It’s really easy to setup an account with the Franchise Tax Board (FTB) in California and electronically file Form 592 online through the FTB SWIFT System.
The first step is to send an email to wscs.swift@ftb.ca.gov requesting a login and passcode for the FTB SWIFT System. You want to provide your company name, address, primary contact name and phone number.
You then wait. Within a few days, you will receive two emails from the FTB that will contain a login name and temporary password.
With the login name and temporary password, you are ready to access SWIFT via this link:
https://swift.ftb.ca.gov
Use the temporary password and login to access the SWIFT System. You then will be prompted to create your own personal password which must be at least 6 characters in length, contain at least one numeric character, and cannot include any special characters like comma, period, question mark and so forth. Just upper and lowercase letters and numbers. Your password must be changed annually but you can change it at any time by using the Password Change feature within the SWIFT System.
You can have an account setup and be ready to electronically file Form 592 within a week. Once you login, you will see 2 subscription folders. One is called “ToFTB” and is where you uploaded files intended for the Franchise Tax Board to process. The other is called “FromFTB” and is where FTB will place files for you to retrieve.
You want to prepare a csv file following 1023S format and upload that to the FTB.
There is one area of confusion and that is a button that says “Set ASCII” or “Set Binary”. If “Set Binary” is displayed, then SWIFT is expecting an ASCII file. If you click on “Set Binary”, then SWIFT is expecting a binary file and the button will display “Set ASCII”. A txt or csv file are ASCII files. They are simple notepad files that use ASCII characters. If you zip a txt or csv file and generate a zip file, then the zip file is a binary file format. The SWIFT system can handle large files so zipping is really not necessary.
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