New for 2022 Configuration:  You can now designate a tax year for your custom questions.  All existing questions default to all years.  If you do not need them for 2022, you can simply edit them and change them to Tax Year 2021.  If you only want new questions to be displayed in 2022, you can designated them as Tax Year 2022 when you are setting them up.

Note:  The tax year designation works like it does for consents.  It will default to “All” tax years unless you change it to designate a specific tax year.

Practice Lab 2022 is now available for use. Please keep in mind that the Practice Lab will be updated twice a week as we receive finalized forms and instructions from the IRS.

You now have access to PL 2022 and PL 2021.

When you log in to your Production Sites, you will see the following TaxSlayer 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018 and 2017. You do not have the ability to create new returns in 2022, but you can still prepare returns in all of the available prior years. You will be able to electronically file 2021, 2020 and 2019 until the IRS shuts down their MeF system in preparation for the upcoming season in late November.

New for 2022 Configuration: You can now designate a tax year for your custom questions. All existing questions default to all years. If you do not need them for 2022, you can simply edit them and change them to Tax Year 2021. If you only want new questions to be displayed in 2022, you can designated them as Tax Year 2022 when you are setting them up.

States will not be available in the Practice Lab until closer to the filing season in either late December or early January. You can use PL 2021 to have your volunteers train or practice with state returns.

The site will be placed in maintenance on Tuesday, November 8th , beginning at 5:00am ET to release the below update(s). Note that deployments may take up to 3 hours to complete. During this time, access to the program may be limited.

PRACTICE LAB

• The 2022 Practice Lab is tentatively scheduled to be launched during the November 8th deploy

Once the 2022 application has been released, you will have access to the following:

Practice Lab — 2022 and 2021

Production Sites — 2022 (cannot start new returns), 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018 and 2017

The VITA/TCE Kiosk links are currently not being routed to the correct page.  We have opened an emergency ticket to get this resolved.

We are currently rendering an error when selecting “Practice Lab” from the VITA/TCE springboard.  We have entered an emergency ticket to get this resolved.

We are aware that notification emails are not being received for those that signed up with their email addresses.  We are working to resolve this.  During the interim, we recommend that you check the blog on a daily basis as we get closer to the start of training season.

The volunteer that prepared the return and the volunteers who can see all returns will see a notification when the taxpayer and/or spouse has signed the tax documents made available to them.

This is from the taxpayers view

The user that prepared the return and any users that have the ability to see all returns will see a chat/message notification

In this instance there are two unread messages because both taxpayer and spouse signed the tax document.

The volunteer will select the unread message(s) – Note we will be adding more clarification around which taxpayer the chat/message belongs to.

The chat history will display the messaging that the documents have been signed.

The following enhancement has been delivered to TaxSlayer 2021.  You can now enter the taxpayer/spouse email address in the personal information section.  This information will ultimately be used by the customer portal feature to eliminate the need to key in the email address a second time.  For all NEW returns, the email addresses entered in personal information will flow to the Return Details page in the e-file section.