1. For California W-2 forms,  according to a Franchise Tax Board presentation Q&A at the IRS Building on Sat January 28, 2006, the SDI indicator and the amount should both appear in two places.  Regardless of whether these numbers appear in boxes 20 and 19 on the paper W-2, they should go there in those boxes in the TaxWise w-2 form.  (Many W-2s have them in in Box 14, but we need to put them in Boxes 19 and 20).  In addition they need to be entered in the CASDI designator box in the last cell in the form for W-2s.  There are a limited set of designators that are considered valid by TaxWise.  When asked what action to take if the designation is not exactly the same as one of the ones considered valid by TaxWise,  FTB  stated that it should not be valid.  However, some cases,  though not on the list are valid .  For example, "CA SDI" with the space appears to be the same as CASDI or SD but is rejected by TaxWise.  It appears that the box at the bottom of the W-2 data entry form is checked for validity, and the amount shown on Box 19 carries over to Schedule A.
2. The latest available TaxWise update is 21.09 (March 28, 2007) for Federal returns, and version 6 for California.

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April 12, 2007.

    It appears that the TaxWise Electronic Filing Center is in isolation mode.  This is a technical term that describes the current state of the servers, but basically means that the computer systems are currently not behaving the way they normally behave or are expected to behave.

    The result for us preparing and E-filing returns at VITA sites is that Tax returns can be prepared and checked on the TaxWise Desktop version.  It appears that response to TaxWise Online is also slower than normal.  It means that the files can be electronically transmitted to the EFC.  It means however, that instead of receiving an acknowledgment of acceptance or rejection within about 2 hours of the IRS drain times that we are used to, we now don't know when we will see the acknowledgements.

    Coming so close to the end of filing season, this presents a problem for those sites relying on quick turnaround.  It means that unless the situation changes quickly, we will have to tell taxpayers that we can't tell them if their returns were accepted or rejected in a timely fashion, and that we don't have any clue about when we can tell them that.

    This information and comment current at the time of writing (approximately 12:30 pm PDT) is provided by a VITA Site coordinator based on information provided through VITA and the TaxWise support sites; it has not been approved, disapproved or confirmed by the IRS and or UTS.