Just as a heads up to sites that were preparing returns over the weekend (2/3 – 2/4), there were roughly 1,000 acknowledgements (Federal and state) that were delayed. They should start appearing at your sites throughout the morning.

The Indiana Department of Revenue sent out the below messaging to all software vendors.

“The Indiana Department of Revenue became aware this morning of a duplicate deposit situation that occurred with several of our customers overnight. We apologize for this inconvenience. Please be assured, the department is doing everything we can to rectify the situation. As of today, all customers’ second deposits are currently pending to be removed within 24 hours. Again, we apologize for the inconvenience and we appreciate your cooperation during this process.“

F1040-NR users claiming a tax treaty exemption for W-2 income this year are now eligible to e-file those returns. If eligible to claim this exemption when completing a 1040NR return, got to Basic Information > Schedule OI > General Information. To claim the treaty exemption, you first must check the box “Check if you were subject to tax in a foreign country on U.S. exempt income” then enter the applicable amount of wages from the W-2. The below red text will be removed now that the e-file block has been removed for 1040-NR returns claiming the treaty exemption for wages. Don’t worry, you CAN e-file these returns.

After completing the applicable information within the Schedule OI > General Information, select Continue to complete the rest of the Schedule OI’s menus, such as “Income Exempt from Tax”. This is where you will select the country and Tax Treaty Article to support the exempt wages.

The site will be placed in maintenance on Monday, January 29th at 5:00am Eastern to release a series of updates.

• M1PR menu not loading. This has been resolved
• 1040NR – Removed e-file block if tax exempt treaty income is claimed on the return.
• Forms Completed – Under Deductions, “Education Credits” now appears after completing F8863.
• Health Insurance – Fixed an issue where exemption menus were not visible when indicating NO insurance for all household members all year.

The site will be placed in maintenance on Thursday, January 25th at 5:00am Eastern to release a series of updates.

• Text updates to assist prepares completing the affordability worksheet. Screenshots will be provided after the deployment

On the Household Income screen additional text was added to further explain this entry is only needed if preparers will be completing the Affordability Worksheet later.

On the LCBP and SLCSP screen, the outlined text received an overall update to explain to preparers how to retrieve the LCBP and SLCSP premium values

Various updates on the Affordability Worksheet when entering annualized contribution amounts. The word “ANNUALIZED” is now bold and in all CAPS. We also added text next to Situation 1 and 2 to help explain the monthly figure needs to be multiplied by 12 and then entered into each applicable month.

We will be placing the site in maintenance made beginning Friday, January 19th at 5:00am Eastern to apply a series of updates. Items that were released with todays updates impacting TaxSlayer Pro Online:

• Corrected misspelled text within the F1116
• ACA: Issue was fixed where the Dependent MAGI screen was not showing for full-year coverage through the Marketplace for all household members and a 1095-A was received.

We will be putting returns in maintenance mode to apply a series of updated on Wednesday, January 17th at 5:00am Eastern. This round of updates is scheduled to include the below items:

• Long-term Care Insurance Premium – Fix for a validation that is occurring when attempting to edit/review original LTC Premium entries within the Itemized Deduction menu
• Various text updates specific to 2017
• Health Insurance – A fix for an error occurring when a Household member is added within the Health Insurance menu with zero (0) months of coverage
• Health Insurance – A fix for a validation error occurring at e-file when marking a dependent as “Not a dependent” that is blocking access to the e-file menu. The program is incorrectly indicating the “Non” dependent must be included for Health Insurance
• Mortgage Insurance Premium Deduction – Due to recently expiring the PMI deduction within the Mortgage Interest menu will be removed

An identified issue with reporting Long-term Care Insurance Premiums is expected to be resolved this week. Once the fix is scheduled to go live, we will post this information in a new blog post.

The Issue:

As an example, let’s say the taxpayer is 72 years old. The preparer visits the Itemized Deduction>Medical and Dental Expenses>Long-Term Care Premiums menu. The preparer claims the allowed premium amount for taxpayers aged 70 or older of $5,110 and saves the entry. The Quality Reviewer then comes behind to verify the entry. Accessing the LTCP menu, they see the preparer correctly entered $5,110 so they click “Continue” to exit the screen and move on. The issue is that the screen is incorrectly validating the correct entry by saying the “Premiums paid can not exceed $410” which would be true if the taxpayer was age 40 or younger.

The Workaround:

When this validation is incorrectly applied to the entry screen for LTCP, instead of clicking “Continue” to move on, click “Cancel”. Clicking cancel will take you out of the screen without kicking off a calculation which is causing the incorrect validation to show. Now, the initial entry made and saved is still on the return. The fix, when pushed live, will allow users to correctly click “Continue” without causing an incorrect validation to show.