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

Thank you Rhonda T for sharing this awesome story.

Under the sponsorship of Heart of West Michigan United Way, Kent County Tax Credit Coalition (KCTCC) has been offering VITA service in Western Michigan since 2004. Over the years KCTCC has managed to retain an average of 150 – 160 volunteers each year, for 2018 KCTCC has a total of 227 dedicated volunteers working at 12 sites. When Brenda B., Program Manager of KCTCC was asked what she believes contributes to the success of their volunteer retention she replied “ We try to keep it exciting for our volunteers”.

With help from their marketing department, workplace campaign and, donor relations Heart of West Michigan United Way has been able to advertise and recruit using a variety of sources including flyers, coupons, bus signs, bill boards, and social media to name a few. This year’s big hit was the use of beverage coasters advertising Free Tax Preparation. “The coasters were distributed throughout Kent County wherever people gathered.  We handed them out in churches, stores, restaurants, on the street and, even bars so I was told” laughed Brenda. Volunteers are also involved in the recruitment process; with the support of local athletic teams volunteers can win event tickets by recruiting other volunteers and having their names entered into drawings. Volunteers have won tickets for Grand Rapids Griffins (Hockey) and Grand Rapids Drive (Basketball) games.

Many thanks to everyone involved in the Heart of West Michigan United Way / Kent County Tax Credit Coalition VITA Program for a Job Well Done!

Bert has been a volunteer for 25 years.  Thank you for your volunteer service.  Bert was featured in an article written by Jenny Sparks/ Loveland Reporter-Herald

Thank you Harry and Rebecca for sharing

Congratulations on your 10 year anniversary of being a VITA volunteer.  Thank you for your volunteer service.

Recognized by Fox 4 as a “Hometown Hero”

Click here to view the video and news article.

Thank you Pennie C from United Way of Tarrant County for sharing this wonderful story.

When asked why Kristen D. volunteers for VITA, she said, “It lets me make a difference in someone else’s life.” It’s VITA Awareness Day! #VITAWorks

In 90 years TAUW has invested more than $669 million in the Tulsa area. TAUW provides services to hundreds of thousands annually through 61 partner agencies.

Thank you for your volunteer service and the awesome work you do.

Items discussed by TaxSlayer

• Filed close to 700,000 returns since our last all partners call
  • Overall you are close to 2% ahead of last year’s volume, which is really good considering the weather challenges of the past two weeks in the northeast and e-file across the industry has been trending down 2%
• For partners that are Certified Acceptance Agents for applying for and renewing ITINs, we have made some changes to allow information to flow to the bottom of the W-7
  • Added a section in preparer(s) setup to add your Acceptance Agent Information
• We lengthened the State fields on the W-2 (primarily the EIN field) so it is easier for the QR to quality review the return. You can now see the entire entry without having to click in the box.
• Rejected returns marked as “paper” are no longer included in the Rejected Returns Report
• The Rejected Clients call to action button on the Welcome screen only blinks once now
• Added California Wildfires and Tropical Storm Harvey to the Disaster Designation list in Personal Information
• Added the Customer Retention Report to the list of VITA reports inside the program.
  • Purpose is to run a report for a specific time from last year to determine which taxpayers have not had their returns prepared for the current year
  • Could potentially be used next year for planning purposes because it lists the date the taxpayer’s return was completed
• We are posting informational messages from SPEC Headquarters to help reach the goal of 4 million returns
• We posted a message at the request of New York on how to handle expired driver’s license for taxpayer or spouse
  • They do accept expired driver’s license as a valid form of identification
  • We are making a program change to accommodate this specific for the state of New York because other states do not acknowledge an expired license as a valid form of ID
  • Their preference is to hold a state return IF they have an expired drivers license
  • You can create a custom tag to identify the return and use the notes to enter the expiration date
• What is the best report to use to identify if the site has marked state returns as paper rather than an electronic return type?
  • Navigate to Management Reports
  • Select Detailed Return Report under the Pro Web Reports section
  • This will allow you to filter the state return type column to identify paper returns

Q:  What can be done to prevent things breaking when fixes are pushed out?

A:  The goal of course is for this to not happen.  We go through a series of regression testing for each released based on the changes that are being made.

Q:  How can rejected returns be removed from the Rejected Clients list?

A:  Once you mark a return as paper, it will be removed from the rejected clients list and the rejected clients reports

Q:  Where is the direct debit information printed on the return?

A:  It is printed on the Client List form, which is currently in the Quality Review print set.  An alternative to pulling this up and just printing out the page, would be to create a Direct Debit print set that just has the Client List Form in it.  This would allow you to print the tax return as normal and then for those taxpayers using direct debit, you can choose that print set and it will just generate a PDF with the Client list form in it.  You can then print the entire Client List for or the page the information is listed on.

Q:  Checking to see when  prior year reports will pull return data for TY2016 returns that were prepared after January 1st, 2018

A: We do have an issue in development to display this information on the Site Production Detail and Summary reports for 2016.  The following reports until Management Reports will display information on these returns

• ProWeb Reports — Detailed Return Report
• Electronic Filing Summary Report
• State Detail Summary Report

Q:  Is there any type of checklist that prints when you complete a paper return letting the taxpayer know what they need to do?

A:  No there is not.

Q:  Is there a way to show the direct debit date?

A:  Currently no.  We already have that documented as a requested revision to next year’s software.

#VITAworks in Minnesota

Thank you for your volunteer Service