Tax Questionnaire Section Overview: Create, Manage & Submit TQ
In order to prepare your tax return, we must first receive your tax information. This is why we’ve created an interactive online Tax Questionnaire which will ask you a series of questions about your tax situation.
The Tax Questionnaire section of your account is where you’ll find information about your Tax Questionnaires.
Please note that all topics related to how to fill out the Tax Questionnaire may be found in a separate help section.
- Create a new Tax Questionnaire
- Manage existing Questionnaires (e.g. edit, view history, delete).
- Edit your Questionnaires
- View your Tax Questionnaire history and roll back to the previous value
- Delete your Questionnaires
- Submitting Your Tax Questionnaire
Creating a tax questionnaire
Browse to the Tax Questionnaire (TQ) section, then click Create New Questionnaire.
How many tax returns are we preparing? One or more?
When creating a questionnaire, please choose if you would like us to prepare one tax return or more.
If you would like more than one - we ask if you are delinquent on filing tax returns for 6 or more years. This is a shortcut to creating tax questionnaires for the streamlined program.
👋 Keep in mind: you can copy data from one year to another, so you can easily create multiple questionnaires now and carry over that information to other years to save time on data entry.
One year
If filing more than one year, please indicate if you are behind on 6 or more years. If you answer yes, we offer you the option to join the Streamlined Program. If interested - please click YES.
This will automatically create 6 TQs as required by the streamlined program.
Streamlined program
This program requires filing 3 tax returns and 6 FBARs. If you indicate YES to the streamlined program, we will automatically create the tax questionnaires required for the program.
- Currently, the years are 2015-2020
- This means we will create 2020, 2019, 2018 normal questionnaires, which ask about your income, and 2017, 2016, 2015 FBAR Only questionnaires which only ask about your non-US bank accounts.
If you click NO - you can select which years you would like to create manually (it is a multi-select field - you can enter as many as you wish)
Are you a US Citizen? Did you live in the US or abroad?
For each year, we want to ensure we ask you the right questions. We ask for each year whether you lived in the US or abroad and whether you are a US citizen or not.
To save time answering questions over and over - for each TQ after the first, click Same as above or the Modify buttons. Same as above implies the answers to the questions in the new year are the same as the prior. Modify means that you want to change the answers for the selected year.
If you click Modify - you can change the question answers for that year
Brief Yes / No to ensure we don’t show what you don’t need
Great! Almost done. Please see the Yes/No questions --- these help ensure that we only ask you relevant questions. For example, we don’t want to ask about your spouse if you are single.
💡Note - you can change this information once you create the TQ at any point by clicking Life & Income on the left sidebar of the questionnaire
+Import responses: copy answers from prior questionnaire
If you have created a tax questionnaire in the past, click +Import Responses in the above window and select the year you would like to copy from. This will save you on data entry as you can avoid re-answering the same question twice. This will auto-populate all questions you have answered in the past (except for money questions, we don’t want to make accidental errors!).
Once you've created the TQ, you can always import answers by clicking the settings icon. See the video below.
Update Tax Questionnaire to latest version
If you’ve previously created a tax questionnaire but did not finish - do not fret.
If you selected YES to the streamlined procedure in the above windows, but we detect you previously created one of the necessary Tax questionnaires, we will prompt if you’d like to update to the latest version & import your answers.
Please click Yes, update & import
When you open an outdated TQ, you can update that year by clicking Convert
There are 5 different TQ types
- US Citizen/GC holder Expat (US citizen residing outside the US)
- US Citizen/GC Holder USA (US citizen/GC holder residing in the US)
- Non-Resident Alien residing outside of the US (Non Citizen/Non-GC holder with US tax requirements, yet residing abroad)
- Non-Resident Alien residing in the US (Non Citizen/Non-GC holder residing in the US)
- FBAR Only TQ - utilized by those participating in the streamlined procedure program
Managing Existing Tax Questionnaires
Editing Your Questionnaires
Note that you cannot edit or delete a Questionnaire after the Engagement Letter is signed.
Usually, it takes about 15 minutes to complete a Questionnaire. We understand that it may be challenging to complete your TQ in one sitting. That’s why our Tax Questionnaire will save your information as you go: so that you can always may take a break and come back to your Questionnaire later if you need to. You may also edit the information you’ve already entered as many times as you like.
To continue working on a Questionnaire you’ve already started or to make changes to the information you’ve already entered, browse to the Tax Questionnaire section, then click the year link.
All changes made to the questionnaire will be saved automatically.
Viewing Your Tax Questionnaire History
Editing a Tax Questionnaire isn’t always easy. Sometimes, you may wish to return to a previously entered value. Luckily, you can do this by accessing your Tax Questionnaire History. To see all changes that have been made to the Questionnaire, click the clock icon next to the TQ.
A page showing your Tax Questionnaire History will open.
The date and time of the last update are displayed at the top. You may view the full history of the changes made below. The changes are sorted by date, and the most recent changes are always displayed at the top.
- DATE - The date and time the change was made.
- SECTION - The Questionnaire section where the changes were made.
- QUESTION - The question whose answer was changed.
- EDITOR - Who made changes (you or TFX team members).
- CHANGES - What exactly was changed (new value added, value changed, etc.)
Rolling Back to the Previous Value
To roll back to the previous value, follow these steps:
1. Double-click the value to highlight it, then right-click on it and select Copy.
2. Right-click on the Tax Questionnaire at the left, then select Open Link in New Tab.
3. Click the year link to edit the Questionnaire.
4. Double-click the value in the Questionnaire to highlight it, then right-click and select Paste.
Deleting Your Questionnaire
If you want to start from scratch, you may delete a previously created Questionnaire.
1. Click the red icon next to the appropriate TQ, then click Confirm.
2. Confirm that you want to delete the TQ, answer a control question, then click Delete.
Submitting Your Tax Questionnaire
When you are done with your tax questionnaire, please submit it.
As you may be working on many questionnaire's, we added a special button: All Done - Please Review to let us know when you're done with everything and we can review.
How to submit Tax Questionnaire
You can submit a TQ from the overview page pictured above, or from within the tax questionnaire itself.
If you’re missing answers to recommended questions
If you answered all the required questions but skipped the recommended ones, you will see the following screen.
This window gives you the option of reviewing all the unanswered questions so that you can go back and answer them. You are not required to answer all the recommended questions, but the more info you provide to us, the better we can prepare your return.
- Select 'Not Ready - still making edits' to return to the Questionnaire and answer the remaining questions. These ones will be highlighted in blue.
- Select 'Finished - submit TQ' if you don’t want to answer any more recommended questions.
All Done - Please Review - click this button when you have submitted all TQs
You can now continue to work on the other Questionnaires. Note that we won’t start analyzing the submitted Questionnaire until you confirm that you are finished completing all your questionnaires.
If all Tax Questionnaires you would like us to work on are submitted, you click All Done - Please Review button to inform us that you are ready. We will analyze your responses and reply with an Engagement Letter within 3 business days.
