CPA Trendlines

Did you feel ‘the stress of success?’

Check the Stress-O-Meter, get the benchmarks.

by Rick Telberg
At Large

Tax season is barely finished, but the postmortems have only just begun.

In the earliest, most preliminary, soundings from our (only slightly tongue-in-cheek) Stress-O-Meter poll, about twice as many practitioners are telling us that this year’s tax season was measurably more difficult than last year’s.

But stress ratings remained relatively unchanged, with about 32 percent reporting the highest levels of stress this year, compared with 30 percent last year.
And the business benchmarks seem clearly improved this year. More professionals are reporting gains in overall revenue, by a margin of 70 percent this year to 63 percent last year; profits, 66 percent to 60 percent; and number of clients, 69 percent to 66 percent.

Meanwhile, the share of professionals reporting increases in the number of clients going on extension jumped to 33 percent this year from 22 percent last year. On a per-client basis, billable gains were reported by 69 percent of practitioners this year, up from 61 percent last year. And profit-per-client gains were reported by 61 percent this year, up from 55 percent last year.

Despite the improved financial performance, some 39 percent of this year’s respondents are griping that overall operations were “worse than last year,” compared with only 20 percent saying the same thing a year ago. Could it be that too many practitioners simply weren’t prepared for the stress of success?
It’s too early to paint a complete picture of the tax season, so we won’t draw too many conclusions today.

But consider some of these additional data points and let us know what you think.

When asked about the most problematic issues, practitioners are telling us:
1. Clients late/unprepared: 47 percent
2. Finding good staff: 42 percent
3. Technology/software problems: 32 percent
4. Personal or family issues: 28 percent
5. Late/erroneous K1s, 1099s, etc: 27 percent
6. Partner or office issues: 22 percent
7. Tax code changes: 21 percent
8. Proper operational planning/scheduling: 20 percent
9. Getting up-to-date on new office, technology or software processes: 14 percent
10. Getting up-to-date on new tax issues: 11 percent

In the coming days and weeks, we’ll be doing a deep-dive into the data to tease out some answers. Meanwhile, we’re still collecting responses and comments. For the moment, let’s just drill into the comments from people who are saying this year is worse. At first glance, some of the financial benchmarks look a little weaker than average, and staffing has been a bigger problem for them.

But let’s let them tell us what’s different about this year…
o “More work, started earlier.”
o “Two new employees not fully up to speed.”
o “A significant amount of new staff with no experience or work ethic.”
o “More work, more slow clients.”
o “Bringing in work earlier & lack of staff.”
o “New procedures and software to go paperless for individuals; preparing and reviewing workpapers in Adobe format.”
o “I am managing a bunch of small business clients in an effort to get out of auditing.”
o “Crazier clients.”

What’s YOUR story? Let us know.

Check the Stress-O-Meter, get the benchmarks.

[First published by the AICPA]

Posted April 23, 2007