY Filers BEWARE, Lacerte's software had a miscalculation regarding the $300 charitable donation for clients taking a standard deduction and qualifying for the earned income credit. The miscalculation resulted in the taxpayer meeting these criteria and claiming the NYS earned income credit as well as empire state child tax credit. Lacerte quietly released updates to correct this issue and did not make customers aware that this correction that CHANGED THE RESULTS OF FILED TAX RETURNS! So if early in tax season you gave results to a client that had qualified for the NYS earned income credit & the Empire state child credit and took the $300 charity donation along with the standard deduction the filed results were changed when they corrected the miscalculation with the update. If you had any clients that met this criteria then I urge you to check their results and call Lacerte to complain. My client had a refund of $1128 which they were told they were receiving (cause like many of you I am sure you did not manually check Lacerte's calculations as that is what we pay big $$$ for is the trust that the calculation are done correctly) after the correction the tax payer will only be receiving $600 and needless to say the client was very upset as they were relying on the original results we provided. I have made many requests for Lacerte to make an official statement regarding this issue to let other tax prepares know this happened and that results given to taxpayers very well could have changed after being filed. I keep getting stonewalled am have gotten nowhere so I am making everyone aware here.