Providers must collect and send the following information to the IRS for program attendees who wish to obtain IRS CE hours:

  • Attendee first and last name
  • Attendee PTIN
  • Program number
  • Number of CE hours earned
  • Date CE was completed

During the first nine months of the year, providers must submit program completion information quarterly at a minimum (by March 31, June 30, and September 30).

During the fourth quarter (October 1 – December 31), providers must report program completion information within ten business days of delivery of each program. This will help ensure that CE information is available during the PTIN renewal period.

Important note: Annual Federal Tax Refresher Course completion records will ONLY be accepted with a program completion date between June 1 and December 31 of the current year.

Providers will have two options for submitting program completion/PTIN data to the IRS:

  1. Providers can input the data into an Excel templateXLSX and upload the document to their individual IRS CE Provider account. Click here for link to template. This method is recommended for providers submitting more than 25 individual PTIN-level CE Records at one time.
     
  2. Providers can input information directly into the IRS CE Provider system through their IRS CE Provider account. This option is a manual data entry process and providers will input information for each preparer by program delivered. This method is recommended for providers submitting 25 or less individual PTIN-level CE Records at one time.  

Note: The Excel PTIN upload template cannot exceed 2MB in size (approximately 20,000 records).  If files exceed 2MB, the information must be broken up into multiple files and uploaded separately.

How to Handle Duplicate or Incorrect PTIN Records:

If you submit a PTIN record with incorrect information, you should delete the incorrect PTIN record by clicking the Remove button next to the appropriate PTIN record, under the specific program in your CE Provider account. Wait at least 24 hours after removing the incorrect record before submitting the corrected record.