Can we have a pow-wow with the development team?

[dkorpel]

It feels like there is a disconnect between the developers and the development team and what we need to serve our clients as tax preparers. I think there would be a great deal of benefit to both sides if we could have an open forum and discussion.

For example, Philadelphia tax returns. BIR, NPT, and School Tax returns specifically. These are included in 1065 partnership returns and 1120S S-Corp returns that are due 3/15. While I understand that the Philly forms aren't due until 4/15, it's more work for us to complete the IRS and state returns and then continue to check the Philly forms for a month, before we can finish the tax return.

In the meantime, the client thinks it takes us a month and a half just to do a return because we're not going to send them a tax return that's half completed. Only to do send it again in March when the Philly forms are finally finished.

It makes us look bad as professionals and it makes Intuit look bad because I'm definitely not taking the blame for it.

To explain further, it wasn't until Thursday 3/3 that we could first see the BIR return in the system. Before that, it just showed an image that said "The form is not yet released." This past Thursday, 3/10 we could FINALLY SEE the NPT in Proconnect for the first time. That's 5 days before the deadline to finalize partnership returns which are required to file both BIR and NPT returns. S-Corps have to file BIR returns. And this is a problem every year, but this year was the latest release date before we could even see the forms. It's unacceptable.

I think there would be a great benefit for us to understand what it takes to get these forms available for preparers to do the returns they've been engaged to do. Does anyone else have issues and frustrations like this that could be brought to a discussion or forum like this?