Allowing tax preparers to keep ITO tax return info when clients disengage QBO

[jjjcpa]

Hello - 

I learned of an issue today that I feel needs to be corrected.  I had a client whom I performed both monthly bookkeeping for as well as preparing their tax return.  Bookkeeping was done thru QBO as their accountant user and tax return through ITO.  When I went in last week to make sure copies of all returns had been shared with my clients via Link, I couldn't find one of my client's tax returns which I thought was strange.  I didn't have time to investigate, but today the client is asking me for a copy of the return and I had to reach out to Live Chat to see if they could help me find it.

After I prepared this client's tax return earlier this year, she decided to start doing her own bookkeeping, so we wrapped up the engagement and I instructed to her to remove me as her accountant user which she did.  In Live Chat today, I just learned that by her removing me as a user in QBO, it literally removed the tax return from my ITO.  I find this unacceptable.  As a CPA/tax preparer, I am responsible for that return and everything in it and now I don't have access to it.  I can't even upload a copy of it to the client.  I can't prove that I e-filed it because it even disappeared from my e-file dashboard.  It's as if it never existed.

I understand that everything is connected between all the Intuit apps and in many circumstances I can see the benefit of being removed from one and all, however, this isn't one of those times.  I am required to keep copies of returns for 7 years and I have been relying on keeping those returns securely and electronically in ITO.  Now I can't trust that method and am going to have to find another secure way to keep these.

I recommend that when a situation similar to mine happens, that a copy of all existing returns from all current and prior years remain with the tax preparer in ITO or that they are at least given a warning and a period of time to download these returns to another secure storage source.

Thanks for allowing this forum for suggestions!

Jennifer Jones

[Anonymous]

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