2023 CA Counselor Reference Manual

Concepts 

• Most TaxSlayer pages don’t have a “Back” button. Instead, clicking “Continue” is the equivalent of saying “I’m done with this page, take me up one level.”
• It’s possible to use a browser action (back arrow) to go back one page in TaxSlayer without saving.
• Pages for entering information usually have a “Cancel” button. If you don’t want to enter any information on that page or decide that you don’t want to keep changes you made, click “Cancel” rather than “Continue.”
• If you click “Continue”, TaxSlayer sometimes saves the page, even though no information was entered. Warning:  That opens the possibility that a page without any entries will be printed in the tax return, and, even worse, the e-file may contain a page that could cause an IRS reject. 
• When you open a page, information from other places may be used to fill (as appropriate) fields on that page. For example, on a TaxSlayer W-2 page, the Employee address information is filled using information from the Personal Information page. 
• If you later change the information on the source page, that change does not replicate on other pages where information has been entered.

• For example, suppose that you entered information in two W-2 pages, then realized, when working on a 1099-R form, that the taxpayer’s address was entered incorrectly in the Basic Information section. So, you go to the Personal Information page and change the address information there. You’re still not done - you must go to those two W-2 pages and check the employee addresses there, to make sure that they’re correct – because they won’t have changed when you changed the address on the Personal Information page. 

• TaxSlayer’s general approach is that each taxpayer document has a matching TaxSlayer page. But sometimes there won’t be a 100% match – information on a paper document might need to be entered in TaxSlayer both on a main page and somewhere else.
• If somewhere else is a TaxSlayer page within the Federal Section of TaxSlayer, this isn’t a big deal – you should finish the main page, then go to that other page. 

• For example, if a Form SSA-1099 has Medicare premiums and the taxpayer has a Schedule C business income, you usually enter the premiums under General Expenses in the Schedule C, to claim the SEHI deduction, rather than on the Social Security SSA-1099/RRB-1099 Tier I page.

• If somewhere else is in the State Section, you should delay entering information there until you’ve finished the Federal Section of the tax return. 
• If you don’t immediately go to a second TaxSlayer page to finish entering information, you should have a system so that you don’t forget about later entering this information.  E.g., you could highlight which information on the paper document has to be entered later (if you have paper documents), and/or make a written note about information, and/or create an internal TaxSlayer note (see page 8), and/or use a post-it to mark the document.

• With an internal TaxSlayer note, you’ll automatically be reminded when you start the process of completing the E-file section, because the first page in that section shows all notes.
• The reviewer will similarly see all internal notes when finishing the quality review, in the E-file section, or earlier if the reviewer specifically checks for notes. That’s why preparers generally shouldn’t delete notes – just add to them to indicate something was DONE rather than needing to be done. 

• Although TaxSlayer has Notes, they can’t be used for calculating totals, as for example if there are multiple property-tax payments during a year. If you calculate a total and enter only that total in TaxSlayer, document the calculation in the taxpayer’s records and/or typed into a note, depending on local policy.

Specifics 

• On a TaxSlayer page for entering information, fields marked with a red asterisk (*) are required. If “Continue” is clicked when such a field does not have an entry, TaxSlayer will display an error message.
• In TaxSlayer, calendar dates are entered in three separate fields: Month, Day, and Year. If no data has yet been entered, the format is shown by MM DD YYYY.
• If date information is typed, rather than entered using the drop-down list, do not type leading zeros for the month or day of month. For example, January 6th would be “1” for the month and “6” for the day; if you type “01” or “06”, TaxSlayer won’t put anything in the field. Use the tab key to move between fields.
• In some cases, such as on the Capital Gains Transaction page, you can’t enter February 29 until you select the year, so TaxSlayer can confirm it was a leap year.
• Dollar amounts can be entered without cents.
• To enter a dollar amount without cents, round up for 50 to 99 cents, round down for 1 to 49 cents. 

• When adding two or more dollar amounts to determine the amount to enter in a TaxSlayer field, don’t round the individual numbers. Include the cents when adding dollar amounts; round only the total.

• If so directed by your LC, enter cents and let TaxSlayer do the rounding.

• Note: When you enter a dollar amount that includes cents, TaxSlayer will round that dollar amount after you save the information on that page (after you click “Continue”)

• There are several ways to reduce the number of times you need to take a hand off the keyboard to use your computer mouse or trackball or similar:
• Tab between fields (Shift-Tab to reverse).
• Tab to a button (“Begin” or “Continue”, for example) and press [Enter] ([Return]) instead of clicking the button.

• You can tell when a button has been selected because its background color will turn black. [This is unfortunately not helpful for “Edit” buttons, whose background color is already black.]

• For check boxes, use the space bar to select that check box, or to unselect it.

• Note: You can also click anywhere on the line with the check box to select that check box.

• In a drop-down list, [type the first letter of the choice you want, and then] use the up or down arrow, if necessary, to go to the exact choice.
• Regardless of how you enter alphabetical information, TaxSlayer will print returns with ALL CAPITAL LETTERS, except for Basic Information names and address.
• Entering information may be faster if you turn on caps lock. For Chromebooks, press the Search key, on the left of the keyboard (the key has an icon of a magnifying glass) plus the [Alt] key.
• TaxSlayer automatically removes periods and extra (double) spaces in text fields.
• If, after you click “Continue”, you see an error message appear at the top of a page, you can go directly to the problem field on that page by clicking on the error message.

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