Version 4.0 and the CARES Act Changes
The CARES Act was established by Congress on 3/27/2020 to provide aid for businesses and individuals due to the COVID-19 pandemic. This legislation provided many tax credits and deferred payment options for businesses to provide flexibility during this time of shutdown and economic uncertainty. This legislation also required the IRS to modify the 941 Form substantially to allow for reporting of these tax credits and deferred payments.
As a result, we have developed version 4.0.x of Quarterly Express Plus that fully supports the Q2 schema changes for Form 941, and Schedule R which is also heavily affected. Version 4.0 of our software will support Q2 2020 and beyond, but we also maintained support of previous returns TY2017 and TY2020 Q1. If you have older returns in your system, they should continue to function without issue.
Quarterly Express Plus version 4.0.x is a mandatory update for customers filing TY2020 Q2 941's and 720's. Your return must have been created in this version to be processed.
For Import customers, there are new versions of our import templates that will always be marked at V4.X in the header. This allows the software to know that you are importing our new format. Older formats will continue to work in the software, but there is no support for Q2 2020 and beyond using the old versions.
The IRS also has implemented a new Worksheet that can calculate some of the tax credits. When completing your return, you may need to visit this worksheet in our software to make sure that the information is present to calculate your credit fully. Much of it is automated, but there are some data elements that may need to be manually entered.
If you need a detailed explanation of the credits and the changes on the new form including the worksheet, go to the updated 941 instructions at the link below: