Intake questionnaire

[colemanpamela99]

Good Morning,

I'm fairly new to tax preparing. Is the a standard intake form or one that you of you could recommend that would be helpful? I know the VITA program uses one. Is that a resource I could use?

[KrisD15]

If you are using the TurboTax program to do your taxes, the program asks you questions as an interview which acts like an intake form.

If you want to use the form the VITA program uses, here is a link to that but the intake form is more helpful to the Tax Professional than it would be for a Taxpayer not familiar with taxes. 

The form helps the Tax Professional know what to report, it might not help you that way, although it does separate Income from Expenses, so it could help you to know if you should report that line item in the Income or  Deductions & Credits section. 

The list of "Life Events" would be very helpful to someone helping you because it would alert them to check for different credits. If you are not knowledgeable about tax credits, it won't be of much help.  

[Carl]

Note that I am not an employee of TurboTax or any of it's affiliates. I am just another user of the software, same as you.

The TurboTax program works "in a way" like the VITA, in that it asks you questions, you answer them. It presents you with selections, you select whatever applies, and so forth.

As a first time user of TurboTax, I would encourage you to purchase and install the CD version of the program that installs directly on your computer. (MAC or Windows). In my opinion, it's much more versatile and user friendly than the on-line version. In comparison, I find the on-line version limited in functionally and not very user friendly. Especially for a first time user of TurboTax.