cpa-return-reviewlisted

# 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. ### Sweep 1 — Identity and posture Boring, and the source of the most embarrassing errors. - Legal names match official records exactly, including suffixes and