March 7, 2009 Session

From Exported Videos

An accidental volunteer who willingly helped prepare 9325 acknowledgement forms for taxpayers whose returns have been electronically filed and accepted by the IRS

2009 Economic Recovery Payment

A one-time Economic Recovery Payment of will be made in 2009. YOU DO NOT HAVE TO FILE A TAX RETURN TO GET YOUR ECONOMIC RECOVERY PAYMENT. Ñ Ifyouarearetiree,disabledindividualora SupplementalSecurityIncome(SSI)recipient,youwill receiveyourEconomicRecoveryPaymentdirectlyfrom theSocialSecurityAdministration. Ñ Ifyoureceivedisabledveteransbenefits,youwill receiveyourEconomicRecoveryPaymentfromthe DepartmentofVeteransAffairs. Ñ IfyoureceiveRailroadRetirementbenefits,youwill receiveyourEconomicRecoveryPaymentfromthe RailroadRetirementBoard. $250 Contacttheagencythatpaysyour benefitformoreinformation. IRS Department of the Treasury Internal Revenue Service www.irs.gov Publication 4751 (3-2009) Catalog Number 52943A

Opening session February 7, 2009

City of Milpitas Vice-Mayor Pete "Primo" McHugh was the guest of honor and was kind enough to declare the filing session open at VITA at MILPITAS PUBLIC LIBRARY on the morning of Saturday February 7, 2009. Vice-Mayor McHugh expressed his appreciation for the hard work and dedication of the volunteers who were there to help people prepare and e-file their tax returns.

Dealing with replacement laptops for TaxWise Desktop

When we get a replacement TaxWise Desktop it comes loaded with several pieces of software, including Adobe 8.xx, TaxWise 2007, and Windows XP Service Pack 2 and Internet Explorer 6.xx

To use it for preparing 2008 returns, the minimum required istallation is TaxWise 2008
together with the latest updates for federal and states and help files.

However, to simplify life with a systematic preparation process for the long run, we found the following to be a reasonable set of things to do:

1. Connect laptop by a network cable to a LAN or other network with internet access
2. Go to Microsoft Windows update and get the latest updates and patches. If you get errors, read the error message carefully and enable and restart the needed services as recommended, and then let it run. This will take a while, because it will download Service Pack 3 (which is big) and you better have a high speed conection, and then run through and install it.
3. If you are used to Internet Explorer 7.xx, go ahead and upgrade that too.
4. Install Abode 9.0 from the TaxWise installation disk. You might as well do it now rather than go through the error message telling you to do it later.
5. Install TaxWise from the TaxWise CD
6. Download the latest updates for federal, state, TaxWise help, and 1040 help
7. Start TaxWise and go through the installation process.
8. Optionally remove TaxWise 2007. While this is not required or necessary, we have found doing so avoids problems of volunteers accidentally starting a return on TaxWise 2007, wondering why it looks different, and subsequently learning that they used the wrong version of TaxWise. If you subsequently need TaxWise 2007, it can be installed from the TaxWise program disk.

How to provide details on error rejects?

Recently, one of our Relationship managers requested a summary of reasons of rejection. One way is to scratch the head, especially if the rejects are spread out over 3 weeks. Another is to go back and reconstruct how you did this by reviewing the rejected returns which had been accepted.

However, a simple way is to look at all the IRS acknowledgements reports at once. When you select the option with all the reports, TaxWise creates a report with a summary of all the returns accepted and rejected during the period of the reports, and then prints the errors (most of the time) and details on the subsequent pages. The report can be saved to a pdf or Excel xls file, or physically printed out on a printer.

That would also be a good way to obtain help from the Relationship manager if you can't resolve any problems on your own, and will let you check that your records on the number of returns agree with the UTS summary records that the IRS gets.

Any additional thoughts on the matter?