Refunds have started coming in over the last few days, but the IRS is still holding the entire amount of everyone with refundable credits (Earned Income, Child Tax, Education) until later this month. We don’t expect big delays despite our government’s dysfunction of late (like that’s a new thing!). I haven’t noticed any state refunds just yet, but again we don’t anticipate long delays.
For those of you sending documents to us, time for a lesson on scanning documents in 2019. Yeah, great, more techno babble garbage you have to learn! Don’t worry, I’ll keep this brief.
First, real scanners are king. They produce the best PDF documents which can then be electronically transmitted to us from your computer, preferably via our SecureFile Portal.
A sometimes more convenient option is to use your smart phone’s camera as a scanner. This works in a pinch for a few documents, but the camera apps are setup for photos, not forms, and they produce a very poor quality on their own due to grey scaling, color blending, and other technical glitches. To combat this failing, there’s an app (go figure, right?!). Actually, there are many free apps and quite a few paid. I really like Scanbot. Office Lens is also good, or Scanner, or Adobe Scan. Pretty much any of them do a decent job turning your phone’s camera into an impromptu scanner.
We’d still prefer you send your documents to us via our SecureFile Portal. The Portal interface is actually pretty good on mobile devices, and it’s way more secure than unprotected emails.
We’re also using our SecureFile Portal for e-signatures and e-payments. We tried this last year with limited success, but this year the kinks seem to be worked out (yay!). You can even send brief messages to me through the portal. Kinda cool for older guys like me that remember phones attached to walls with cords and rotary dials.
As always, feel free to call or email our office if you have any questions or concerns or just need help getting organized.