Thanks Phoebe! I was hoping you'd be the one to answer. 🙂 I'd seen your answers on so many posts and you're always so helpful.

My understanding (which I admit is quite limited to these O&G partnerships) is that if they take the IDCs all at once, my client is required to make AMT adjustments - which resulted in him paying some AMT tax. In addition, because he is a limited partner and subject to passive loss limitations anyways - he doesn't need the huge write offs... 

And not part of my original question - but Lacerte is doing this odd thing on the Federal K1 reconciliation worksheet where they are changing my "ordinary income" k1 input by a figure equal to what they are sticking in the "disallowed due to at-risk" column. I've filled out the "at-risk" boxes in the k1 section (he has enough "at-risk" basis) - any idea why Lacerte is doing this and how to fix it?