The Tax Return Analyzer reads the finished return your accountant sends back and explains it in plain words: where the income came from, how the tax was figured, what you paid and what came back. It also gives every tax year a place to collect the papers that go INTO the return, months before the return exists, and checks each one against the return once it arrives.
It is personal. Only the person who uploads something sees it. Nothing here belongs to a company, so it works even for someone with no books at all.
Privacy first
The PDF you pick is read on your own computer. Social Security numbers and bank account digits are removed in your browser before anything is sent, the server checks again and refuses anything that still looks like one, and the PDF file itself is never uploaded. Delete removes the stored data for good; the file on your computer is not touched.
Uploading a return
Open the analyzer from the front page of your books and press Upload return. Pick the government copy of the return, the full PDF your accountant sends. The reader recognizes what it is on its own: a personal return files under Personal returns, a company return under Business returns, and a transcript or an amended return is read as such. A locked PDF asks for its password, which never leaves your browser.
Each uploaded year becomes a chip on the year strip. Click a year to read it. Compare years lays several returns side by side, oldest to newest.
The collection space for the current year
The current year is always on the strip, even with no return yet. Click it and you are in the collection space: the place to gather the W-2s, 1099s, K-1s, 1098s, Social Security statements, donation receipts and anything else the accountant will ask for, as they arrive. Most papers for a tax year come between January and April of the following year, and having them in one place means one send to the accountant instead of ten.
Press Add document and pick the PDF. The reader looks at the page, guesses what kind of paper it is, who issued it, its EIN and its key amounts, and opens a confirm window with everything filled in. Nothing is stored until you press Save document, so check every figure against the paper and correct what the reader got wrong. Amounts are kept in whole dollars, the way the return prints them.
The kinds it knows, grouped the way the type picker groups them:
- Wages and income: W-2 (wages, federal and state tax withheld), 1099-NEC and 1099-MISC (nonemployee compensation, rents), 1099-K (card and app payments), W-2G (gambling winnings), Schedule K-1 (business income, rental income, distributions, the capital account).
- Investments: a brokerage statement, the consolidated 1099 a broker sends with interest, dividends, proceeds and cost basis in one paper; or the single forms, 1099-INT, 1099-DIV, 1099-B, 1099-OID; and 1099-S for a property sale.
- Retirement, health and benefits: 1099-R (a distribution, its taxable part, withholding), SSA-1099 (net Social Security benefits), 5498 (IRA and Roth contributions, year-end value), 1099-SA (HSA distributions), 1095-A (marketplace premiums and the advance credit), 1099-G (unemployment, a state refund), 1099-C (cancelled debt).
- Home and deductions: 1098 (mortgage interest), a closing statement for a house you bought or sold (the contract price, points, prepaid interest and property taxes paid at closing, from a HUD-1, a settlement statement or a closing disclosure), a property tax bill, a donation receipt (money given, and the value of goods given when the charity leaves that for you to state), medical expenses, and a childcare provider's statement (the provider's EIN goes in the EIN box).
- Education: 1098-T (tuition paid), 1098-E (student loan interest), 1099-Q (education account distributions and earnings).
- Payments and anything else: an estimated tax payment (put the quarter in the note), and Other document for anything not listed, with the one amount it carries.
Every kind has at least one amount box, so a row that says its amounts are not filled in yet always has somewhere to type them. Pressing the pencil on a row opens the same window to change the type, the year, the issuer, the EIN, the amounts or a note. A save that cannot go through, such as an EIN that is not nine digits, says so inside the window and keeps what you typed. Closing a window with unsaved changes asks whether to save, discard or stay.
When the issuer sends a corrected copy
A 1099 or W-2 sometimes arrives twice: the original, then a copy with the CORRECTED box checked at the top (a W-2c for wages). Add the corrected copy like any other document and switch on Corrected copy in the confirm window. The earlier paper from the same issuer for the same year stays in the list marked Replaced, and only the corrected copy counts in the totals and in the checks against the return. Matching uses the EIN when both papers carry one, otherwise the issuer's name.
The list itself
The year's documents sit in a table you can sort by kind, issuer or the day they were added, search by any word or amount, and page through; the page size you pick is remembered for you. The band above it counts the documents, the kinds, and the federal withholding across every paper that carries one, the figure to hold against line 25 of the return. Print and Download give the same list as a printed page, a PDF, a spreadsheet or a CSV, for sending to the accountant.
Documents checked against the return
The day the year's return is uploaded, a card called Documents vs the return appears above the collection. It puts each document next to the line the accountant entered: W-2 wages against line 1z, withholding across every document against line 25, interest and dividends per payer against Schedule B (brokerage statements included), 1099-R taxable amounts against lines 4b and 5b, unemployment and state refunds against Schedule 1, estimated payments against line 26, and each K-1 against its entity on Schedule E. A green figure ties to the dollar; amber means look closer. A difference is not always a mistake, a consolidated brokerage statement can split across lines, but you want to know it is there. A document replaced by a corrected copy is left out of every check.
Donation receipts, closing statements, property tax, medical, childcare, tuition, student loan interest, Social Security and the other papers without a line the analyzer reads are collected and totaled for the accountant, not compared to the return automatically.
Deleting
The trash icon on a row asks first, then removes the stored document. A return has the same trash icon in the year's list of uploads. Nothing on your computer changes either way.