Welcome to the training on the CCH Tax Resource Library on Accountant Connect. This information is provided through a partnership between ADP and the Wolters Kluwer CCH tax editorial team. During the train today, we're going to learn how to navigate the system, access relevant research materials such as US Master Tax Guide, as well as the State Tax Laws and Regulations. We'll also look at how we can locate valuable tools and resources, such as a Client Letter Toolkit and the Penalties and Interests Calculator. Let's go into Accountant Connect. Here you see the CCH tax resources listed in the left-hand panel. Before we open that, I'd like to point out the key facts and figure cards here under resources. Now, you'll find that here under resources under key facts right alongside of the information related to your marketing tools, COVID-19, in the state payroll tax rates. There are actually three, I want to point out. There is the All States Sales and Use the Federal Tax and then one for depreciation. Now, I actually opened those up here in separate tabs for easy viewing. You'll notice in the All States Sales and Use, that you have information to the state sales tax rates and the sales tax holidays. On the back, you have access to tax instead of information, as well as information related to streamline sales tax states. Next, there's the federal tax that has things like the withholding tables, access to other aids, for instance, for long-term capital gains, security information, and information related to education incentives. On the back, you can see information related to the standard deductions for 2020 and 2021. Those will be updated when the new card comes out for 21 and 22. The third card is related to depreciation. Now, at your fingertips, you have access to information related to good section to ADF, luxury car limits, standard mileage rates, depreciation periods for common assets and businesses. On the back, you have your depreciation tables. Let's click on the "CCH Tax Resources" in the left-hand panel. Once you click on that, you'll notice it opens in a separate tab in your browser. Now let's take a look at some of the features across top of the screen. First, we'll start with the tax news. Now, when you first click in on "Tax News", you'll notice across the top you have access to Highlights. Highlights are going to show you any developments that have come out today. Next, you'll see a federal tax weekly newsletter that of course comes out on a weekly basis, and you have access to all the federal tax weeklies for the last year. Notice on the screen, you can pull up a printable version of this issue just by clicking on the link. You also have options across the top to save it to a PDF or Word document, share it, print it out, or open it in a separate window. At the top of the federal tax weekly, you'll notice there's a table of contents of the articles that are included. Simply click on the link to jump down to that article. The State Tax Review is a weekly newsletter for all the developments from all the states. Here you also have access to all the copies that have come out within the last year. There is a table of contents across the top, just like we saw in the federal tax weekly. There is an option here, print version of this newsletter. I opened a sample copy over here so you could see. Next, we'll talk about the tax briefings. Tax briefings come out whenever new legislation occurs. Here you can see one for the Build-back Better Act, came out on November 19th. In addition to any tax briefings regarding new legislation, we'll also kick out one for a year in tax planning, as well as a post-filing season update reviewing legislation that may have occurred, and then towards the end of the year, we will release a tax year in review. Now, let's take a look at the Master Tax Guide. The Master Tax Guide is a nation's top federal tax resource. It provides you with a comprehensive guide to the current federal tax role, and it includes coverage of tax exempt organizations, and tax organizations including, start with Chapter 1, individuals, corporations, S corporations, partnerships, trusts, and estates. If you look at the top of the page, you notice on the left-hand side, there's a drop-down box where you can access the Master Tax Guide going back at least 20 years. There are three options available on access information into master tech side, the overview, the chapter coverage you see here, and the topical index. Let's click on Overview. Here you can see we have quick access to the quick tax facts, tax rates, checklist, and special tax counters. Under the Overview section, if we click on Paragraph 1, the introduction, we can see it gives us an overview of the current legislative environment, including any recent legislation. If we click on the topical index, you can see an alphabetical listing of topics. For instance, let's say I wanted to see the requirements for ABLE accounts. I would click here on Paragraph 870. Note in the left-hand column, it actually opens Chapter 8, takes me down to the education and disability benefits and right to Paragraph 870, ABLE accounts. While we're here in Paragraph 870 for ABLE accounts, let's look at some of the ways we can annotate our research. In the top right-hand corner, you'll notice there are options to save, share, print, and open the document in a new window. When you click on Save, you'll have the ability to save this as a PDF or a Word document. The share option allows you to e-mail it either to yourself or someone else. In the email, you can include this document as an attachment to the e-mail or a link back into the CCH resource library, or pull the information from this page into the text in the body of an e-mail. There's also the ability to print and open the document in a new window. By opening the document in a new window allows you to multitask, and actually view multiple items at the same time. There's a search feature here, at the top, that'll let you search the entire CCH resource library. There's also a feature within the master tax guide to search, just the master tax side. Notice here, at the top of the screen, it says Search US master tax guide. If I click in there and say I want to research something like the annual gift tax exclusion. So I start typing, you'll see a list of suggested keywords based on what you're typing up here. If you type in your keywords and simply hit the search button. Notice the list of documents or paragraphs that we found in the master tax guide are listed on the right-hand side. It tells me