How to Efficiently Use Your Client Organizer

The Client Organizer is meant as a tool to organize your tax information. It is provided at the beginning of tax season in order to assist you in gathering relevant documents needed to prepare your return. It’s helpful to print and refer to it as you are gathering your documents.  If any items no longer apply or need to be updated, you can cross them out and note the changes.  Please upload to the portal any organizer pages that contain updates/changes.

·      The first page in our year-end letter, which contains important tax office information.

·      The second section is the Tax Engagement Letter, which puts our tax preparation agreement in writing.  Changes include an additional paragraph concerning the Affordable Care Act (ACA).  The Engagement Letter must be signed and returned before work can begin.

·      The Checklist Section (CKLIST) contains a summary of the tax documents you had last year.   At a minimum, please review the list of prior year documents and make sure you’ve included them in your tax package. 

·      The fourth section (MISC) contains two pages of Yes/No questions that we ask you to answer and return.  These yes/no questions help us to discover anomalies that may or may not happen every year, like the birth of a child. 

·      The rest of the organizer is detailed pages listing documents or information on your prior year returns.  These pages do NOT have to be completed; they are meant to help you ascertain that you have all required documents, addressed any differences from prior year(s), and highlight any new information.  You can also organize your current year documents in order of the organizer pages by placing the documents behind the corresponding organizer pages.

Any notations made on your tax documents is very helpful in determining relevancy and develop an overall picture of your tax situation for the current year.  The more involved you are in organizing your tax documents helps us prepare your returns and keeps tax preparation fees low.

Required Pages to be returned:

1.     Tax Engagement Letter

2.     Yes/No Questions (MISC section)