Counting Down to the End of Tax Season

How will accountants celebrate the Busy Season 2009 Finale?

What are your plans? Comment here. Then join the survey and get all the answers.

by Rick Telberg

How you celebrate can depend on what you’re celebrating, particularly if you’re celebrating the end of busy season 2009.

There will, no doubt, be parties and much rejoicing. Maybe even some dancing, and, dare we say, drinking? So it’s time to start chilling the champagne and booking the rooms. The end of busy season is within sight.

The celebrations, like accountants and accounting firms, come in all favors and styles.

Take, for instance, Mark Borel’s small practice in Reno, Nev. One year recently, his post-season celebration plans included a staff lunch, after which all the ladies were sent to a spa for all-afternoon treatments. And then the shop was closed for a three-day weekend.

Ramsey Sessions, who runs a firm in Trussville, Ala., once booked a trip to New Orleans to take part in a rifle competition.

Even more jubilant was a managing partner at another small firm coming off an improved season, who treated all staff members to massages, a pub crawl and country club dinner before taking off on a trip to Las Vegas.

But even when busy seasons are tougher than the year, CPAs find a way to mark the occasion. At Lister & Jeter in Greer, S.C., managing partner Bryan Jeter limited his celebration to cold beer and sleep.

After a down year, a firm in Farmington Hills, Mich., had to settle for a staff lunch, a get-together at a bar and bowling.

Patrick O’Rourke, head of a small firm in Washington, D.C., celebrated the end of one tax season by taking the kids to a baseball game and biking in Shenandoah, Va.

Tom Arnold, at Quincy, Ill.-based Arnold, Behrens, Deters & Gray, has been known to be content with a celebration of just “fishing and gardening.”

A nonprofit organization executive who moonlights as tax preparer was looking forward to just “sleep and exercise.”

One managing partner of a small firm was planning to “consume a large amount of alcohol, go to the beach and consume more alcohol.” Just don’t forget the suntan lotion.

Michael Bergeron lives in Houma, La. – Mardi Gras country – which he uses to explain his taste for “a couple of martinis, golf and a crawfish boil.”

A managing partner in San Francisco shook off a down tax-season one year with “a day at the ballpark watching the Giants lose.” I’m not sure which was the bigger disappointment.

Harvey VanDyck, owner of Century Accounting & Tax Solutions in Simi Valley, Calif., once was planning to “have a Black Russian” and catch a Dodgers game.

Which reminds me: The Yankees home opener is April 16. Coincidence?

What are your plans? Comment here. Then join the survey and get all the answers.

Posted on March 19, 2009