22 Using the Site ① The First Screen and the Six Steps of a Check
Question for this chapter. Where does the site begin, what do the six steps of a check ask, and what happens if you pick the not-sure answer along the way?
Answer. The site opens on a first screen with two buttons, one for checking your own household and one for viewing an example household. Choosing your own household leads through six question screens, covering your U.S. tax status, where you lived, family and filing status, income and foreign accounts, whether you have filed, and what happened that year. If you do not know an answer, you can pick the not-sure option and keep going; it is stored as unknown, marked with a badge, and never turned into yes or no for you.
What to check
- Answer each question about the tax year you are checking, not about your situation today.
- On step 1, enter your citizenship and green card facts; the site's engine decides resident or nonresident, not you.
- On step 2, give the state where you lived that year, and note whether your work state was the same or different.
- On step 3, tick which family members may be on the return, and answer the two spouse questions separately: one about holding an SSN or ITIN, one about holding a valid work SSN.
- Leaving step 1 unresolved means no refund range is built, however much you fill in later.
What to confirm. Confirm that each answer reflects the year you are checking and that any answer you are unsure of is left as not sure rather than guessed.
One-line summary. Start from the first screen, work through the six steps in order, and mark anything uncertain as not sure instead of guessing.
The full chapter is in the book. The web shows only each chapter's question, answer, checkpoints and one-line summary.