Income Tax Preparation Report in 2003

Summary

There is a new behavior in the Income Tax Preparation Report in QuickBooks 2003. It was modified to provide a quick view of the amounts that would be posted to tax programs (such as Pro Series).

Question

The Old Behavior of the Income Tax Preparation Report (in ver 2002 and below):

• Double-clicking on line items in the report displayed the "edit account" screen and you could change the income tax line.

The New Behavior:

• The report now has an amount column that displays the totals for the year in each account.
• Double-clicking on line items in the report displays a transaction detail report for that line.
• This eliminates the ability to find unassigned tax lines and assign them.

The report was changed in 2003 so that tax preparers could quickly view each account, the amount, and the tax line to which it post when exporting to tax programs (such as Pro Series).

Answer

A better report for finding unassigned lines and assigning them:

• Use the Account Listing Report. It works almost exactly like the old Tax Prep Report in that it displays the accounts, it's filterable to the "Tax Line" filter (so you can display only "unassigned" accounts), and when you double-click on a line, it displays the Edit Account screen. The only thing the Account Listing does not do is show a date range, and therefore, it doesn't show the amounts in Income and Expense accounts. But if you previously used the Income Tax Preparation report in the past to view the tax line assignments, the Account Listing Report is the better report for your purposes.