there were 13 explanations found. It lists the top three documents and gives me the ability to expand the list to more explanations. To open one of the documents from the list, simply click on the title. For instance, I'll click here, on Paragraph 41, transfer tax credits exclusions and exemptions. When I click on the document from my search results, you'll see the keywords are highlighted in yellow. Built into the system, there is a legal and tax a source. It does automatically recognize individual keywords and terms of art as well as acronyms. On the left-hand side, notice it opened to the area of the master tax side that contains information that I clicked on. In this case, it took me to the overview section and open tax rates and estate and gift taxes. At the top of the document, there's an option to go back to your search results. Then you can select another document. For instance, if I click on the Paragraph 2905, gift tax annual exclusion, that opens up to Chapter 29, estate, gift, and generation skipping transfer. To reset your search results, simply go to the top and click on master tax guide. Let's look at doing a search in the entire CCH resource library. If you're the top right-hand part of the screen, you'll see a search box. Let's use the same example. As I'm typing, you'll see the drop-down box which suggested keywords. You can arrow down to the desired keyword and press Enter to select it. Simply press Enter and run your search. In the search results. Notice that the top of the screen it lists the keyword you look for. It also tells you how many results you found, and then it tells you your search scope. In this case, we searched all content. Beside the document lists that you see on the right-hand side, you'll see a list of filters on the left. The filters on the left, let me choose how I want to sort my documents, how I want them to display, the type of documents I want to look at, as well as let me focus in on the various jurisdictions under the state laws and regulations. Under display, you'll notice the default is organized by categories. If you look at your search results, you can see the categories are clearly listed. For instance, the first category is practice tools. As we scroll down we see the next category is explanations, regulations, and so on. Each category displays the top three documents in that category and gives you an option to display the rest of the documents in that category. You can see the bottom, for instance, is practice tools, I can click on more practice tools. Also in each category, it tells you how many documents are in that category. Let's say for instance, I want to scroll down and look at just the explanations, I'm going to click on more explanations. I essentially filtered to just that document type. If you notice at the top of the search results, I have a filter with explanations here and there's an X. If I want to go back to the initial list of documents, all I have to do is click on the X there to remove the filter for explanations. Let's say I just wanted to filter down to the news. I'll go over to the document type filters on the left and click on news. Notice a news filter is at the top of the search results list, like we saw with explanations. When looking at a news items because they are a time sensitive document, I could go to the sort order and change it from relevant to most recent. That brings the most recent news articles here to the top of the list. Let's remove that news filter. I'm going to go back to the beginning of the master tax guide. Another search option besides just searching things like just the mass of your tax guide or the entire library is within a particular resource like the master tax side is you roll your mouse through the menu items. Let's say I want to click on just Chapter 2, corporations and search just that. When I clicked on Chapter 2 corporations, you'll notice on the right-hand side, a little search button appeared. If I click on that, a search box pops up, I can then click in that box and type a keyword and search just that area. Notice the results appear just from that chapter. I'm going to go back to the beginning of the master tax guide. Now let's take a look at the state laws and regulations. Notice there's an index at all 50 states plus the District of Columbia. We also list New York City. If I click into one of the states, will see a list of tax topics. Let's look at Illinois. [inaudible] left-hand side that contain the laws and regulations. In some cases, you will even see local ordinances for the larger cities in that state. Note, there's a box at the top to search just that jurisdiction. Let's say I want to find Statute 6-3-2-1 in Indiana. I'm going to go to the top and change state and select Indiana. At the top of the page, I'll actually type in my statute, 6-3-2-1. Then click on the Search button there to the right. Notice it search both the laws and regulations in Indiana. There's my statute right there at the top. When I click on it, you can see it opened up into personal income taxes on the left-hand side, and then gives me a list of the statutes in that topic. You scroll on down through the list. If you don't see the statute that you searched for, there's a more option at the bottom. I'm going to click on more. As I skim through the list, I'll notice that statute is actually highlighted. Now let's go look at tax forms and instructions. The tax forms and instructions option is an online library of form instructions and publications, and they're available for federal, state, and local jurisdictions. Let's pull that over to the middle of the screen and expand it just a little bit. One thing to note is it does open in a separate window and once you get to your list forums and click on them, it's going to open a PDF copy of that form back in your browser, that essentially will take this and move it to the background so to get back to the tax forms and instructions, you'll just all Tab over and toggle back to that program in the background. Note on the screen that you can filter down by tax year, your jurisdiction, federal or state, the type, forms, instructions or publications, the form type such as individual, corporation, etc, and you can also put in a keyword. Notice a type is the only one that's required. Once you complete or fill out the filter's, simply click "Submit" to get a list of forms. Let's look for a 1040 for the tax year 2020. I'm going to go to year, select 2020. Keep it at federal, I could hit the "Drop-down" and select the State. Under Type, I'm going to click