Tax Season Prep Checklist in Muin

Tax Season Prep is a checklist for one tax year. It reads your books and shows what is still open before you hand them to a tax preparer or filing software. Each step says how many items are left and links to the page where you fix them.

Muin organizes your records. It is not tax advice and does not prepare or file returns. Review everything with a tax professional or your filing software before you file.

Open Tax Season Prep

Go to Finance, then Tax & Compliance, then Tax Season Prep.
Pick the tax year. From January to April the page opens on last year; after April it opens on this year.
The page shows your readiness for that year and the steps done so far.

Which return Muin prepares for

The page shows Preparing for and the return Muin uses. It comes from your filing profile:

Return	Who files it
Schedule C (Form 1040)	A sole proprietor or a single-member LLC
Form 1120-S	An S corporation
Form 1065	A partnership or a multi-member LLC
Form 1120	A C corporation
Form 990	A tax-exempt organization

If your filing profile does not say which return you file, Muin prepares your books for Form 990. Open the filing profile from the link on the page to set it. The return decides which steps appear and which line of the return each account adds up to.

The steps

Step	What it checks
Connect your bank	A bank is connected, so transactions for the year come in on their own
Fill in missing months	Every month of the year has bank transactions. Months with none are listed. Import those statements as CSV, OFX or QFX
Categorize transactions	Every transaction has a category, so it lands on a line of your return
Attach receipts	Business expenses of $75 or more, and all lodging, have a receipt
Separate personal spending	Purchases that look personal are marked as personal or as an owner draw. Businesses only
Review large purchases	Purchases over $2,500 are reviewed. Use Record as asset for equipment your preparer depreciates
Home office and vehicle	Your home office square footage is entered. Business miles come from your expense reports. Schedule C only
Split expenses by purpose	Shared costs are split between programs, management and fundraising. Form 990 only
Complete large donor records	Donors who gave $5,000 or more have a name and address for Schedule B. Form 990 only
Assign restricted gifts	Gifts a donor tied to a program sit in a restricted fund, so the 990 reports net assets with donor restrictions. Form 990 only
Start your Form 990 workspace	A 990 workspace exists for the year. Form 990 only
Review your tax lines	Every account is on a line of your return. Accounts under Unmapped are left out until you fix their category. The totals for each line come with the paid plan
Upload tax forms you received	1099-K forms, other 1099s you received and last year’s return are uploaded
Collect W-9s from contractors	Contractors you paid above the IRS reporting threshold have a W-9 on file

A transaction in another currency cannot be checked against the dollar limits until Muin has an exchange rate for it. The review step (Review your tax lines, or Start your Form 990 workspace for a nonprofit) lists each currency that needs a rate: enter how much of it one US dollar buys and select Save rate, and Muin checks those transactions again.

A step shows Done when nothing is left. Steps for transactions that need a look show a few of the rows, with a link to the full list.

Books kept in QuickBooks

If your books are in QuickBooks and no bank is connected to Muin, connect QuickBooks under Connectors and Tax Season Prep reads your QuickBooks company instead. Five steps then count from QuickBooks: Categorize transactions (lines on Uncategorized or Ask My Accountant), Attach receipts, Separate personal spending, Review large purchases and Collect W-9s from contractors (vendors paid above the threshold who are not marked for a 1099). Make those fixes in QuickBooks. Rows in another currency are counted but not compared with the dollar limits.

Under Map QuickBooks accounts to tax lines, each QuickBooks account shows a suggested line of your return and the reason for it. Pick a line and select Save; your choice always wins over the suggestion. If QuickBooks cannot be read, the page shows Muin’s own records and a Retry button.

Tax Year Details

Go to Finance, then Tax & Compliance, then Tax Year Details to enter what your books do not hold:

Home office: the square footage you use only for business and the total square footage of your home.
Vehicle: Muin totals your business miles for the year from the mileage on your expense reports, so you do not type them twice.
Tax forms you received: upload 1099-K forms from Stripe or another payment processor, other 1099s and last year’s return, so your preparer has them in one place.

Download the tax package

Select Download tax package to get a ZIP file for your preparer. It holds:

Your tax lines, as a CSV and a PDF
A TurboTax summary, in the order TurboTax asks for each figure (businesses)
Expenses that still need a receipt
Large purchases to review
Owner and personal items
Assets placed in service
Contractors who may need a 1099
Transactions in another currency that need an exchange rate
Owner draws, distributions and contributions for the year (businesses)
Opening and closing balances by balance-sheet line (businesses)
Your tax-year details
A MANIFEST file that lists every file in the package

If your books for the year hold entries in more than one currency, Muin does not add them together: the download stops and names the currencies, so you can correct those entries in the general ledger first.

