TaxSlayer VITA/TCE Support will be closed on Easter Sunday, 4/21/2019. Beginning Monday, April 22nd, off-season customer support hours will begin as follows:

• Sunday: CLOSED
• Monday-Friday: 8am-5pm ET
• Saturday: CLOSED

Today was the last all partner call for this filing season. Thank you to each and every one of you that made this filing season a success! We know local taxpayers in your community champion your efforts in providing a valuable and vital resource to them.

We didn’t have very many updates to cover today other than reminding everyone we are currently in a “code freeze” until after April 15th. This just means that we will not have any program deployments from April 10th (yesterday) through April 15th. We also mentioned the Suggestion Box and strongly encouraged volunteers to enter any and all suggestions to continue to enhance the software for you. Also, regarding the Suggestion Box, as a reminder the Suggestion Box is to report enhancements you’d like to see but not to report items you feel are defects with the software. Any potential defects need to be reported directly to customer support so they can be addressed quickly.

Below are the questions and answers recorded from the All Partner Call on Thursday, April 11th. There were only two questions asked.

Q: More of a suggestion but a volunteer asked if the 1040-NR program can be updated to allow for an entry to support a departure date prior to an arrival date for the Schedule OI. This would specifically benefit students that go home in May and return to school in August or September.

• We asked this item be reported to the Suggestion Box for further review. One item that needs to be reviewed is if the 1040-NR schema would support this type of entry via electronic submission.

Q: This was a question presented to IRS representatives on the call. How to handle a 1099-MISC with Box 7 income when the income should have been reported in Box 3?

• Advisement from the IRS was to “key it how you see it” but ultimately the taxpayer should be referred back to the payer to have a corrected 1099-MISC.

Below are the questions and answers recorded from the All Partner Call on Thursday, March 28th. We are posting questions most applicable to all sites.

Q: How do we determine residency status when an international student with an F1 visa changes to an H1B employee status with the H1B being less then half the year?

• Referred volunteer to their SPEC RM to perform tax research on their behalf.

Q: Can you lock a return after it has been accepted so it cannot be reopened?

• No, but from Client Status, volunteers can generate the accepted PDF of the Federal and State Return(s).

Q: Can the Suggestion Box send automated responses summarizing entries made?

• Currently, this is not available using the third-party survey platform.

Q: Is there a way to delete preparers instead of just marking them inactive?

• No, preparers added must stay in the database because their logins are tied to tax returns prepared and transmitted.

Below are the questions and answers recorded from the All Partner call on Thursday, March 14th. We are posting questions most applicable to all sites.

Q: Looking for reports to access specific dollar amounts for both fed and state returns.

• We recommend taking advantage of the Site Production Detail Report (Electronic and Paper) to drill into TP data at your site. There are also various other reports available within Management Reports to assist.

Q: Question about for carryforward data, why does a state with no income tax show as an optional carryforward item.

• Recommended to the volunteer to request an enhancement via the Suggestion Box to adjust the way carryforward data works in relation to states without income tax.

Q: When suggestions are submitted via the Suggestion Box, would like to receive an automated e-mail referencing the enhancement entered.

• All requests entered into the Suggestion Box are  responded to by Kim or Craig along with regular updates based on status changes with submitted enhancements. Since all suggestions are manually reviewed, it can take a little time before we are able to send out acknowledgement e-mails.

Q: Volunteer was asking the IRS if there was an income limitation for assisting taxpayers in their community.

• IRS representative indicated there is not an income limitation but the most important item to note is the volunteer must have the appropriate certifications to complete the tax returns.

Q: Question about a 1040-NR/EZ return getting rejected by the IRS due to $0 AGI.

• The IRS does not accept any 1040 return with $0 AGI via e-file and that these returns should be paper filed. Alternatively, sites have indicated they enter $1 in Other Income in order to e-file a return.

Q: Why does a 1040-NR return for a married nonresident require spouse information?

• We have opened Issue 3239 to remove the current validations requiring spouse entry when no longer applicable for 2018 1040-NR returns. For the time being, enter all spouse information but if a SSN/ITIN is not known, volunteers can enter 111-00-1111.

Q:What SSN do you enter when needing to apply for an ITIN?

• Enter all zeros (000-00-0000) to get access to the W-7 menu for the applicable individual on the return needing an ITIN.

Q: Can you electronically file Form 8843 for 1040-NR returns?

• The IRS still requires Form 8843 be paper filed if being filed by itself. If also preparing/filing the 1040-NR/EZ, Form 8843 will be included in the transmission.