on "Form" and "Instructions". Click on "Individual" for Form Type and in the Keyword box, I'm going to type 1040. Then I'm going to click on "Submit". If we scroll down, we see the list of forms that include the form number 1040. Notice in the left-hand column under Type, it identifies whether it's a form or instructions. All I have to do to open it is simply click on the number under name. On the right-hand side, it can tell you when the form was last updated. Let's click on Form 1040. Notice it takes me back to my browser and opens at in a separate tab. You get a PDF copy of the form that you can fill out and then download. In the top right-hand corner, notice there are options to download, print and then there are three dots for additional options. In there you can change it to a two-page view. You can also click on "Present", which takes it to a full screen. Notice it says Escape to exit full screen. The last option is document properties. I'm going to simply Alt Tab back over to the tax forms and instructions. Scroll back to the top of the page and change your filters to choose another form. Notice when I click on "Year", I have access to forms all the way back to 2000. Now let's close tax forms and instructions, and let's look at some of the tools and resources that are available. To get back to the tools and resources, I'm going to click back on the "Start" option to get back to the homepage. From the start page, we can see the tools and resources located over on the right-hand side. Now let's look at the Client Letter Toolkit. The Client Letter Toolkit provides hundreds of letters to communicate important legislative information to your clients. Notice that the bottom of the screen you can choose how many letters you display at one time, the default is 10, but you can bump it all the way up to 100. There are two filters in the top right-hand side of the screen. Notice the first one lets you filter at the document list, the other one let you highlight changed documents. For instance, if I want to see any letters that have come out recently, I can click on the highlight changed documents filter. I'm going to go back to October 1st and then click on "Highlight" at the bottom. Note at the top it tells me that there are seven documents highlighted, and then I can click to remove the highlight if I want. Notice that in our client letters we have year-end tax planning for both individuals and businesses. If I want to open a letter, I'll just click on "View" on the left-hand side. Let's look at the year-end tax planning for individuals. Notice the top you're viewing a sample of the actual letter. You can also click on "Client Letter Overview". It'll give you a little information about the letter and tell you when it was updated. That letter can be emailed, printed or downloaded. Click on the ''Download'' option, notice there's an option download to word, a PDF or a HTML. If I download it as a Word document, I have the ability to edit it and then send out to my clients. I can choose to download both the sample and the client letter overview information. Let's go back to the main list using the back button at the top. If I want to remove the highlighting, I'll click here on remove highlighting. Within the client letter Toolkit, you'll find a list of documents related to legislate developments as well as tax planning letters. There's a number of ways you can filter to find relevant information. Let's click on the icon to filter the document list there at the top. Notice in the product filter box, you can type in keywords, you can select letter types, client types and categories. Letter types include client developmental letters and frequently asked questions. Client types allow me to target individuals, investors who are retirees, etc. Categories allow me to target specific areas that might be of interest such as corporations, family, or things like tax planning. Let's say we want to look for information or letters related to the American rescue plan. I'm going to go to the keyword box and type, The American rescue plan. Then I'm going to click Apply at the bottom. Note, there are several letters that I can use to communicate information with my clients related to The American rescue plan. When I'm finished, just click reset filter. Now let's close down the client letter Toolkit, go back to the CCH resource library and let's look at another tool, the penalties in an interests calculator. Note that it opens another tab and it gives me an intuitive screened in information. I'm going to enter the client name here at the top. Then I'll select the jurisdiction which defaults to federal, I can pick a tanks type, I'm going to change it from corporate to personal income tax and then notice the required fields, due date of return, initial tax owed, tax due, and due date of payment. There are additional fields where I can enter the date the payment was made and the payment amount, as well as Notice information. Let's put in April 15th. The amount owed was 1000, the tax due was 600, the due date the payment was also April 15th and then I'm going to click calculate. The information is listed on the right-hand side. You can see your tax, penalties and interest, and the amount due. In the right-hand panel, you'll see a series of options. For instance, I can save this for future use in which I would just click Open to get back into it, I can hit the home or reset button to start over, I can email a copy of this so I can print it, I can also export it. Let's click first on the detailed report at the bottom. Notice it pulls up a screen that shows you all the detail. Starts with a due date, the penalties in this case, failure to file and pay, shows the interests that's been accrued, and then at the bottom shows you the balance. As you can see, it's a very easy to navigate tool, you can fill in additional information as needed. Let's go back to the resource library. The last thing we want to talk about is my history in the top right-hand corner. This gives me access or research that I've previously done. The last few things I've looked at are listed right there on the screen, if I want to access more, I'll click on more history. This is going to give me access to the last 12 months of research that I've done. Notice on the left-hand side you'll see filters to open any searches or documents. Above that there are filters to narrow down to a specific time period. Let's go back to the start or the home tab. That concludes our training today. Thank you very much for attending. Please have a great day.