Preparer hours left

When steps are still open, Tax Season Prep shows about how many preparer hours of cleanup are left. Muin counts the open items, multiplies by the minutes a preparer usually spends on each one and by an hourly rate, and shows what a preparer would bill. Clearing the items yourself saves that amount.

Savings and Risks

Go to Finance, then Tax & Compliance, then Savings and Risks to see one tax year in three groups:

Money to recover: deductions and credits your books suggest you may be missing.
Penalties to avoid: late or missing filings, such as a contractor who may need a 1099.
Preparer time left: the open items a preparer would otherwise bill you to clean up.

Every item names the records behind it, so you or your preparer can check it. Items with no dollar figure are counted separately. Choose another tax year from the year menu. With Muin Tax Ready, each item shows the records it comes from and how to fix it.

Muin also runs this check on the first of each month and adds anything new to your agent inbox.

Two more agents work from the same checklist. The Tax Readiness Check runs every Monday from November through April and adds one task to your inbox for each Tax Season Prep step still to do; a step you finish closes its task on the next run. The 1099 Filing Check runs on January 10 and January 31. It adds a task for the 1099 filing deadline and one for each contractor who cannot be filed yet because there is no W-9, no taxpayer ID, or a failed IRS TIN match. Muin does not file 1099s for you.

The Document Chase agent runs every Monday from February through May and asks for the tax forms your return still waits on. It looks for a Form 1099-K when you take card payments through Muin, and for each 1099-K, 1099-NEC, 1099-MISC or 1098 you received the year before. Issuers send these by January 31, so nothing is chased before February 1, and nothing is chased once you answer that you have no tax documents for the year. Each missing form is one task in your inbox that names your forwarding address. A form counts as received when you upload it on Tax Year Details or forward it to that address: Muin reads the emailed form, files it under its tax year and closes the task on the next run.

To get a reminder of how much to keep aside for estimated payments, go to Settings, then Finance, and set Estimated payment set-aside to the percent of net income you want to hold back. Enter 0 to turn the reminder off.

Muin does not compute your tax or file your return. Your preparer decides what applies to you.

Muin Tax Ready

Muin Tax Ready is the product built on Tax Season Prep. Open it from Products > Muin Tax Ready.

Free and paid

Part	Free	Paid
Readiness score: the checklist for the year	Yes	Yes
Savings and Risks totals	Yes	Yes
Totals for each line of your return	No	Yes
Each Savings and Risks item with its records	No	Yes
The year’s inputs in Tax Year Details	No	Yes
Download tax package	No	Yes

On a Platform Plan, every step in this table works today: start a 30-day trial. The paid Tax Ready plan sold on its own comes later. On the free tier of Tax Ready on its own, a paid step shows a card that says the paid plan is not on sale yet, instead of an error, and the readiness score keeps working. To hear when the paid plan opens, leave your email with Notify me on the Muin Tax Ready page.

Setup

On Products > Muin Tax Ready, select Run setup. Setup connects your books (connect QuickBooks under Connectors), asks the year’s tax questions in Tax Year Details and turns on the Tax Savings and Risk Watcher. Your first readiness score then shows on the product page.

The Tax Ready panel

The product page shows where your tax prep stands for the year in five tiles:

Tile	What it counts	Opens
Readiness	The share of the prep steps that are done	Tax Season Prep
Open items	Everything left across the prep steps	Tax Season Prep
Flagged transactions	Transactions that need a receipt, look personal or may be an asset	Tax Season Prep
1099 vendors without a W-9	Vendors paid over the 1099 threshold with no W-9 on file	1099 & W-9, filtered to vendors missing a W-9
Tax package	Ready to download, or how many prep steps are left	Tax Season Prep

Who can see it

Owners and admins see all of it. Other team members need Finance access in their role: with view access they can open Tax Season Prep, Savings and Risks and the tax package; saving the year’s inputs needs edit access. Team members without Finance access do not see these pages.

Cancel

Open Products > Muin Tax Ready and click Stop renewing, then confirm. You keep the paid steps until the end of the period you have paid for; then the year’s inputs and the tax package lock again. Your books, your tax-year details and the free readiness score stay.

Ask Muin

Ask “Am I ready for tax season?” in Ask Muin to get the same checklist in chat, with the steps still open. Ask “What could I save on taxes?” to get the Savings and Risks items in chat.