Tips On Importing Stock Transactions To Intuit Tax Online

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Beginning in tax year 2013, Intuit Tax Online finally was equipped with some limited import capability thru excel file or .csv file to improve data input efficiency.  As mentioned in my previous post, importing stock transactions in this manner is not straight forward, it requires us to scrub the spread sheet to comply with the software's import format.  One issue that the software's import instruction doesn't mention is that there should be no special character in the "Description" column on your spread sheet before import, because the software  doesn't take special character such as ",  or #".  Remember to scrub out all special characters before importing, or you will be flashed by the software  with error message about "missing required description column".  Once your spread sheet is successfully imported, you have to check the "Ignore" box next to the heading line imported from your spreadsheet, and then select in the above drop down boxes (see picture above) the appropriate headings. Only columns that are selected through the drop down box are imported.  So make sure you select all the headings that are relevant to your columns in your spread sheet to ensure a complete schedule D import.

Intuit Tax Online 2013 Finally Allows Import Of Excel File Or CSV File

I finally got my day trading client's years of past due tax returns caught up.  In my last post, I had mentioned about my dissatisfaction with Intuit Tax Online's lack of capability of importing 1099s. After manually typing in hundreds and hundreds of lines of stock trades from several years back, I have to say that it's not fun at all, even for a fast typist like myself.  I ended up billing my client a lot more for my extra typing.  Thank God that beginning in  tax year 2013, the software finally allows Excel file or .CSV file import.  It's still not as efficient because it depends on whether the brokerage provides the trade records in excel or .csv format.  One of my client's brokerages is Fidelity which unfortunately claimed that trade activities weren't available in any type of spread sheet format other than Pdf.  I have no idea if the customer service reps there were telling me the truth or they were just plain stupid,  because it's hard to believe any data that is stored in the computer to generate any statement in Pdf  without being able to generate the trade records in spread sheet format.  After calling Fidelity back and forth and being bounced from one customer service rep to another, while being put on hold with annoying music forever, I just gave up.

This is what I have been putting up with for many years since I started working.  It always amazes me that how the USA is the superpower of the world when there is so much inefficiencies everywhere, whether it's with the Big 4 accounting firms, or with Wall Street, or with the healthcare industry.  Anyway, I finally decided to just convert my client's thick pile of pdf 1099s into excel, using the Adobe converter, which is about $24 for a year's online subscription.  The pitfall of doing that is, the OCR technology that is used to do such conversion causes the excel spreadsheet to come out in the exact same format of the Pdf brokerage statement where one stock transaction was spread out in multiple lines.  This means I had to scrub the excel spread sheet to put the data in the import format specified by Intuit Tax Online.  This took quite some time too, even though it was still somewhat faster than typing into the software from scratch.  

How about you, what type of tax software do you use in your tax practice?  Which tax software do you think  is the most efficient in terms of data entry?  I would really appreciate it if you could share your experience with me.

Intuit Tax Online Can't Import 1099? Sucks!!

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I can't believe it when I see this.  I am told that I have to manually type in my client's dividend income and interest income because Intuit Tax Online doesn't have the capabilities to import 1099 forms. This is a cloud based software supposedly caters to professional accountants and yet it is less capable than Turbo Tax that caters to the mass "Do It Yourself" market.  Is this a joke????  Yes, Turbo tax can import 1099 forms very easily.  I am a fast typist, but I still don't like to manage my tax practice as if I am still in the last century.  Unfortunately, I only have a very small tax practice and I don't mind typing.  Gee!  I realize that Intuit is really competing with the professional accountants by equipping the mass market DIY software Turbo tax with more capabilities than the cloud based software it sells to the pros.  Is it Intuit's agenda to cripple us, the accountants?  I will switch cloud based software if my tax practice grows.  Intuit's Tax Online is just ridiculous.

Critical Diagnostics: Underpayment Penalty Interest Rates Missing

Technology can't do everything, and there are many things it can't do in the accounting profession.  I had said in my last post that the accounting profession was often lagging behind in technology because we are just never the creative and the forward looking type.  Sometimes, I wonder if it's because our training and our profession require us to look back so much that we are over time losing the ability to look forward.  This is why our software just never quite work efficiently or effectively as it is supposed to.  This has to do with the people who took part in designing it and testing it (we the accountants).

I had started using Intuit Tax Online since I started my own practice.  My main practice area is litigation and forensic work. But I do taxes in between my litigation projects.  Yes, I can do taxes, and I am very good at it because I had worked all over the map of public accounting in various firms. I had excelled in quite a number of tax seasons.  I love doing taxes.  The Big 4 once told me I had to specialize and I wasn't supposed to do more than auditing a specific industry.  This is why  I didn't like to work for the Big 4, they love to pigeon-hole people and it's just too limiting and boring! Why can't a CPA love more than one thing?  After all, we didn't go to school to study only taxes or to study only auditing.  We didn't take the exam on just one subject area either.  

Anyway, with my small volume of tax returns that I am currently doing for passion and leisure, I feel that Intuit Tax Online can be the perfect software for me.  But like all software I have been using, there are limitations and inefficiencies.  One of them is the critical diagnostics that pops up to tell you that the interest rates for underpayment penalty for your state is missing, yet, it doesn't tell you how to resolve it.  I can't believe at this day and age,  a tax software still can't come up with a more helpful and problem solving diagnostics mechanism.  

This is not a big deal if you are a veteran tax accountant like I once was, it took me a couple minutes to fix it and make the diagnostic go away.  Because I am used to dealing with all kinds of inefficient tax software, I knew right away I just had to go to the right input screen to input the state interest rates "manually".  

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I'm a fast typist but I still hate doing mindless data entry like this. Can any software developer explain to me why the interest rates can't be automatically provided and updated by the software?  For those of you CPAs who need to input the rates for your California returns, you can click here for the rate table.