Personal Taxprep 2019.4

Conditions and Conditional Blocks

Conditions

A condition is made up of three elements:

  1. a conditional instruction;
  2. a comparison value (it can be a tax cell or a value); and
  3. an operator.

Conditional blocks

A conditional block is a paragraph that does not appear in the letter except under certain conditions. In letters supplied with Personal Taxprep, almost the entire letter appears in conditional blocks.

A conditional block begins with the instruction [IF () THEN] and ends with the instruction [END]. The intermediate instructions [ELSE] and [ELSE IF] allow you to create multiple level conditions.

Structure of a conditional block

The following example shows the various elements which make up a conditional block:

The first condition of this block contains three elements:

  1. The tax cell [Line 43500 minus line 48200] is the first comparison value.
  2. The operator "smaller than" (<).
  3. The numerical value 0.00 is the second value that allows a comparison to be made.

In an actual letter the condition can be much more complex and include many tax cells and operators.

The instruction [IF () THEN] is the starting point of the conditional block.

The entire conditional block is defined by the instructions [IF ()THEN] and [END].

The element [ELSE IF] is an intermediate instruction in the conditional block, which determines what will be printed should the first condition prove false. This instruction as well as the instruction [ELSE] allow the construction of several levels of conditions.

The [END] instruction is the final point of the conditional block.

The tax cell [Line 43500 minus line 48200] is used here to print the cell amount if the condition is true. The whole paragraph will be printed, including the cell.

Multiple level conditions

Using the conditions [ELSE] and [ELSE IF], you can also insert a condition within a condition. You can thus specify a general condition and then decide which paragraphs within the general condition must meet an additional condition.

Note: Multiple level conditions must be used very carefully because it may be hard to determine where one condition ends and another begins, especially concerning paragraph spacing.