What is the Santa Barbara Prep Paid program?
Santa Barbara Tax Products Group offers a program called Prep Paid that can prove beneficial to both you and your clients. With Prep Paid, Santa Barbara takes care of collecting your tax return preparation fees out of the taxpayer's federal tax return refund. Since Santa Barbara is taking care of collecting your fees, you don't have invoices to worry about and your clients don't have to pay you up front.
What are the benefits to the tax preparer?
- Receive a direct deposit as soon as your client's refund is funded.
- No more chasing clients down to pay your fees.
- Reduce your credit card fees. Prep Paid eliminates the need to charge your clients via credit card, so you don't have to worry about additional fees.
- No checks to print. After your fees are deducted and paid to you, the taxpayer receives the remainder of their refund either by direct deposit or loaded to a debit card, whichever they desire.
- No minimum number of transactions required.
- No minimum refund amount. Since there are no additional bank-related fees for the taxpayer's refund to cover, there's no minimum refund amount. As long as the total refund is greater than your preparation fees, you're good to go.
- No advances. Prep Paid keeps it simple, so there are no refund advance options.
What are the benefits to the taxpayer?
- No additional cost. The preparer pays the one-time $15 fee. The only thing deducted from the taxpayer's refund is your tax preparation fees.
- Includes access to additional services like audit protection and identity protection.
- Your fee can be collected from either their federal or state refund - whichever is funded first.
- Clients can receive their refund via direct deposit or debit card.
Are there any fees?
Santa Barbara charges the ERO a flat $15 service fee for each return utilizing Prep Paid. That's it - the taxpayer pays no extra bank-related fees, and the Prep Paid service includes both the federal and, if applicable, state refunds.
How do I receive my preparation fees?
Santa Barbara receives the taxpayer's refunds from the IRS and/or state, deducts your preparation fees, and deposits them into your bank account.
How do I sign up?
To enroll, open the Santa Barbara enrollment application in your TaxSlayer Pro Account Hub. In the first step you'll see a drop down menu under the heading "Program Type" where you can choose to enroll in the Prep Paid program.
I live in a state that requires all clients be charged the same whether they use a bank product or not. How does this affect me?
Taxpayers who use Prep Paid don't pay any extra fees, so all of your clients are being charged the same no matter how they choose to receive their refund.
How do I select Prep Paid in TaxSlayer Pro?
Once you're enrolled in the Prep Paid program, you'll select to use it in program configuration:
- If you use TaxSlayer ProWeb, from the Welcome page select:
- Configuration
- Office Setup - In the "Selected Bank" drop down menu, choose "SBTPG".
- If you use the desktop version of TaxSlayer Pro, from the Quick Menu select:
- Configuration
- Electronic Filing / Bank Setup
- Bank Setup Menu
- Bank Used for Bank Products - Select "Santa Barbara TPG (Prep Paid)".
Then in a tax return with a federal refund, if the taxpayer wishes to utilize the Prep Paid option to receive their refund you'll choose "Santa Barbara TPG (Prep Paid)" when marking the return for e-file and indicating how the taxpayer would like to receive their refund. If there is a state return that also has a refund, you can select to have its refund handled by Santa Barbara in the same way as the federal refund.
Additional Information: