FOR TAX PROFESSIONALS|FIND A TAX PROFESSIONAL
taxscout.ai
Book a Demo

Return workflow / 1040

Available now

The individual return, from a shoebox of documents to a reviewed workpaper set.

A 1040 is rarely hard. It is long, and every one of its small pieces can go missing quietly — a basis adjustment, a second state, a K-1 that arrived last year and not this one.

TaxScout collects the documents, extracts the fields into workpapers that keep their source, compares against last year, and raises the exceptions for a CPA to decide.

01/Scope

What is supported on an individual return.

1040Available now

The core individual workflow.

W-2 and the 1099 seriesAvailable now

Recognized and extracted.

Brokerage and basisAvailable now

Including the RSU sell-to-cover adjustment that started this company.

Schedule C / E / FAvailable now

Sole proprietor, rental and farm schedules.

K-1 inputsAvailable now

K-1 received by an individual.

Prior-year comparisonAvailable now

This year against last year.

02/Typical sources

What the return is built from.

  • W-2s, including a mid-year employer change
  • The 1099 series — INT, DIV, B, NEC, MISC, R, G, K
  • Consolidated brokerage statements, with the basis detail behind them
  • 1098 mortgage interest and 1098-T tuition
  • K-1s received from partnerships and S-corporations
  • Last year's return, used for comparison rather than as an input

03/Example exceptions

The kind of thing that gets raised.

RSU basis that excludes compensation income

A broker reports basis that does not include the compensation income already taxed through the W-2 — which can be entirely consistent with the reporting rules. The return still has to pick up the adjustment. This is the failure that started TaxScout.

A prior-year form that has not arrived

Last year's return listed a K-1. Nothing has arrived this year. It stays on the outstanding list instead of quietly disappearing.

State wages that disagree across W-2s

Two W-2s, two state wage figures that do not reconcile. Sometimes a part-year move; sometimes an error. The CPA decides which.

A low-confidence field

A photographed form extracts a number the system is not confident about. It is raised rather than passed through.

A missing basis adjustment related to RSU sell-to-cover transactions went undetected across four tax years and resulted in approximately $12,000 in overpaid tax. The core failure was reconciliation: source documents, imported data, adjustments, and final returns were not systematically tied together.

04/The stages

Where a 1040 goes.

01

Collect

Portal, intake, documents, reminders.

02

Prepare

Document processing, workpapers, research, prior year.

03

Review

Exceptions, source links, validation, decisions.

04

Deliver

Handoff, signature, communication, billing, archive.

Business entities: /returns/business — each entity type carries its own status.

·/Limitations

What this does not do today.

  • TaxScout e-files supported federal and state returns through IRS MeF under your firm's EFIN — or hands approved data to the professional tax software your firm already uses. E-file coverage is published per return type, and nothing is transmitted before the reviewer approves and the 8879 is signed.
  • Extraction quality depends on document quality — a phone photograph of a 1099 extracts less reliably than a native PDF.
  • Source highlighting depends on OCR anchoring; on a poor scan you land on the page rather than the field.
  • Accuracy percentages are not published without a documented benchmark.
  • TaxScout assists preparation and review; the professional judgment on every exception is the CPA's.
Watch one 1040 move end to end