The Department provides many resources to assist tax professionals with filing taxes including guidance, forms, and answers to all kinds of questions. The Iowa Sales & Use Tax Guide provides a summary of what is taxable and what is exempt. Iowa taxes about 75 services, review this Sales and Use Tax: Taxable Services to determine if your service is taxable or exempt.
Increased Online Support
GovConnectIowa provides increased access and functionality to tax professionals including:
- Access to view and manage multiple clients under one logon
- Ability to file returns, make payments, and view, file and pay history for clients
- Electronic third party authorization submission available
- Ability to view and respond to correspondence for clients
A third party is an accountant, tax preparer, or payroll service provider that manages taxes for the taxpayer.
A third party should use their own GovConnectIowa logon to manage tax accounts; they should not ask for their clients' usernames and passwords.
What is a logon?
A logon is the combination of a username and password that allows a user to sign in to GovConnectIowa. One taxpayer can have multiple logons. When multiple employees are responsible for managing a company's tax accounts on GovConnectIowa, each employee should have his or her own GovConnectIowa logon.
Obtain Other Party Administrator access to an account
What is an Other Party Administrator?
This access type is intended for third party users such as a tax professional, accountant, family member, or other third party representative.
If you are connected to more than one client as an Other Party access type, you will receive access to the Accountant Center.
What do I do?
There are two pathways to receive access to a clients' tax accounts.
- You can request access to their tax account
- Your client can grant immediate access via their own GovConnectIowa account
If you choose to request access, an access code will be mailed to the taxpayer’s headquarters or primary address on file. Access codes expire 90 days from the date on the letter.
To request an access code:
- Log in to your GovConnectIowa account
- Select Request Access to an Account
- Follow the on-screen prompts to complete the request process
To enter the access code:
- Log in to your GovConnectIowa account
- Select Enter an Access Code to Connect to an Account and follow the on-screen prompts
- Once the access code has been validated, you can navigate to the GovConnectIowa homepage and begin managing the tax accounts
Cancel my online access
If you cancel your online access, you will have to create a new username and password to access your tax accounts through GovConnectIowa.
What do I do?
- Log in to your GovConnectIowa account
- Navigate to the Settings tab
- Click Cancel Access to the right of the intended customer or account
Note: If you cancel your online access, you will NOT be able to reactivate your access. An active logon with Full Access or Administrator access has the ability to grant immediate to other GovConnectIowa users.
Can I reactivate my online access?
If you cancel your online access, you will NOT be able to reactivate your access.
Note: An active logon with Full Access or Administrator access has the ability to grant immediate to other GovConnectIowa users.
When to use a secondary logon
Secondary logons are designed for third party filers with multiple employees and many clients.
The parent logon can break up their client list into smaller customer groups which can be assigned to their secondary logons. This improves security by not having a shared username and password.
Managing secondary logons
What do I do?
- Log in to your GovConnectIowa account
- Navigate to the Accountant Center or Manage My Profile
- Click the Manage Secondary Logons link
- Select the name of the secondary logon link in the Logons table
You can:
- Resend the logon access email
- Deactivate the logon
- Update the logon's customer groups
- Update the logon's accessible account types
- On the Activity tab, review the historical activity for this logon
Creating client customer groups for secondary logons
Before creating secondary logons, customer groups and client security need to be set up. By default, secondary logons will have access to all customers your have access to.
If you need to limit access to some of your clients, follow these steps:
- Create customer groups
- Organize customers into customer groups
- Update user settings and assign access to appropriate groups
Where do I start?
- While logged in to GovConnectIowa, click the Accountant Center or Manage My Profile
- Click the Manage Secondary Logons link in the Access for Employees or Other Parties section
What do I do?
- From the Manage Secondary Logons link, click the Customer Groups tab
- Click Add a new customer group. If this is your first time adding a customer group, you should only see the Default customer group populated in the Customer Groups tab
- Enter a unique name and description for the group and click Save. You should see your newly added customer group in the table
- Navigate to the Customers tab
- Click the Customer Group name link, select the desired customer group for the client, then click Save. You should see the customer group update in the table to the selected customer group
Note: If many of these updates are to be performed, it may be helpful to review the Filtering topic under Navigation.
Add a secondary logon
Once customer groups and client security have been set up, adding secondary logons is straightforward. Each secondary logon can have multiple customer groups.
Where do I start?
- While logged in to GovConnectIowa, click the Accountant Center or Manage My Profile
- Click the Manage Secondary Logons link in the Access for Employees or Other Parties section
What do I do?
- From the Manage Secondary Logons link, click Create a New Secondary Logon. Fill in the logon information
- Click Next. The Access Settings step is shown
- Select the customer group(s) that you would like this secondary logon to have access to. Then select the specific types of accounts you would like this secondary logon to have access to
- When ready, click Submit
- Review the pop-up window information and check the email for the logon for further instructions
- Click OK
- Click the Secondary Logons breadcrumb link in the top-left of the page. You should see the newly created logon in the Logons table
What is the Accountant Center?
Use the Accountant Center to view and complete open actions for all clients in one place and share your access with other users.