Tax practice

Accountants may be extremely comfortable offering expertise on tax-related savings or advice on expense and cash management, but they may be less accustomed to steering clients to take specific steps to grow revenue.

An NAEA survey reveals the most common reasons taxpayers receive CP2000 notices.

I do not believe the problem is how to manage the millennials; rather it is the myopic firm managers who need better management techniques.

Almost every job has a value to the client. Try to uncover this and price the job, considering that value.

A federal district court has ruled in favor of tax preparers who filed a class-action lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service over its right to charge fees for Preparer Tax Identification Numbers, and the IRS may need to refund hundreds of millions of dollars in fees collected each year.

The Tax Office of Tomorrow

Clients are focused on sales, delivering products and services, and growth, but many of them don’t understand how to consistently stay profitable. That’s where their accountant comes in.

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.

With April 18 in the past, tax practices should start assessing their performance.

Uber and Amazon may be the models for the tax preparation process of the future, according to Keith Alessi, the former Jackson Hewitt chairman and CEO who recently joined the board of upstart tax prep franchiser Happy Tax.

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.

During busy times, healthy habits and extracurricular activities are some of the first things to fall off your plate.

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

Lawyers and engineers are the most likely occupations to hire professional tax preparers, according to newly released statistics.

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.

With a host of new credentials, certificates, degrees and other ways of signaling their expertise now available, accountants and firms need to develop strategies to figure out which best suit their careers and their practices.