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My boyfriend is on probation for felony charges. He is almost done paying his fees, and has had perfect visitations with the probation officers. He is elligible to have it reduced to a misdeameanor. The problem is, he just got transferred to a NEW officer who is very unhelpful and rude. She will not give him a straight answer. My questions are:
1.) Once his fees are paid in June, is he elligible to have the crime reduced to a misdeameanor?
2.) We have contacted his attorney several times in the last month to get answers to these questions and have not got ONE returned call. What should we do?!

I appreciate any and all wisdom.

1) He’s not necessarily eligible to have his charge reduced to a misdemeanor in June when he pays his fees… Nothing is owed to him, and when the time comes, he’ll need to petition the Court for an early release and a reduction in charges… In my county, the judge often sets a minimum time–usually about halfway through probation–as the first time that the Court will consider a petition to terminate probation early and/or reduce the offense to a misdemeanor… Contrary to popular belief, fee payment is not the only determination as to whether a person gets terminated early or gets a sentence reduction… In fact, it’s nowhere near the most important factor… His general performance on probation and whether or not his PO thinks he is a low risk to reoffend is the most important component…

2) Hire a new attorney…

There may be a number of factors contributing to your opinion of his PO… One may be that she is, indeed, rude and not very helpful… Sadly, some PO’s–often the new ones, or the burned-out ones–are like that… Good PO’s don’t like ineffective PO’s any more than probationers do…

But I also offer you a different possibility to ponder: She isn’t familiar with your boyfriend, and she needs time to make her own assessment of his progress… She doesn’t want to commit in January to something that he wants in June, when she doesn’t know how he’s going to perform on probation for the next six months… I have taken over several different caseloads in my career, and it’s usually a challenging transition, both for the PO and for the probationer… Neither knows what to expect from each other, and I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard, "My old PO told me that I could………" when it wasn’t true… Sometimes it’s true, but many times, it’s not…

My advice is to just relax… Let time take its course… If your boyfriend continues to stay out of trouble and comply with his conditions of probation, you may be pleasantly surprised by his PO’s change in disposition as she becomes more familiar with him and learns first-hand that he’s not one of the many who are lying to her and trying to manipulate her…

If, in six months, the problems remain, your boyfriend can contact his PO’s supervisor and see if there are any constructive solutions available…

I have received Massachusetts State Tax Refunds my whole life. Last years return (for the year of 2007) I received $213.00. This year I was only scheduled to received $90.00 back in taxes, but non the less I was due a refund. Now today I received a letter from the Massachusetts DOR, saying that they took my $90.00 refund and applied it to an income tax liability of $227.00 from 12/31/2007? What the hell is this? What would cause this? Of course it’s a Saturday and I can’t get ahold of these crooks. Please help!

Get all previous returns and have a professional check them out.

Yes the Congress does, and you know very well what my party affiliation is.

It seems smokers are getting the last laugh while your property taxes go up to replace that tax revenue. OUCH!

They have reduced expendatures for roads and bridges, police and other services while they have increased taxes in fuels and things like excessive taxes on telephone lines, "airport fees",alcohol and a bunch of other ways to produce revenue without providing anything in return.

Funny, the same numbers of people are still dying of the same causes as well.

Proponents of a flat tax believe that tax revenues can actually rise even when the flat tax is lower than current income tax rates. How could this happen and why? What’s your position on this issue?

Proponents of the flat tax believe that the tax revenue is an optimization function. Which means that it can either be minimized or maximized. In this case, the proponents think that it can be maximized. To keep it simple if the tax revenue is maximized at tax rate X, any rate above X or below X will cause a decrease in Tax revenue. I do believe that this can work.

xtraheavy01: You assert that a flat tax is bad because people who write off their mortgage, interest, and real estate taxes would no longer get that deduction. You are assuming that the home owner would receive a greater value in these deductions than s/he would with a flat tax. There is not enough evidence to support this either way.

You also make the claim that people who donate will no longer get the deduction? I could only guess that you mean people will have less incentive to donate if they can’t write it off. This begs the question do people only donate because they get the tax deduction? This is very cynical.

The rest of your argument is also filled with formal fallacies and erroneous assumption. Too many to mention, however
reading the rest of your rhetoric I can’t help but to feel the deep and profound disdain that you have for the rich. It doesn’t matter how much something helps the poor or middle class as long as the rich can’t benefit from it.

And on a side note being a tax preparer make you no more an expert on taxes than a bar maid being an expert on the LCB.

Didn’t those great republicans G.W. Bush and Ronald Reagan cut taxes?
How is it possible that these two tax cutters managed to spend more money than before taxes were cut rather than spending less money after cutting taxes?

Do you still think the government in Washington DC is spending your tax money?

I’m not sure what you mean, but shineon is right. The only thing is, those people are not going to continue to buy our debt if we as a country continue to run astronomical budget deficits. As a country, we are only surviving because we have managed to build up the best credit score in the world. However, now we are abusing that and as our debt rises out credit score will go down.

How do Microsoft and the owners of Firefox make money? Google is planning to create a browser also to compete with them called "chrome". I was wondering where does the source of revenue come in? There are no ads, etc. These programs are free.

Microsoft makes money (obviously) by selling their software and having a big monopoly on the desktop. Firefox does it by "advertising" Google by having the search bar. Firefox is open source, so much of the work done to make it was done for free by people who wanted to contribute, making it much easier to support financially.

How do Microsoft and the owners of Firefox make money? Google is planning to create a browser also to compete with them called "chrome". I was wondering where does the source of revenue come in? There are no ads, etc. These programs are free.

Microsoft makes money (obviously) by selling their software and having a big monopoly on the desktop. Firefox does it by "advertising" Google by having the search bar. Firefox is open source, so much of the work done to make it was done for free by people who wanted to contribute, making it much easier to support financially.

McCain is keeping the bush tax cuts. But obama wants to increase for the wealthy. With current estimate how much revenue will be increased with the new tax plan?

There is no way to tell until legislation is introduced. Any answer you get to this question will either be pure speculation or histrionic oratory.

McCain is keeping the bush tax cuts. But obama wants to increase for the wealthy. With current estimate how much revenue will be increased with the new tax plan?

There is no way to tell until legislation is introduced. Any answer you get to this question will either be pure speculation or histrionic oratory.