This is an awesome story submitted by Jim at Scottsdale Community College

Caitlin enrolled in our Scottsdale Community College (SCC) income tax class where we use VITA materials for part of the course instruction.  These students are invited to volunteer in the SCC  VITA program, and Caitlin decided to volunteer.  She attended the 4-day training prior to tax season as a refresher, and brought her sister, Faith, along.  On the second day of training, their other sister Emily tagged along (just waiting for a ride to another event), and she became interested.  All became certified and volunteered.  Later, during the tax season, Faith’s dad (Dennis, a CPA) stopped by the site to see what we were doing, and he got certified.  Faith and Dennis decided to take the tax class the following semester to expand their tax knowledge to partnerships and corporations, and one day during a special study session, Dennis’ wife, Mary attended.  She became interested in taxes, and she got certified.  Mary now serves the invaluable role as Screener, and all in the family are volunteering this tax season.  Thanks to all of them!

Thank you for your Volunteer Service!

The following PDF is an update on your suggestions (not all 1,000 are on here yet).  This document will be updated periodically with new suggestions and responses.  As we move out of tax season into planning season, it will also be updated with an indicator of the suggestions that will be able to implement for the next filing season.

We tweaked the format a little to allow us to sort by Federal and State.

An example of the status column can be found by Tracking ID 269372 (Ctrl+F allows you search in the document)

What’s Trending:

• Less clicks to enter multiple interest and dividend items
• Increase the size of selection boxes

Don’t see your suggestion…don’t worry…suggestions will be added to the list as we pull them.

Don’t see a response next to your suggestion…we are reviewing each suggestion and will provide a response.

Click here to view PDF

The link will launch a Brainshark video with instructions on how to view the file.

We will be putting the returns in maintenance mode at 5:00 am on Friday, April 6th to perform a series of updates.

• Zip Code Updates (Issue #1851)
  • 39840 – Cuthbert, GA
  • 77498 – Sugar Land, TX
• Fix with ACA when filing MFS and claiming spouse exemption (Issue #1542)
• Correct a print issue where F5695 was not generating in the PDF when no credit was being taken and it was all carryforward to next year (Issue #1848)
• GA – Added a Interest Income adjustment field within the GA Retirement Worksheet menu (Issue #1570)
• AL – Update to AL PY returns where non-allocated rental income was carrying to the AL Schedule E (Issue #1865)
• HI – Entries for Spouse AGI within Food Excise Tax Credit menu were not saving inside the state program (Issue #1855)
• MO – Added page validation for qualification questions for Property Tax Credit within Basic Information menu (Issue #1834)
• OH – Resolved an issue where the Resident Credit was not calculating based on Gambling Winnings earned in Indiana (Issue #1823)

Along with doing over 2000 returns so far this year, last week they hosted a Tax Problem Solving Day.  Below are the results and information.

The Advocates saw 20 taxpayers. All eleven appointments came plus nine walk-ins.  In all the situations, the taxpayers needed to see an advocate for solution. Some of the taxpayers were referred back to VITA to have returns filed.

The site is also planning on opening one day a month post filing season, in order to help these and additional taxpayers with amendments or problems.

Thank you Patricia L for submitting this “Shout out”

Stay the Course!

With just a little more than two weeks before April 17^th, we are steadily moving towards our 4.0 goal, as reflected in our numbers for the week ending 3/25/2018.  We will stay the course until the job is done!

Kudos to everyone for helping prepare 293,008 returns! Yes, we are a little short of our weekly projection, but compared to last year, this represents a 2.3% increase. As you can see below, we are quickly approaching the 2.5M cumulative mark. Hats off for achieving a 0.1% increase above last year!

Even with the continued weather challenges in some areas, we continue to see increases in our FSA and prior year return preparation numbers, 5.9% and 53.3% respectively.  We’ve also seen a 1.9% increase in our state tax return preparation. Keep it up!

Update 1

Halfway There!

Keep up the good work!

~~~  Original Message ~~~

First, we want to thank each of you for your dedication and commitment to make this a banner year for return production.  SPEC’s goal is not only to reach 4 million returns for Filing Season 2018, but also serve more taxpayers and touch more lives by offering as many free tax preparation options as possible.  We are confident and poised to accomplish great things this filing season with your assistance.

To help track our progress, we have developed weekly projections to determine where we should be in relation to our 4.0 goal.  Each week this message will be updated with our progress and promote SPEC’s theme: SPEC 4.0, Watch us Grow!

For the week ending 3/4/2018, 356,317 returns were projected to be completed.  We reached an actual count of 313,542 and are almost at the 1.5 million mark. Our cumulative return count is 1,468,961.

While the actual count is below the SPEC projection, there is still time to narrow the gap!

If you have any ideas on ways to help this initiative, we would love to hear from you! Some of you may consider extended hours or days.  Every little bit helps!

Thanks for your engagement and all you are doing to provide free tax assistance to the taxpayers in your community!

SPEC Headquarters

4/6/2018 – RESOLVED

Scenario:  I DO NOT have “Always print schedule A” selected in office setup, but Schedule A is printing with all of my  returns.

We are actively investigating why this is happening.

RESOLVED 04/04 – Impacted AZ returns with Reject Code 702 can be resubmitted at this time if not already accepted.

Update 04/03

We made corrections to the e-file schema and replayed the existing AZ rejects.  We are currently testing a permanent solution that will be delivered through the update process.

Update 04/02:  We are making a program change to accommodate the changes that AZ put into place on Friday evening.  The goal is to have the update delivered by Wednesday.

Scenario:  My Arizona return was rejected for the following:

Reject Code: 702 | Category: Error | Severity: Reject
FRM – The amount on the Net Capital Gain line is not consistent with values on related lines.; FRM – The amount on the Net Capital Gain line is not consistent with values on related lines.

We are investigating the cause of the reject.  We recommend that you tag these returns and hold the state if rejected until we update the blog post

We received the following email from AZ late yesterday afternoon.  We are reaching out to them to understand why the change they made is impacting the returns.

Subject: BR702 Updates- No schema changes

Good Afternoon,

In order to streamline BR702 we have made the following changes:

Form 140, for loss only, line 18 loss limited to -1500 for married filing separate and -3000 for single/ married filing joint/head of household. If Line 18 is not null or zero, there must be an amount on line 19 or 20.

Form 140PY, if line 32 is not null or zero, there must be an amount on line 33 or 34.

Form 140NR, if line 32 is not null or zero, there must be an amount on line 33 or 34.

Form 141AZ, for loss only, line 15a loss limited to -3000. If Line 15a is not null or zero, there must be an amount on line 15b or 15c.

There is no schema change, just business rule logic change. These lines will no longer need to reference the federal form. These new changes are in effect as of today, March 30^th. We apologize for any inconvenience.

We will be putting the return in maintenance mode at 5:00 am on Monday, April 2nd for a series of updates.

• Locate the W-7 from Forms Search.  Enter W and scroll down or ITIN to pull up Go to Application for ITIN
• Correction to the wording on Adjustment Code D on Capital Gains page