Date: October 21, 2026

Topic: Site operations — post-filing contacts, rejects, returns on hold, and the taxpayer experience after the visit

Session Overview

• Open-floor “what’s on your mind” discussion, followed by the last of the site operations discussions: how programs contact taxpayers after a reject, what happens to returns put on hold for missing documentation, and what taxpayers take away from the experience.
• Seven participants spoke alongside the facilitator; more may have attended without speaking.

Notes are generated with AI assistance and anonymized before publishing — participant names, organizations, and locations are left out below. Software and public resources mentioned by name are kept in for reference.

What’s on Your Mind? Updates from the Field

• Success: after about three years of pursuing it, one participant’s program was confirmed as a partner of a community college. The participant will attend classes beginning in December; the department director’s exact ask (recruiting, informing, or offering opportunities) is not yet clear. The college is offering a tax class for the first time and was described as very responsive to local needs, able to create certification classes quickly. The facilitator suggested community college systems in other states may be a similar resource.
• Request: a participant expanding a virtual team asked for site-coordinator-specific online or recorded training beyond the IRS videos, for new coordinators at site extensions who cannot attend the in-person (or even virtual) coordinator training.
• Resources suggested: a VITA practitioner’s whole-site training that one participant had used as a study resource a couple of years ago (they will search their archives); Get Your Refund, which usually has good tools though maybe not a training; and a United Way program’s virtual VITA toolkit, which is somewhat dated but is the basis for much of Get Your Refund’s design.
• The participant already records live virtual sessions, but discussion makes the recordings long, and audio with many voices is a problem. Facilitator’s suggestions: practice the presentation and record it, then deliver the class live and record again, using whichever is the cleanest take; and plan stopping points (for example, record in roughly 5-minute segments) so a section can be re-recorded rather than the whole thing. Coordinators likely also need content unique to the program, which favors making your own.

Communicating with Taxpayers After a Reject

• One site: the site coordinator or a quality reviewer calls, and the contact is noted in TaxSlayer. If the number is out of order or rings unanswered, they email or mail a letter when possible and try calling again later. Missing IP PINs are the hardest cases.
• Facilitator emphasized capturing multiple ways to reach a taxpayer: a phone number, a second contact number, email, and the mailing address already needed for the return.
• Waiting for acceptance: one program, when space allows, asks clients to stay about 10–15 minutes until the return is “accepted for processing by the IRS,” using those exact words. Clients are told when the appointment is scheduled and again before preparation starts, and most are receptive. Most rejects can be resolved on the spot, even a missing IP PIN (for example, helping the client set up an IRS account or call for information from a Form 1095-A). A client who insists they have no IP PIN gets a paper return to mail. Acceptance takes about 20 minutes in February and 10–15 minutes later in the season (federal only). For clients who leave, texts get better responses than email. Another program used the wait-for-acceptance approach only at the end of the season.
• Facilitator’s take: a clever solution to a common problem that gets rejects resolved quickly. It also creates time for additional services such as financial empowerment or voter registration checks. Think through whether your waiting area can handle it and whether clients leaving is actually a problem for your population.
• One participant believed the tax software can text clients an acceptance notice if the phone number is on record and consents are signed, and wondered whether it also sends rejection notices; this was not confirmed.
• An appointment-only program texts rejected clients through its scheduling software, since clients already trust that number, and also calls and leaves voicemail from a burner phone. Because the burner number changes each season, they text first asking clients to accept a call from the new number.
• One small site has a single, most experienced person who files all of the day’s returns at the end of the day and follows up on rejects. Everyone in the office knows to send questions and callers to her. She keeps rejects together in one clipped packet with research notes, and prints returns for mailing so clients sign before leaving. Facilitator: usually one person handles this, but at least two people should know what’s happening with e-file (the “hit-by-a-bus” theory of VITA management) without too many hands in the process.
• Outgoing phone numbers: Google Voice; online phone systems where all sites share one number and each has its own mailbox; burner phones; and one program that registers its main number and all extensions in the caller directory, labeled as free tax prep, so calls don’t show up as spam.
• A year-round program has site coordinators track their own rejects and follow up about once a month during the summer, noting each attempt in TaxSlayer. If there is no response by the end of summer, the intake sheet is shredded and a note is left in TaxSlayer, since the status of a rejected return can’t be changed other than to paper.

