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If you are not producing excellent work, you cannot scale (your tax practice), and if you are inefficient, you cannot perform good work. If you’re going to do work out of sequence, you can’t be efficient.
Your tax accountants should be able to file all of your firm’s tax returns without asking for extensions, even with the heavy demand during tax season.
However, the majority of them would be unable to do so as there is no workflow system in place that gathers and arranges client papers and information, allowing them to concentrate on using their abilities without being constrained by operational requirements.
Because of this, the IRS receives billions of dollars in tax delinquencies each year.
Tax preparation checklists for your CPA Austin, an essential component of an effective workflow system, enable tax businesses to streamline their processes and finish tax projects, possibly saving their clients thousands of dollars annually.
In order to standardise your tax workflows and increase the productivity of your tax preparers in 2025, this article provides you tax preparation checklists.
What is a Tax Preparation Checklist?
A tax preparation checklist is a list of the steps, data, and paperwork you’ll need to have your clients’ taxes ready and filed.
Because these checklists are so simple, any tax preparer may use them to learn what they need to do to properly finish tax returns.
Why a Tax Preparation Checklist Is Essential for CPAs and Accountants
1. Reduces the Risk of Errors or Omissions in Client Filings
The worst moment to discover what information you’re lacking and pursue clients for it is during tax season. Your team may become unstable as a consequence, and your tax filings may be inaccurate and lacking information.
Your staff can view all of the documents and information they require from customers when they use a tax preparation checklist. In order for you to gather it before your team gets down to work, it also lets you know what you have received and what is still pending.
This gives you more time to correctly compute earnings and deductions and include all pertinent paperwork on your client’s tax return.
2. Saves Time by Organizing Tasks into a Logical Sequence
Checklists organise the necessary tasks into milestones. After you complete this, the next item in queue will follow.
The tax preparation checklist helps your team recognise what comes before (and after) what by arranging tasks and information in order of performance.
This helps you identify process bottlenecks that are costing your time and money by streamlining your tax workflow and tracking the progress of each tax project through its many stages.
3. Ensures Compliance with Tax Laws and Regulations
Checklists for tax preparation are designed to meet all applicable legal and regulatory requirements. Additionally, they are often made or modified prior to tax season, when you have a better understanding of your client’s company type, tax bracket, and how the legislation affects them.
It goes without saying that using them to get your clients ready will result in compliant financial reporting.
4. Enhances Client Trust Through a More Systematic Approach
Consider how stressful it would be for both your staff and your clients if you had to visit them three times to get three distinct papers because you neglected to request them all at once.
This is avoided by using a solid tax preparation checklist, which makes it easier to work with you by allowing you to request the appropriate files and information from your customer, allowing them to deliver you everything you want at once.
Additionally, your staff can correctly accomplish tax job with the help of tax preparation checklists. Better compliance results are produced as a result, inspiring customer happiness and trust.
A Comprehensive List of Tax Preparation Checklists
A. 1040 Tax Return
By displaying your client’s tax rate and deducting their standard deductions from their taxable income, Form 1040 informs the IRS of their personal tax obligations.
For the tasks, subtasks, and pertinent chances for automation throughout the process, your team has a single source of truth thanks to the 1040 tax preparation checklist.
About This Checklist
CPAs and other tax professionals who work with US taxpayers are the target audience for this individual 1040 tax return.
The template, which covers the 1040 process from client data collection to verification, organisation, and filing, was created by ES.CPA, EA, managing partner of Boscia and Boscia PC.
The customer must finish the tax organiser as part of the related client job. Using the Financial Cents customer Task tool, you may additionally request that your customer sign the tax form online, provide more papers, or supply more information.
Nick uses Financial Cents’ secure customer Portal to deliver the 1040 tax return to the customer in SmartVault, completing their procedure. However, you may share all tax returns and documents with your clients using Financial Cents’ file-sharing tools, so you don’t require a third-party program.
In anticipation of the forthcoming tax season, tax business owners have downloaded the template sixty-two (62) times.
This year, plan your 1040 tax tasks using Nick’s advice. To obtain it, click this link.
B. 1099 Preparation
Your client’s payments to independent contractors ($600 and more) that are not included in their W-2 are reported on the 1099 tax return.
You may collect your client’s Form W-9 at the start of the tax year by using a workflow checklist for this procedure. This lessens the chance of a last-minute rush, which might interfere with your client’s business operations and cost them money.
About This Checklist
The 1099 tax preparation checklist was developed by ES.CPA to assist you in finishing your clients’ taxes in any US sector.
Identification of 1099-eligible suppliers is the first of the template’s nine phases, which conclude with submitting the forms with the IRS and keeping copies of the returns (along with other supporting paperwork).
Two sets of customer tasks for various work phases are included in the template:
The client checks the list of all identified contractors during preparation, asks contractors for any information that is missing, and verifies the correctness of the figures on the 1099 forms.
Between October and December, 31 tax firm owners were enabled by this checklist.
C. 990 Tax Return
Form 990, the tax return that assists charity, non-profit, tax-exempt companies in reporting their financial data to the IRS, enables you to evaluate your client’s adherence to tax-exempt rules.
Once your 990 tax preparation checklist is complete, you can concentrate on making sure your customers submit all pertinent data in a manner that complies with IRS requirements, including the organization’s leadership (directors, board of trustees, etc.), employee compensation procedure, and non-profit operations.
About This Checklist
Greg Scholten, President of Ontrack Accounting Solutions, an accounting business that offers bookkeeping, accounting, and tax services to non-profit organisations, developed the template.
Eleven tasks, two client duties, and automation that advances your non-profit tax projects to the next phase automatically when a condition is satisfied are all included.
Greg utilised Ignition proposals for the template, but if you want to maintain your processes in one piece of software, you may use the new Financial Cents proposal functionality.
This template has been used by twenty-four other tax accountants to direct their work for nonprofits. To get it and start using it for your company right now, click this link.
D. Sales tax
Your staff must comprehend each state’s tax laws and compute your taxes appropriately if you serve clients that operate in many states.
Working without a checklist increases the likelihood of confusing transactions that are, for instance, subject to sales taxes with those that are not, as the sales tax procedure may become so complicated.
About This Checklist
This checklist’s six items will assist you in sending in your clients’ sales taxes for all US sectors.
The duties in the template, which was created by ES.CPA, vary from the actual filing to cross-jurisdictional sales tax verification.
Between October and December 2024, this checklist was utilised by twenty-one additional Sales Tax Professionals. To download and begin using it right now, click this link.
Deadline Tracking
Your impending deadlines are shown by the Financial Cents’ Due Date function so you may set aside enough funds for them.
- The tax projects that are due by a specific date are shown by the Due Date Filter.
- Due Date Reminders: automatic notifications for all tasks that are past due. Every person of your team ought to establish their own.
- Extension Due Date: this lets you add more time to the deadline for tax tasks.
- Internal Due Dates: This feature allows you to establish an early date for tax projects so that you have time to evaluate all of them before they are due.