Ed Mendlowitz

There are two types of accountants—those who do their work with blinders and those with wide-open eyes. Both can do competent jobs for their clients, but the ones with the wide-open eyes grow and can do far better work for their clients.

This program will be a wild ride on everything you need to consider.

I think branding is very important. Everyone and every business has a brand. Inattention to branding creates a brand that might not be what you would like, but nevertheless you will have a brand. Branding needs deliberate attention.

I write a lot about a lot of things. On technical topics I never get negative feedback—unless I wrote something wrong, which fortunately has been very rare, and then it is a gentle nudge that perhaps I overlooked or misread something.

Many firms fire staff after tax season. The reason being that they feel they needed to get through tax season and those who are not good are let go as soon as practical. I did it differently.

The annual life cycle for accountants traditionally ends and begins with April 15 (or whatever the actual due date is). The early months of the year are involved or consumed with tax season. After tax season ends, normality begins.

I never liked counting down months, weeks or days. To me, it makes the time seem to go by too quickly and decreases my appreciation of today.

When I started my practice I tried to extend as many clients as I could. I figured this would ease tax season and spread the work out throughout the year.

Some suggestions of ways to relieve pressure as you rush toward the last-minute crunch deadline.

It’s tax season and there will be some mistakes on returns you send to clients. Hopefully not many, but there will be some.

Very few preparers would consider changing any part of their system a month before busy season ends, so I won’t offer any of my sage advice. But I will make a suggestion.

Here are some ways to save you and your tax practice some headaches this season.

WithumSmith+Brown, PC has rolled out a “Dress for Your Day” policy with a manual illustrating the different ways staff can dress depending upon what they are doing that day.

My two columns in January on having a firm specialty of being a generalist have generated considerable comments and emails to me.

There is no question there are different kinds of complexity for returns.

Tax season is a busy time and there is a temptation to take a shortcut on procedures, skip some extra training or sidestep an extra effort to be in touch with a client. Succumbing to these and other temptations is a shortsighted mistake that should be avoided.

This summer a couple of my columns dealt with developing a specialization, and I had a ton of feedback. One person I spoke to is a young accountant who is trying to figure out a career path with a specialization. She has about five years of experience and feels she needs to choose a specialization to be able to start the next phase of her career.

I am asked frequently how I get ideas, and each time I give a different response.