A rainy Sunday on the far north California coast. Hey, a good time for me to do my taxes. Federal forms are all available on-line. Download them, filled them out, done. Okay, time for California taxes. Visit the Franchise Tax Board site. The main form, 540, is available, but not the instructions nor are any other State forms!!
It’s the middle of February! People want to do their taxes. But forget about us “people.” What about paid tax preparers? Are they losing business waiting for the State to release these forms and instructions. Holy Toledo! I’m not losing any business and I’m pissed off.
Must be a temporary glitch. I go to H&R Block. She filled out the fed and CA state. They were both accepted an hour after she filed them. Should be getting refunds in two weeks.
I did my taxes last weekend using H&R Block’s software. I used e-file and was able to submit my California taxes to the Franchise Tax Board electronically, and they debited what I owed from my bank account withing a few days. However when I printed a paper copy of the forms for my records they all came out with “Draft forms. Do not file.” printed across them and there was some note in the software that the real forms weren’t available yet and would be available in a future update.
Exactly. We get this error in our tax software all the time: “Form ZYXW is pending approval; do not file on paper” and yet we file electronically just fine. It’s because the protocol to file electronically evidently is approved, but how exactly they are going to do it on paper is not. Most people file electronically in one way or another; very few people do so on paper. Thus, most of the efforts are aimed at making sure the electronic filing process is ready. The people filing on paper are such a burden on the system anyway; the can wait.
Interestingly, I had the opposite problem recently. Our software for some reason was not updated to create electronic files correctly if there was alimony paid now that the date of the agreement must be entered on the form since ones entered into in 2019 or later are treated differently (not taxable when received, not deductible when paid). I emailed support and told them about the error, and they said effectively (though not directly) that I could file it on paper just fine. It took two weeks before the software was updated, and there were dozens of things that were fixed in that update, so I bet they had it fixed long before but didn’t want to push an update out when they knew there were other things wrong.
Thank, glowacks for an explanation I can understand. I’m still angry because I think all forms and instructions should be ready by mid February. And while I’ve filed my taxes on paper my entire life I’ll accept that electronic filing is prevalent. I look into it each year but am uninterested in going through the learning curve.
Fuck electronic filing, at least in CA and a few years ago, and the people who designed the piece-of-shit system. Okay, maybe they’ve fixed a few things since then for all I know.
I tried it in CA once. The system required me to enter a whole lot more detail about each of my 1099 forms than the paper forms ever required. Then, after I had gone through all the dialogs both before and after that point in the process, just as I tried to submit the whole thing, it said I couldn’t file electronically because I had too many 1099’s.
Thanks for waiting to tell me that until after I had gone through the entire process, Ca.
I never tried filing CA taxes electronically again after that.