Single-Owner Firms Trail Bigger Competitors in Tax Prep

z_tax tougher year for sllos vs othersAnalysis shows smaller firms having the most trouble.

CPA Trendlines Research

CPA Trendlines’ surveys reveal a panoply of gripes from sea to shining sea about tax season: Affordable Care Act. New regulations. Computers. Clients. Even health problems and weather problems can seem worse.

And who are suffering the most? Solo practitioners, the ones with the gumption to go it alone, the ones who can’t stop working on tax returns to fix a computer, go to a doctor, shovel some snow, or explain federal forms to a client.

Then again, there’s John Briggs, president of Incite Tax, a small but growing firm in Sandy, Utah, reporting a 2015 season of glee. “Referrals keep pouring in. We took on 92 new clients just during the tax season. Add that to 81 new clients we added between last busy season and January 2015, and we have a total of 173 new clients. Regulatory issues lead to opportunities.”

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Five Things to Think about Before You Think about a Merger

Learn how to ask the right questions.

By Marc Rosenberg
CPA Firm Mergers: Your Complete Guide

As a generation of aging Baby Boomer partners marches towards retirement, thousands of firms are seeking the only exit strategy available to them – merge into another firm. Thus has a voracious appetite for mergers been created at all size levels, particularly:

  • Sellers who are sole practitioners (remember, 30,000 of the S.’s 45,000 CPA firms are solos and a huge percentage of those are at an advanced age) and multi-partner firms under $2 million
  • Buyers with annual revenues of $3 million and larger

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Use Others to Promote Your Protégée

Businesswoman presenting chart to colleagues9 ways to help her be more visible and get better assignments.

By Ida O. Abbott
Sponsoring Women: What Men Need to Know

Promoting your protégée to others is an important part of sponsorship.

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MORE ON SPONSORING WOMEN FOR LEADERSHIP: 8 Ways Sponsors Can Highlight Opportunities | 17 Ways Sponsors Can Help Protégées What Sponsors Need from Protégées | 3 Ways to Derail Sponsorships | Keep Close Relationships From Getting Too Close | 4 Ways Sponsors Can Help Women Seek Power | Judged on Performance, Not Potential? Must Be a Woman | Why Women Are Overlooked (And How to Fix It) | 3 Ways Men Are Favored in the Workplace | Women Need Promotions, Not Just Advice | 4 Ways Women Leaders Improve Firms | CPA Firms Must ‘Man Up’ and Get Women On Board

Here are nine concrete steps: READ MORE →

Why Even The Best and Biggest CPA Firms Are Losing Their Best and Brightest Talent

Despite paying top dollar for top talent, old-line firms are losing Gen Y staffers with bigger ambitions.

Derek Davis, The Shared Economy CPA, talks about launching the first app-first CPA firm

By Rick Telberg
CPA Trendlines Research

With CPA firms locked in a battle for top-level talent, wages are advancing at record rates in desperate efforts to both retain and recruit highly-prized professionals, according to CPA Trendlines research.

Partners and staffers alike, feeling stifled and underused at their current firms, are finding a broad array of new opportunities at other firms. And where they can’t find the right position at another firm, they are creating their own.

Los Angeles CPA Derek Davis, for example, left a career at a Big Four firm to start his own practice. But his first hire wasn’t an assistant. And his first partner wasn’t another CPA. Instead, Davis teamed with a software designer. And they didn’t open an office, they launched an iPhone app.

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