How A MyFTB Account Makes Personal & Business Taxes Easier

As a business owner or tax professional in California, it’s essential to stay on top of tax-related responsibilities. Online tax accounts can be powerful tools to streamline tax management for individuals, business representatives, and tax professionals. In this blog post, I’ll explore the benefits of setting up a MyFTB account and how it can make many tax-related tasks more efficient and secure.

What is a MyFTB account?

A MyFTB account is an online platform provided by the California Franchise Tax Board (FTB) for California taxpayers. It allows individuals, business representatives, and tax professionals to manage their tax-related responsibilities more efficiently and securely. By creating a MyFTB account, you gain access to a range of features that make it easier to monitor and manage your tax information.

What are the benefits of a MyFTB account for business owners?

1. Stay informed about tax obligations: With a MyFTB account, you can easily view your account balance, tax year details, estimated payments, credits, payment history, and proposed assessments. 
2. Gain access to tax documents: A MyFTB account give you access to a list and images of tax returns, notices, and correspondence. This feature saves time and effort spent on searching for and organizing physical documents.
3. Update contact information with less delays: Keep your contact information up to date in your MyFTB account to ensure you receive timely notifications and correspondence from the California Franchise Tax Board (FTB).
4. Manage authorized representatives: Setting up your MyFTB account lets you control who can access your account by managing your list of authorized representatives, such as tax professionals or those with power of attorney.
5. Secure your tax information and communications: A MyFTB account offers secure messaging and chat features, which allows you to communicate with customer service representatives about confidential matters, send secure messages with attachments, and receive email notifications for new notices or correspondence.
6. Access individual tax information: A MyFTB account gives you the ability to access California wage and withholding information, FTB-issued 1099 information, and respond to proposed assessments with a 30-day deferral request.
7. Manage information for multiple business entities: Using your MyFTB account, you can update the exact entity name before filing a return and also add additional businesses within your account.

What are the benefits of a MyFTB account for tax professionals?

A MyFTB account offers numerous benefits for tax professionals, helping them provide better services to their clients while streamlining their tax management processes. Key benefits for tax professionals include:

1. Access to client information: With a myFTB account, tax professionals can easily access their clients’ tax account information, payment history, tax returns, and correspondence. This makes it simpler to provide accurate advice and manage clients’ tax obligations effectively.
2. Efficient communication: Tax professionals can communicate securely with the California Franchise Tax Board through the chat feature or send secure messages with attachments. This eliminates the need for lengthy phone calls or mailing sensitive documents, saving time and effort.
3. Simplified Power of Attorney (POA) process: When clients have myFTB accounts, the relationship verification step for submitting POA forms becomes easier and faster, enabling tax professionals to establish authorized representation more efficiently.
4. Management of client relationships: Tax professionals can maintain a list of Tax Information Authorization (TIA) and POA clients, allowing them to keep track of their clients’ authorization statuses and ensuring they have the necessary access to provide their services.
5. Collaboration with colleagues: A myFTB account allows tax professionals to maintain a list of tax professional associates, facilitating collaboration and coordination within a firm or practice.
6. Access to online services: Tax professionals can use online services provided by the California Franchise Tax Board to assist their clients, making their work more efficient and accurate.

Overall, a myFTB account enables tax professionals to manage their clients’ tax affairs more effectively, securely, and efficiently, resulting in better client service and a smoother tax management experience.

Recent MyFTB updates  

The FTB has made several changes to its MyFTB account program, which currently has over 55,000 tax professionals registered to use it. The changes improve and streamline the user experience and make it much easier to get clients added to the system. This will save practitioners time, for example, when they’re doing things like verifying estimated tax payments, available credit carryovers, and non-wage withholding credits.  

• More Payment Information Shown: My FTB includes credits that have carried over from prior years that can be claimed on a tax return. For individual clients only, this page also includes non-wage withholding credits. Payments will appear on a taxpayer’s payment history page as soon as the FTB has associated the payment to the account. This lets the tax professional know that the payment was received and is tied to the client, regardless of how the payment was made. It’s important to note that even though the payment is viewable, the processing may not be complete and the payment status could change. For example, it could be dishonored. But this feature provides the tax professional assurance that the payment was received. 
• Stricter Guidelines For Information Requests: In 2022, the FTB tightened their rules as to who can obtain taxpayer information from the Tax Practitioner Hotline. As a result, many tax professionals were unable to obtain estimated tax payment verifications from the hotline. One way around this issue is for the tax professional to obtain a power of attorney or tax information authorization with full online access so that they can view their client’s payment history online on their MyFTB account. Full online access is only available once the taxpayer completes the authorization process with the tax professional so secure these authorizations now to have access to your client’s tax information during filing season. Remember that the authorization only belongs to an individual tax professional, not the firm they work for. 
• Verification Process Updates: One reason many practitioners were reluctant to sign up for MyFTB is because of the lengthy verification process. Beginning this past October, the period of time a taxpayer has to respond to a relationship verification letter was shortened from 45 days to 20 days. Taxpayers have to verify power of attorney or tax information authorization requests to allow a tax professional to add the taxpayer to their MyFTBClient account. If a taxpayer does not contact the FTB within 20 days, the FTB will reject the relationship request. To expedite processing, the taxpayer can also call the FTB to approve the Power of Attorney or Tax Information Authorization relationship, or they can authorize the online access account on the FTB’s website.
• Online Enhancements For Scheduled Protests: Individual taxpayers and tax MyFTB account, an active POA relationship, and full online account access can now view scheduled protest hearing information, like tax year, date, time, and status, and upload documents in advance of the protest hearing. Taxpayers and tax professionals can also view and protest a notice of proposed adjusted carryover amount. This information is not yet available for business taxpayers.‍
• More Context For MyFTB Messages: A new feature added at the end of 2023 is the ability to connect a MyFTB message with a prior communication. If the message is regarding a bill or other item, the tax professional can select that item from a list of recent communication items so the FTB can keep all the notices and messages together. With future MyFTB enhancements, messages will automatically be routed if the case is moved to audit or collections. This should help expedite processing since the message will be in context of the taxpayer’s case.

How to create your MYFTB account

Setting up a MyFTB account offers numerous benefits for business owners and tax professionals in California. The platform provides easy access to tax account information, secure communication, and various features tailored to the needs of individuals, business representatives, and tax professionals. If you’re looking to simplify your tax management process, a MyFTB account is an essential tool to add to your arsenal.

Step 1: Visit FTB website and click “MyFTB account.”

Step 2: Click “Create an account.”

Step 3: Click “Create MyFTB account” button

Step 4: Accept Terms And Conditions, Then Click “Continue.”

Step 5: Enter Your Name, Username, and Email Address

Step 6: Add Security Questions And Create A Password

Step 7: Choose The MyFTB Account Role That Best Describes Your Situation

Step 8: Enter SSN, Mailing Address, And Previous California Return Information

Once you’ve followed these steps, you’ll have set up your MyFTB account and be ready to make your tax information retrieval easier.