cpa-return-review
CPA — Pre-Delivery Return Review
Not legal or tax advice. No thresholds, limits, rates, or dates appear here — all of them expire. Verify every amount and every rule against current IRS/state guidance and current-year software logic. The practitioner who signs owns the return.
Activate when: a return is prepared and going to review; you are reviewing someone else's work; you want the same discipline applied by every reviewer in the firm. Do NOT activate when: you are preparing rather than reviewing; the question is one isolated treatment; the question is what an examiner would attack rather than whether the return is right — that is [tax-prep-pre-file-audit-premortem], on 1120-S as much as on 1040.
Why this skill
Errors that reach clients are rarely exotic. They are a carryover nobody re-checked, a state that quietly changed, a name spelled two ways, an election made last year and forgotten this year, and a number that is technically correct but obviously wrong next to last year's.
Reading a return top to bottom hunting for mistakes finds what you already suspect and nothing else. Different error classes hide from different kinds of attention, so the review is five separate passes with five different questions — not one careful read.
Process
Run in order. Each sweep is its own pass.