Vita Volunteers TaxWise Blog

No form 8158 on Forms Tree - Was:Who is not green?

2010-01-28T20:13:00.000-08:00

Part of going green is to use electronic documents rather than paper documents when possible. While there are all the requirements of interview sheets and Quality Review Checklists that are printed up and checked off, at our site we choose to fill in the electronic version of those forms and keep them with the return.

In the last 2 years, we routinely filled in Form 8158 after selecting it from the form tree in taxwise, and used it as a checklist that was carried with the return for future reference. Imagine my consternation when I found that this year that was not the case. A call to our friendly TaxWise Customer Support and a one hour wait on the phone established that indeed the form was not on the form tree. The suggested solution was to go to the IRS website and download the form and print it out to be used.

When a form is already in the form tree, I would expect it is easier to just leave it there, rather than make a conscious effort to take it out. If this was a conscious effort, it does appear that someone has too much time on their hands and needs to be doing something to appear busy.

In these days of ecology consciousness and going green it is a sad state of affairs that we are now going back to yet more paper printed and shredded.

Whatever will be next?

Rude customer service interaction

2010-01-27T00:12:00.000-08:00

When a person is dealing with a telephone and trying to get through to a person for customer support, it is disrespect for the machine thelpo abruptly on the person. Nevertheless, that is how the customer support line behaved towards this person needing service.

The customer service help line number was obtained by logging into the TaxWise customer support website with the Client ID and the super secure password that was required. On calling the number given there and entering the client ID, I was told that the client ID did not entitle me to help on that line, and the line went dead.

If the website portal of TaxWise cannot provide the correct customer support number for a given client ID, it reflects on the care taken in presenting the site. It is sloppy programming of the portal, and to compound the insult, no other alternative phone number is given. I suggest it reflects the poor attitude of the vendor to the customer, and perhaps is an indication of the quality of the customer and technical support staff.

Bah! Computers and automation are supposed to help people, not be used as an excuse to deny service or be rude to customers.

Evaluate If TaxWise Online will work for you (updated)

2010-01-27T00:01:00.000-08:00

Evaluate if TaxWise Online will work for you posted on July 1, 2009 was suggested as a way of evaluating if TaxWise Online would work for you. In objectively trying it out, and also the practice lab version of TaxWise Online, it was found that performance was slow. It could be that the internet connection to the computer was slow, since it did not meet the minimum recommended connection speed of 800 Kilobytes/sec or 800 Kilobites/sec.

Discussion with users of TaxWise Online during the last season indicated that the production version of TaxWise Online (TWO) is actually faster than the practice version. However, since it is not possible to try it out in a production environment before "buying" as it were, it might lead to remorse later on to be told that the poor performance is due to not having a fast enough internet connection. Recall that the amount of data transferred is relatively small, so possible reasons for poor performance could be insufficient server capacity or insufficient internet connection speed at the server.

Speed Test Results

2009-12-10T06:07:00.000-08:00

The stated requirement for TaxWise Online to work effectively is a speed requirement of 800 kilobytes/second.

The following are results of speed tests at the India Community Center and the Milpitas Public Library on July 15, 2009.

India Community Center Speed Test 149 Kilobytes/sec

Milpitas Public Library Speed Test 1.1 Megabits/sec = 137.5 Kilobytes/Sec

As can be seen the speed tests showed the speeds to be way short of the required minimum speed of 800 kilobytes/sec = 6.4 Megabits/sec. Furthermore, the average high speed internet speed for California is 1.41 Megabits/sec which is less than 25% of the required minimum speed.

What does this mean? It means that most places with regular high speed internet access will not meet the minimum speed requirements. To do so will require getting premium or "elite" service levels. It also means that if you are getting sluggish response, you may be told that your speed connection is inadequate.

Evaluate if TaxWise Online will work for you

2009-07-01T14:27:00.000-07:00

If you are thinking of switching from TaxWise Desktop to TaxWise Online, you can try TaxWise Online Training through December 1, 2009 to see if this product is right for you.

You can gain access to this if you have a valid login and password for the the Taxwise support site. This training is for site coordinators and current volunteers who are familiar with the program and would like to practice over the summer. It could also be used to train current or prospective volunteers and conducing classroom training sessions.

Remember that the stated required internet speed is 800 kilobytes (kilobites) / sec

Further details should be available from your local VITA Relationship Manager. Login procedures cannot be provided on a public forum.

locked fields on tax form defaults cannot be unlocked in a return

2009-02-25T22:43:00.000-08:00

Because volunteer tax preparers were poking around in fields they had no business poking around in, I locked the defaults on some fields on the default tax forms.

It worked well, until I found there was a situation that required changing the field which required unlocking it. Well, evan as Administrator the field could not be unlocked, and that was frustrating. It appears that the locking carried over from the default tax return to the return itself, and no matter what I tried, it was not possible to salvage the return. The only way out was to copy the whole return on a different workstation starting with a different default tax form on the new return which had the field unlocked.

In my view, the ability to unlock a locked field should be allowed by a user with the appropriate privilege, rather than permanently locking it because the starting Tax defaults form was set that way. What do others think?

Returns being accepted before they are created?

2009-02-18T23:35:00.000-08:00

As a user of TaxWise Desktop version who sometimes receives strange acknowledgement reports, I carefully save and later look at the Ack reports.

Imagine my surprise when I noticed last week that some of the returns created on Sat Feb 7 (that was the first day of business at my site) were accepted on Feb 6!

I checked the reports for this week, and sure enough for a number of returns created on Sat Feb 14, the acknowledgements said they were received on Feb 13.

I don't know if it happened in the past, but it is only this year I noticed this phenomena. Maybe my eyes are playing tricks on me, maybe it is a phenomena that occurred only at my site, or maybe I was just lucky in getting strange experiences? This happens not only from my reports, but from reports generated directly from the reports list in TaxWise, and even in the IRS Ack reports coming back from the EFC.

Anybody else have this happen at their site?

Reject with no details

2009-02-12T16:49:00.000-08:00

So today I get a rejected return from the IRS through TaxWise. No reject code, no description, no nothing. So I go to the customer service center to find the return status. I bring up the screen, enter the SSN, and am faced with the following message:

Which says that

"The Return Status application has encountered an error.
Please try again soon. We apologize for any inconvenience.
If you continue to experience problems please contact Customer Service."

Three times I get the same message. Pleasant though it might be to spend the time talking to Cusotmer Service Reps, and much as I enjoy talking to them, I don't enjoy enough to repeat it too often.

My question to other coordinators: Are you also facing these strange problems this year as well, or am I just lucky in encountering them for everyone else?

Acknowledgements not visible in Desktop TaxWise

2009-02-11T10:11:00.000-08:00

The first lot of e-files transmitted had several problems.

1) After getting accepted by the IRS, 20 returns were batched and transmitted to CA state. A little while later, 2 acknowledgements came back to say all had been accepted. Subsequently, when I created the reports on State return status, the reports showed no acknowledgements. What is more surprising is that when I looked for the acknowledgements, the two CA acknowledgements were missing. It was weird that this happened, and I thought I was imagining it, but fortunately, I had exported the report to pdf and found it on my system, and sure enough it was there.

When I called up TaxWise customer support, they told me that the returns had been accepted by the state, and that they needed to "re-hang" the acknowledgements. By that I presume they somehow send the acknowledgement back again manually and it is received and processed by the transmitting computer, and everything is OK.

2) 2 of my IRS returns were rejected by the IRS. I reworked and transmitted them again, and waited and waited for the acknowledgement. I subsequently transmitted another return, and received the acknowledgement of the last return, but not the previous 2. Again, TaxWise customer service had to "re-hang" those acknowledgements.

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I find this disconcerting: I rely on the reports and updates to the database to keep track of which returns have been processed correctly and which are still outstanding.
When I have 30 returns in a batch, I find it difficult to keep track of which ones are still in process, especially if there are only a few mixed in with the incorrect status information.

I was told that due to the high volume of returns being processed this week, there were glitches; however, while I can understand acknowledgements not being sent out, I find it a bit difficult to understand how the state acknowledgement can be processed sufficiently far to generate a report but not to update the database, and then disappear without a trace from the transmitting computer.

I am sure I am not the only lucky transmitter to have this problem. While I can appreciate that the volume of returns are high, people with problems like I have just clutter up the customer service lines, and wait in frustration which the customer service reps apologize - one solution is to look into increasing the system reliability and provide the ability to transmitters to rehang bad acknowledgments themselves, and to make sure that running ah acknowledgement a second time does not mess up the system.

What are the experience of others?
Please add your comments and insights.

What is a TaxWise User?

2009-02-11T10:00:00.000-08:00

It will save a lot of wasted discussion and misunderstanding if we realize that the term User in TaxWise refers to a computer account, and not to the individual using the account.

There are three predefined USERs in TaxWise: ADMIN, GUEST, and TRAINING. ADMIN can create additional other Users (Account Names).

There are three predefined GROUPs in TaxWise: Administrators, Training, and SuperUsers. A group defines the capabilities or privileges of its members. An account which is a member of multiple groups has the privileges of all the groups of which the account is a member. What is a capability of privilege? It is something that could be done - not necessarily must be done or should be done.

ADMIN belongs to the Administrators Group. Guest belongs to the SuperUser Group, and Training belongs to the Training Group.

What are the current requirements for a USER to use TaxWise. Each user needs to have a password assigned by ADMIN, something which has changed from the past. In addition, the password has to meet other requirements.

While it may appear silly to not allow ADMIN to create new returns, there is actually for a very good reason. That way it prevents an ADMIN who is doing administration accidentally starting returns, leaving the workstation, and accidentally allowing the next user to have those privileges without realizing it.

At many sites, a single user in the SuperUsers group is used to create and prepare returns even though different people may be prepare the returns. This works for a small number of preparers and returns prepared at the site, and is a very convenient way of doing things. However, when there are a larger number of volunteers, say more than 8, and the site prepares in excess of 20 returns in a session, this becomes cumbersome. (1) it is not possible to keep track of who prepared which return unless each preparer consciously indicates his or her identity on the return (2) it requires a large amount of scrolling to find a return of interest, particularly when trying to identify which returns to e-file when they are mixed among returns that are not ready to e-file. Keeping the returns of each preparer separate in individual user accounts makes it more manageable to find a return, and identifies quickly which preparer is familiar with a return should questions arise. An alternate arrangement used at some sites is to create a new user for each day's returns. This has the advantage of keeping the bulk of returns prepared within the same time period together, but still has the problem of not keeping track of the preparer of individual returns.

These comments come frome experience with the TaxWise Desktop product. They may not be applicable for the TaxWise Online product.

When we say that a Group can do something, it means that anyone logged in as a user belonging to that group can that that.

Members of the Administrators Group have all the privileges possible, except for starting new Tax Returns, or owning any tax returns. Two capabilities of the Administrators Group are the ability to create new User Accounts and Groups beyond what are already predefined in TaxWis, and the ability to create and modify Tax Form Defaults.

SuperUsers have all the privileges or capabilities of Administrators except for the two unique privileges. In addition, they can start new returns, and own returns they start unless the return is subsequently assigned to another account, or if the returns are assigned to them.

When all preparers use SuperUser accounts to prepare returns, there may be undesirable consequences. Some preparers may get a little adventurous, and accidentally connect to the Electronic filing center and get emails and acknowledgements downloaded to their machines, which is not desirable. One way then is to let preparers use accounts which are members of a group that does not allow interaction with the transmitting center.