Custom Client Grid
The custom client grid is a returning feature from our Legacy Wintax software. It allows you to customize which columns of information show up on your Recall Client grid to better suit your needs.
Here’s how tax pros can help clients battle unemployment related identity theft
As part of this year’s summer campaign Boost Security Immunity: Fight Against Identity Theft, the IRS and its Security Summit partners outlined ways tax pros can help clients victimized by unemployment compensation fraud schemes.
Information Regarding Child Tax Credit Advance Payments External Inbox
With the announcement of the Child Tax Credit advance payments, we felt the need to add an additional client listing report and excel export option. This is to aid you in your communication efforts with your clients and offer applicable notifications and advice.
The IRS is sending some letters to taxpayers with additional information and has set up www.irs.gov/childtaxcredit2021 that offers more details and the ability to opt out. This webpage also has tools for non-filers to enter their information.
5 TIPS TO CLOSE THE TAX SEASON
1. Back-Up and Protect Your Data
As the tax preparer, backing up and protecting your data should be a primary concern. Making regular backups to an external storage device at a minimum of once per week is important. Imagine next week your hard drive fails. The returns you’ve done, acknowledgement reports, PDF copies, and scanned documents are gone. Without a backup, your only hope is to take your computer to a technician who is going to charge hundreds of dollars to attempt to recover data and there is no guarantee they succeed. If they can’t recover the data, hopefully you had paper copies, but it could take hundreds of man hours reinputting data. If you don’t have paper copies, well, we hope you are lucky enough to never get audited. If you have a backup, you would only need to spend a couple hours bringing your data over and you’d be ready to go. Taxware does NOT store a copy of your data. Seek competent technical advice to keep your computers and data protected.
As the tax preparer, backing up and protecting your data should be a primary concern. Making regular backups to an external storage device at a minimum of once per week is important. Imagine next week your hard drive fails. The returns you’ve done, acknowledgement reports, PDF copies, and scanned documents are gone. Without a backup, your only hope is to take your computer to a technician who is going to charge hundreds of dollars to attempt to recover data and there is no guarantee they succeed. If they can’t recover the data, hopefully you had paper copies, but it could take hundreds of man hours reinputting data. If you don’t have paper copies, well, we hope you are lucky enough to never get audited. If you have a backup, you would only need to spend a couple hours bringing your data over and you’d be ready to go. Taxware does NOT store a copy of your data. Seek competent technical advice to keep your computers and data protected.
For detailed instructions on how to backup your data click here or contact technical support and a technician would be happy to assist you.
2. Don’t Forget to Pull in Acknowledgements
As a security measure we purge acknowledgement records every 30 days. This means after 30 days we will only be able to tell if the return was accepted or rejected, however we will not be able to read the reason why the return was rejected. If you have returns that are awaiting acknowledgement for longer than 5 days, call technical support and a technician will investigate why your acknowledgements have not come through.
3. Have Last Minute Rejects?
Don’t stress, if you get a rejected return on April 18th the IRS gives you a 3 day grace period to fix it!
Don’t stress, if you get a rejected return on April 18th the IRS gives you a 3 day grace period to fix it!
4. Start your Free Trial with Textellent.com
Do you want to grow your business for the 2021 Tax year? Now is the time to evaluate and start your free trial with Textellent, the text marketing and appointment scheduling platform that is fully integrated within your Wintax program. Just one short on-boarding appointment and you will be up and running. Doing this in the off-season should help you have the time to really delve into the many benefits and options this additional program could provide you and your business.
5. Celebrate!
Last but not least, plan and go on vacation! You deserve it! TripAdvisor is one of our favorites.
Updated Unemployment Compensation Exclusion
The IRS revised their unemployment exclusion worksheet today. The change basically excludes the Unemployment subtraction from MAGI calculation in the forms and worksheets listed in the IRS link listed below. We have applied these worksheet changes to the Wintax – 1040 program and they are available in the latest update.
New Exclusion of up to $10,200 of Unemployment Compensation for 2020 1040 Returns
The IRS released the following information regarding “The American Rescue Plan”. We have updated our program to reflect those changes. After applying the update, you will need to go into any existing tax returns for calculations to be applied. New tax returns moving forward will be automatic. If your client has unemployment income, and is below the applicable threshold, an automatic entry on line 8 of Schedule 1 “Other Income” with “UCE” as the description and a negative number will be produced. The link below will give you more information on the IRS website.
IRS, Summit partners issue urgent EFIN scam alert to tax professionals
WASHINGTON – The Internal Revenue Service, state tax agencies and tax industry today warned tax professionals of a new scam email that impersonates the IRS and attempts to steal Electronic Filing Identification Numbers (EFINs).
Important EIP Update
Hello Taxware Clients,
We have received a few questions regarding how to select or set a tax return as an EIP filing only return. We think the confusion comes from the IRS requirements in the 2019 tax year.
Read more
Wintax NextGen Automatic Backups
Starting with the 2020 version of Wintax there is a new file structure for your data that will allow for easier backups of your data and setup information. The biggest change is that your data will no longer be defaulted to be saved in the program folder directly, but instead to a Settings and Data folder that, by default, will be located in your Taxware folder.
