The document check: tested hard, not yet proven.

• Every printed amount has one owner, decided by where it sits on the page. A box takes an amount only when its own label is the owner, so an empty box can't borrow its neighbor's.
• Every number on a scanned page is read twice, the second time at another size, and must come back the same digit for digit. Otherwise the box stays blank.
• A brokerage statement must add up to every total the statement itself prints, or the whole statement is blocked for a person.
• Every value that came from a scan is marked "check" on the keying sheet, so the reviewer compares it with the page.

• Amounts in the wrong box: 291 of 1,434 amounts put in the wrong box on the first run, 0 of 32,989 read wrong on the latest.

  The first run on layouts nobody had designed found the most serious fault in the project: an empty box took its neighbor's amount. The reader was rebuilt so each amount has one owner.

• Checkboxes and codes: 13 of 192 read wrong on the first run, 0 of 18,496 read wrong on the latest.

  Checkboxes, the 1099-R distribution code and W-2 box 12 were still read the old way: an empty checkbox took its neighbor's X. They are read by ownership now, and box 12 is all or nothing.

• Brokerage statements: 7 of 200 read wrong; 53 read exactly on the first run, 0 of 1,000 read wrong; 982 read exactly, 18 blocked on the latest.

  A statement is now read by its own column headings and checked against every total it prints. A layout it can't read is blocked, and that block can't be clicked away.

• A blank that told no one

  The rule says "blank and flagged". Looking at what blank really did showed that a box was only flagged if it was a required one: withholding printed in a box whose label was not recognized was simply missing from the keying sheet. Now everything printed and not read is reported. A box with something printed in it that could not be read blocks the return and opens the page beside it.

• Documents built to be misread

  An adversarial review built documents meant to be read wrong without being blocked. It found 9 ways to put a wrong number on a return and 6 ways to lose a document, plus holes in identity checks and locking. All are fixed, and the attack documents are now tests held to the same rule: read exactly right, or blocked.

• The keying sheets, read from the preparer's side

  A review of the sheets found a long-term sale that would have imported into ProConnect as short-term, sales that should not have taken the no-8949 route, tie-out lines that could never tie, and questions that stated the law too flatly. All fixed. The simulators now check short-term against long-term, which is how the next one of those gets caught.

Expect real layouts to find more. What protects a return is the order of things: blank and flagged before wrong, every unread amount listed, and a person checking the sheet against the page.

Windows' text recognition garbles some labels and breaks some numbers. Those come out blank and flagged: about a quarter of the amounts on generated scans, and 4 of 60 clients held in the messy season. It also drops things outright, most often a lone X in a checkbox, and nothing can flag what it was never given, so on a scan the checkboxes that came out empty are named for the reviewer.

A digit misread the same way by both readings of a scan can still get through. The one seen so far, 3,409.11 read as 3,409.41 beside a scanner's speck, is now caught. The next may not be, which is why every scanned value is marked "check".

A whole-dollar amount printed as a bare number, with no comma, cents or dollar sign, that is not read is not reported either.

A separate check catches this and blocks the page, but the reader itself will fill a blank box on one form from the other.

Tested on layouts we drew and on a review's attack cases, informed by four brokers' published samples. Not yet run on a real statement; expect some to be blocked for a person. Options trades, Section 1256 contracts and collectibles are flagged, not handled.

Page-one boxes only. No footnotes, state K-1s, basis schedules or Section 199A detail; a question is raised for the preparer instead.

Estimated payments, charity receipts, mileage and childcare are recognized and named for hand keying, not read.

State wages and withholding are carried; nothing state-specific is checked. Business returns (1120-S, 1065) are not covered.

The 2026 layouts are built from the IRS instructions. The real 2026 forms arrive in January.

Scans need Windows, because it uses Windows' text recognition. Each person runs it against a folder on a file server or hosted desktop, never a synced OneDrive, SharePoint or Dropbox folder.