Tax season ends today, and some of you can rest well tomorrow after concluding a successful tax season. However, some of you won’t be resting easy because you had a lousy tax season. Either way, I think it's important to review how things went to either make things better or less worse for next year. However, next year starts tomorrow, since extensions and delinquent filers help create an almost 12-month “tax season.”
Each owner and partner works in a professional practice, but you are primarily in the accounting or tax preparation business. As business people shouldn’t you be considering ways to make your business better? I know I do — continuously. Since Ken Burns’ PBS program on Benjamin Franklin is still on our minds, here are five quotes of his to consider.
- “Keep thy shop, and thy shop will keep thee.”
- “The eye of a master will do more work than both his hands.”
- “Want of care does us more damage than want of knowledge.”
- “Not to oversee workmen is to leave them your purse open.”
- “A little neglect may breed great mischief.”
Tax season is a massive undertaking, causing the year’s greatest amount of client interactions, the most hours staff will work per week, the largest number of files that will be opened, and the mountain of data that will be handled (whether paper or digital), and the receipt of a large percentage of your annual income.
A CPA, EA or tax preparer in the primary role of preparing tax returns will be concerned with getting the returns out the door today. A businessperson, however, will be primarily concerned about the details of running a business perpetually, including having a system that works, procedures that are followed, uniformity of repetitive steps, proper and targeted training, a culture of excellence that applies to the staff and partners, checklists that simplify tax preparation and review, ways to avoid upward delegation where lower-level preparers push the work up to the higher qualified reviewers and owners, where deliverables to clients are user-friendly, clients’ concerns are addressed timely and not pushed forward because it is “tax season,” the right fees are charged for the superior value-added services you perform for your clients, and the payment is received timely.
To me, running a business properly and diligently is a no-brainer. One way to hone in on improvements that might be necessary is to have an after-action review or a tax season retrospective. I have some checklists for this, but an easy way is to schedule a lunch with everyone in your practice who was involved in any way with tax season. Go around the table (or screen, if it's done virtually) and give everyone two chances to speak. The first go-round is to get their individual thoughts. The second will be for anyone to add to what they said earlier or to respond to comments others made. Have someone take notes on everything that was said and then review them to see what changes might be necessary, how they will be made, and when and who will be responsible for following through on the changes. Do it while tax season is fresh in everyone’s minds.
I like using checklists as much as possible, but the lunch idea is pretty simple, with the purpose of bringing up problems that were incurred and could be reduced or eliminated, many with little effort. You don’t need any checklists for that, but if you want some, I’ll send you two on conducting a Tax Season Retrospective. Email me at
I hope you had a good and profitable tax season and good luck in your efforts to make your future tax seasons even better.
Do not hesitate to contact me at
Edward Mendlowitz, CPA, is partner at
