Each year, we send out a tax organizer to help you prepare for the coming filing season. We use a platform called SafeSend to securely deliver your organizer and offer you a digitized version of what was once an extremely large, cumbersome paper document.
We know it looks extensive (and sometimes, admittedly, even overwhelming) but believe us when we say that the organizer is designed to make your life easier — not harder. It serves as a guide to help you gather and submit the information we need to prepare your return accurately and efficiently, and is not just some extra task we are needlessly foisting upon your already busy schedule. As far as it remains possible from our end, we would never do that.
This post is meant to help you understand precisely what the organizer is (and what it is not) so you can use it effectively without spending unnecessary time working through the process.
What the Organizer IS
The tax organizer is intended to be a tool of convenience. It’s more or less a checklist and reference guide intended to jog your memory about the types of tax documents you may have received, as well as provide you with a dedicated space to add notes and comments we as your preparers need to know in order to accurately complete your tax returns.
Use the organizer as a roadmap to help you identify, collect, and upload all the documents that are relevant to your situation this year. For example, if the organizer reminds you that you typically receive a form 1099 from a brokerage or investment account, that’s your cue to check for that document and upload it when it becomes available.
You do not need to fill in every box or line of the organizer. The source documents you upload for each item should outline all of the quantitative and qualitative data we need, and that’s what we work from anyway. The general rule is this: if a source document presents the numbers and other items we need, you do not need to re-enter those items on the organizer. We will see the source documents you uploaded (which we require anyway) and pull any needed information from the document itself. If we require anything else, we’ll be in touch soon enough. For each section of the organizer that offers a document upload option, you’ll find the following section on the right side of the screen in the document upload and notes to tax preparer pane.
There are a few sections, however, we do ask that you pay special attention to and fill out completely, including:
The Questionnaire
This section helps identify areas that may require additional discussion with us, such as new sources of income, life changes that may affect your filing status, or unusual items that formerly weren’t applicable.
The Federal, State, and City Tax payments Sections
Please be sure to include any federal or state estimated payments you made for the current year, as applicable, along with the amounts and dates the payments were made.
This one is really, really important as it helps to cut down on federal and state notices resulting from reporting incorrect information as it relates to payments. We want to be sure that all your payments and credits are reflected accurately, so please take your time with this section and ensure it’s correct.
The Notes to Tax Preparer Section
You can add clarification notes or include questions directly in the organizer. Yes, it’s nifty.
For example, if a W-2 looks different from a prior year or if you want to explain something about a 1099, use this section to share that context. We read those carefully, so feel free to include information where relevant on each page of the organizer.
You can find the notes to tax preparer section in the pane on the right side of your screen near the bottom. It looks like this:
What the Organizer IS NOT
The organizer is not homework. You (likely), like us, left school long ago. We are not interested in giving you homework and, frankly, we’re not interested in grading your homework, because that’s not a good use of anyone’s time.
This is not an exercise in duplicating inputs. You do not need to transcribe or re-enter all the numbers from your uploaded tax forms, as mentioned earlier. Please keep that in mind as you’re working through things.
Think of it this way: the organizer is there to help you remember, not to have you recreate your return. It’s a collaborative tool, and its purpose is to streamline the communication and document collection process, so we can focus on accuracy and efficiency.
The last thing we want to do is give you something extra to do. We’re here to help, and a big part of that is making sure you’re not taking things further than we expect you to or need you to!
Should you have any questions, please use the contact information header within the organizer to reach out to your firm contact.
