Tag: Pro Online

Phishing

Scammers often try to steal their victims’ identities by sending them phony e-mails which claim to come from trusted sources, such as well-known financial institutions or government agencies (including the IRS), and ask them for detailed personal and financial information. This practice is known as “phishing.” The information requested is used by the scammers to gain access to the victims’ bank accounts, open new credit cards in their victims’ names and get cash advances, and more.

While we have not heard this from our VITA/TCE community, we wanted to share this as an informational awareness alert:

TaxSlayer Pro has been made aware of an email phishing scam where the sender claims to be from TaxSlayer Pro.  The subject line may read “Urgent Warning” or “Action Required”.  The body of the email is asking you to “take action or lose access to your account within 24 hours” or “we’ve updated our servers and some of your information is missing”.  This email contains a link to a site intended for you to update your information.  Do not click the link or provide any requested information.  These emails were sent from an unknown party not affiliated with TaxSlayer Pro.  Please note, official email from TaxSlayer Pro will always be sent from a TaxSlayerPro.com email address, or in the case of VITA/TCE a [email protected] email address.

The IRS has noticed an increase in the number of phishing attempts targeting professional tax preparers over the past year.  Phishing emails may use differing language in an attempt to trick an individual in to disclosing sensitive data.  Should you ever have concerns about the legitimacy of an email claiming to be from TaxSlayer Pro, please do not hesitate to contact our Support team by phone at 800-421-6346 or by email at [email protected] prior to taking any action.

How to Spot a Scam

Many e-mail scams are fairly sophisticated and hard to detect. However, there are signs to watch for, such as an e-mail that:

• Requests detailed or an unusual amount of personal and/or financial information, such as name, SSN, bank or credit card account numbers or security-related information, such as mother’s maiden name, either in the e-mail itself or on another site to which a link in the e-mail sends the recipient.
• Dangles bait to get the recipient to respond to the e-mail.
• Threatens a consequence for not responding to the e-mail.
• Gets the company or other federal agency names wrong.
• Uses incorrect grammar or odd phrasing.
• Uses a really long address in any link contained in the e-mail message or one that does not start with the actual company email address. To see the actual link address, or url, move the mouse over the link included in the text of the e-mail.

The MeF maintenance build window is being extended on Sunday, March 4, 2018. Both ATS and Production systems will be unavailable from 12:00 a.m. until 2:00 p.m. Eastern.  The build will deploy critical system updates.

Impact:  No returns will be sent and acknowledged between these hours

We will be placing the returns in maintenance mode at 5:00 am EST on Thursday, March 1st to apply a series of updates.  The update is scheduled to include:

• The add back of Form 5695 (Residential Energy Credit Form) per passage of extenders
• Added Zip Code 89081 to the zip code database for North Las Vegas, NV
• Form 1116 – Text update for country “Isle of Man” from the drop down menu (Issue #1361)
• New Jersey – Fixed an issue where 1099-R income with Code 3 in Box 7 was double reporting on Line 19a (Issue #1343)
• New Jersey – Fixed an issue related to the Property Tax Credit not calculating on Line 49 when applicable (Issue #1165)

We will be putting the returns in maintenance mode at 5:00 am EST for a series of updates.

• Added zip code 37934 to the zip code database for Knoxville, TN.
• PA Local – Fixed an issue where the local tax rate entry was not carried to the PDF (Issue #1327)
• Pennsylvania – Fixed an issue where the Schedule SP was not including the Resident Credit on line 13 (Issue #1376)
• Kentucky – Fixed an issue where the “Enter Exempt Percentage” field for Retirement Income (Schedule P Part 1 Only) was not saving (Issue #1308)
• Vermont – Fixed an issue where the percentage entries within the Homestead Declaration and Property Tax Adjustment menu, LC-142 and PR-141 were not holding (Issue #1336, 1337, and 1338)
• Colorado Amended Return – Fixed an issue where the entry for “Enter the amount from your original return…” was not holding (Issue #1357)
• Arizona – Fixed an issue where the Property Tax Factor percentage entry was not saving (Issue #1342)
• Maine – Fixed a display issue where the “X” was not carrying to the Injured Spouse designation (Issue #1279)
• Rhode Island – Fixed an issue where the RI-1040H was including “Direct Rollover” amounts as Household Income (Issue #1341)
• Connecticut – Fixed a display issue where the “Y” was not showing next to the CT-8379 indicator when included in the return (Issue #1340)
• Iowa – Fixed an issue where the IA Amended Return was not being removed from the PDF when selecting “NO” to completing the amended return (Issue #1330)
• Utah – Fixed an issue where Part Year residency dates entered within Basic Information were not saving (Issue #1292)

Blog Posted 02/27/2018

We will be putting the returns in maintenance mode at 5:00 am EST on Tuesday, February 27th to apply a series of updates.  The update included:

• Extending the Taxpayer/Spouse last name field to 20 characters
• You can now search by Last 4 of the SSN if your site has more than 499 returns
• You can now search by hyphenated last name if your site has more than 499 returns
• You can now send state only returns after the federal return has been accepted
• MAGI in Schedule A immediately reflects change in AGI when income is added or removed from the return without having to exit and re-enter the return

Date Issued:  February 22, 2018

This alert supersedes the previous alerts issued on February 2 and February 16, 2018.

Click here to download PDF

blog posted 02/26/2018

We will be putting the returns in maintenance mode at 5:00 am EST on Monday, February 26th for a series of updates.

• Fixed an issue where the Schedule OI Tax Treaty Article selection was not holding if the menu was re-entered (Issue #1234)
• Added zip code 85388 for Surprise, Arizona to the zip code database (Issue #1318)
• Kansas – Fixed an issue within the K-40H/PT menu where “Other Household Members” was not holding the SSN entry (Issue #1159)
• Michigan – Fixed an issue where Worksheet 4 for MI-1040CR was not calculating (Issue #1126)
• Michigan – Fixed an issue where 1099-R entries within “Deductions for Taxpayers born before 1953” were not fully being cleared after information was removed. The Private or Public checkbox was still showing on the PDF (Issue #1288)
• Pennsylvania – Fixed an issue in the Schedule UE menu where deleting entries for standard mileage rate to override automatically carried amounts from the Federal 2106 was carrying $0 to the PDF instead of the amounts from the Federal 2106 (Issue #1177)
• California – Added a drop-down within the Tax menu to indicate if a taxpayer paid their Use Tax directly to CDTFA (Issue #1316)
• Delaware – Fixed a display issue on the DE amended return where Line 6B was not showing the leading percentage number (Issue #1257)
• Delaware – Fixed an issue where Line 7a was not calculating personal credits on the DE amended return (Issue #1258)
• Louisiana – Removed “Motion Picture Resident” credit (Issue #1245)
• Louisiana – Fixed a display issue where the description for subtraction code 21E was not carrying to the PDF (Issue #1300)
• Louisiana – Fixed a display issue where the DOB for a dependent listed for the Military Serviceman menu was not showing in the correct format (Issue #1299)
• Minnesota – Fixed an issue where the M1CD was calculating incorrectly when qualifying child was born during 2017 (Issue #1293)

Blog posted 02/24/2018

Scenario:  Your federal return is accepted, and you are trying to send the state as a state only return

You receive the following error on the Submission page in the e-file section.

Solution:  Hold the state return.  We will fix this in an update.  DO NOT remove the check mark from Send State Only and resend the federal return with the state.  The federal return will get rejected 902 and the state will not go anywhere.

Blog posted 02/24/2018