Returns on Hold: Missing Documentation

• The facilitator clarified the question: taxpayers whose return is partly done or at quality review when a W-2 or other documentation (for example, gambling records) turns out to be missing and they must go get it.
• One program returns the documents to the taxpayer, notes it in TaxSlayer, and offers a follow-up appointment. For those who disappear, they check the software for in-progress returns from the last four weeks and call about once a week; if there’s no response, the return is converted to paper. They plan to add a template letter this coming season telling the taxpayer the return has not been completed and that completing it is now their responsibility.
• Another program gives clients a packet with a checklist of what to bring and has seen problems drop from roughly 6 in 10 clients to about a third. The participant is considering texting the checklist ahead of appointments (using consents already collected and a bulk-text tool), noting that entering the numbers is an extra job at the end of the season, though a good one for an intern or volunteer.
• Facilitator uses a simpler what-to-bring list from the CFPB, updated last year, because the IRS list names many items most taxpayers don’t have; it will be made available.
• Facilitator’s practice: keep copies, not originals, in a taxpayer’s file. Whether to keep a file at all depends on your taxpayers, volunteers, and storage (for example, whether everything is locked away each night).

Surveys & Referrals

• Surveys: one program must survey clients for some of its funding. Paper surveys are completed on site, framed as customer-service feedback, and pulled from the file to stay anonymous; a year using QR codes sharply reduced participation. Another site hands out a paper survey while the return is printing, with a survey box at the exit; they’re reviewed weekly and passed to management. One participant asked if anyone had used a tablet; no one on the call had.
• Referrals: programs described referring clients to financial empowerment coaching and health insurance navigators, with weekly on-site availability and referrals given ahead of the visit so partners can call clients.
• Facilitator: use a Form 7216 consent for referrals even when they’re in-house, and consider including follow-up on the referral among the things the taxpayer consents to. Follow-up matters more when referring to a community partner; have some way to check that the process is working.

The Taxpayer Experience

• Facilitator’s framing: taxpayers may think “these dummies screwed up my return” when called about a reject; the goal is for them to think the program is responsive. Setting expectations up front helps — the IRS rejects returns for reasons beyond a site’s control, and the taxpayer should expect a call or text and know how it will come.
• When to contact the site about a refund: one program says 4–6 weeks; another gives a quarter-sheet with “Where’s My Refund” information for federal and state; the facilitator says 3 weeks. Direct-deposit refunds typically arrive in 10–14 days, with state refunds longer; participants noted multi-week state delays in some states.
• One participant who uses a personal cell phone for reject calls was repeatedly contacted by a client whose refund took about six weeks and arrived larger than filed. Facilitator guessed an IRS correction was made on the back end.
• Facilitator prefers taxpayers contact the program when something is wrong, a habit that goes back to the early e-file days when federal returns were e-filed but state returns were mailed on paper and some clients never sent them. A participant noted a similar problem when clients owing money left their payment in the envelope instead of sending it.

Challenge of the Week: Prior-Year Returns and Missing Retirement Funds

• A participant described a client in a year-round program who needed three prior years prepared. Digging in, the preparer found roughly $325,000 withdrawn from a retirement account in one year and more than $500,000 over two years, with no record of where it went. The client is the guardian of her husband and says she knew nothing; the preparer has begun to suspect she is not being fully upfront. The client has been told she will owe a lot but still wants the returns prepared.
• Facilitator’s strong suggestion: bring in a Low Income Taxpayer Clinic (LITC) before filing; they can say whether to prepare the returns first and may have investigative tools and contacts. The client may also need a traditional legal clinic for guardianship and finances.
• Other participants had seen similar cases: obtaining transcripts (including through a local IRS office) to see all transactions, and working with the bank to trace deposits. To find a clinic, search IRS.gov for “Low Income Taxpayer Clinic” or “Taxpayer Advocate Service” and look by state.
• Facilitator noted that what used to be a first-time penalty forgiveness request is now automatic, starting this summer, and likely tied to the first return filed — so make sure it lands on the right return when clients have multiple years.
• A participant described a client who owed about $20,000 for 2017–2020, half of it interest and fees, after her late husband, who had dementia, stopped paying. They had filed jointly, so the debt remained. Transcripts helped her understand when and why it happened, and the clinic was valuable for negotiating. Facilitator: clinics can pursue options such as innocent spouse relief, and taxpayers should not be afraid of working out a problem because the IRS has many tools for doing so.

Resources & Next Steps

• The facilitator showed the free resources folder (a Dropbox folder linked from the website), including materials from a VITACon workshop with packets and guidance for running your own version, a free online sources section (including a virtual VITA toolkit and a nonresident tax help group’s resources), and links to another contributor’s resources. Participants are welcome to use and adapt any of it.
• Next week: a snapshot discussion on volunteer recruitment — what people are doing right now and what low-hanging fruit might reach a few more volunteers.

The Society for Free Tax Assistance  •  VITAquality.org  •  a project of JC Craig Consulting