Click here to launch the 2019 VITA Awareness Day toolkit.

This year also celebrate’s the 50th anniversary of the VITA.

Below are the bullet points from our opening presentation at the beginning of the All Partner call today.

• We received print approval from MA and the “Do Not Mail” strips were removed from PDF’s
• Web Reports should be current by Monday, March 4^th
• Sites using FSA links for taxpayer self-prep need to make sure to refresh the URL between taxpayers to make sure their clients are creating their initial accounts using the correct URL
• We are working to update the items from the Suggestion Box so we can start adding new items in March
• We will have a short maintenance window on Thursday, March 7^th at 11:00pm EST

Below are bullet points from our opening presentation at the beginning of the All Partner call before opening up for Q&A from the field.

• Discussed the challenges we experienced with the software on February 5^th, 11^th and 12^th
• We currently have web reports turned off so we can make sure they are optimized and do not have a negative impact on the system.  We hope to have them up soon, possibly after our maintenance window on Sunday.
• If you do get an unexpected error at any time, we strongly recommend you close the browser (not just the tab) and start a new instance of the browser.
• Watch the blog for state announcements regarding delays in acknowledgements and rejects
• The “Back” button is once again available at the state level, replacing the “Cancel” button
• Still getting some IRS 905 and 202 rejects.  If something changes with your EFIN, you need to notify your SPEC RM and TaxSlayer support rather than just changing it in the software.
• If your site is experiencing slowness loading the list of customers on the Client list page, you can go to Office Setup and lower the number of returns to display from 999 to something lower.  This will change your client search to only display the last 100 returns instead of all returns.
• The error links on the e-file page now take you to the error
• Selecting the Ready to Re-transmit button on the submission page in the e-file section when working rejects will automatically add the return to the transmission list.

The following are questions and corresponding answers that we received on the Partner Call that was held on Thursday, February 1st.  We are posting the ones that are most applicable to all sites.

Q: We are seeing PA Local Return issues with wages not carrying from Federal entry nor performing any calculations.

• We have asked this volunteer this volunteer to e-mail [email protected] with an EFIN and last 4 so we can review.

Q: Do rejected transmissions that are resubmitted stay as rejected until the accepted ack comes back?

• Yes, when rejected returns are resubmitted for processing, their status will not change until a different acknowledgement is returned (an accepted acknowledgement).

Q: How long do transmitted returns that have been stuck take to get their ack once issue is resolved?

• When stuck transmissions become “unstuck”, it can take up to several hours before a site may see acknowledgements because the queue requires time to release the number of returns that may have been stuck.

Q: Recommended browser to use?

• We personally use Google Chrome (Kim and Craig) but we always recommend to volunteers to use the latest version of their preferred Internet browser.

Q: Update on 2015 returns issue when trying to access E-file?

• This is reported as Issue 2705. It is currently being worked and we have asked that the priority be updated with development for a quicker resolution. Once fixed, it will be posted in our Release Notes on the VITA/TCE Blog.

Q: Reject Clients number not lowering when fixing returns?

• As returns listed in the Reject Clients menu are corrected, resubmitted, and accepted by the IRS and/or State, they will be removed from the Reject Clients menu.

Q: ETA on web reports (Management Reports) being turned back on?

• We do not have a specific ETA as our engineers and IT staff continue their investigations, but we are hopeful, web reports will be turned back on soon.

Q: Federal 1099-R information not transferring to MI, Schedule 1?

• We asked this volunteer to e-mail [email protected] with the EFIN and last 4 of a return that we can further review.

Q: When will printing MA returns not include the water mark “Do Not Mail”?

• Each software vendor must have their forms approved by each state for paper filing. Until these approvals are received, vendors must watermark their forms. Once we receive forms approval from MA, the watermark will be removed from the PDF’s.

Q: Issues with Transmissions from Transmission Menu not filing every return marked for e-file?

• This is specific to attempting to file returns using the limited return view per page. We recommend they expand the Transmission menu to show 100 returns per page. We have also opened Issue 2620 to review the root issue.

Q: Why do Print Sets not show EIN for 1099-R?

• We have asked this volunteer to contact support at [email protected] to provide additional information related to their question. We also noted that the Quality Review print set available to all sites includes the 1099-R and also includes the EIN.

Q: Status on Issue 2480 with MFS question being added back to the software?

• Issue 2480 is currently being tested within our pre-production environments. Assuming it passes all levels, the fix could be pushed live as early as Monday, February 18^th (note: not a hard delivery date).