The VITA Issue Committee thoroughly reviewed Publication 4491, Process Based Training (PBT) and endorsed it as a replacement to Publication 678, Volunteer Student Guide. The Committee believes the close integration between tax law, tax preparation, and the use of the Taxwise program is important to the successful training of tax preparation volunteers. The Committee then suggested some specific changes to the material which will improve the training material.
PBT currently targets Basic and Intermediate Volunteer Tax Preparer Training. PBT needs to be augmented to include material for Advanced, Military, and International tax preparers to enable PBT to be used as a full replacement to Publication 678, Volunteer Training Guide. Subject material to be added includes: Pensions, Social Security, Railroad Retirement Benefits, Sale of Stock and Sale of Home.
We believe PBT has four important objectives:
- Obtaining correct and complete data from the client at the interview stage;
- Using Form 1040, U.S. Individual Income Tax Return, Instructions; Publication 17, Your Federal Income Tax (For Individuals); and Publication 4012, Volunteer Resource Guide, to research client issues at the site when preparing tax returns;
- Completing the data entry into Taxwise; and
- Successfully completing a quality review of the tax return to eliminate errors.
We would like to see additional emphasis on the second objective. We recommend that students use these other three documents (Form 1040 Instructions, Publication 17, and Publication 4012) as part of PBT training. We also recommend that consideration be given to minimizing the presentation of material in PBT, which is available in these other three documents.
Reasons for this are: the material is often preliminary in PBT due to publication date requirements; duplication increases the bulk of PBT unnecessarily; it will encourage students to get used to using these other documents; and less updating of PBT will be required. |
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