Art Werner: Shift Gears Post-Tax Season | Quick Tax Tip
Replace reactive reporting with proactive planning.
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TAX PRACTICE
Why Chaos at the IRS Spells New Work for Tax Professionals
The three key IRS tools every pro must learn today.
By Eric L. Green, LLM
Between all of the back-and-forth between DOGE and the IRS, not to mention travel and credit line reductions, it raises questions about what exactly the fate of the IRS will be.
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In fact, the latest announcement is to cut the IRS by 50 percent by the end of 2025. So, if you are wondering just what the heck the game plan is, you are not alone. After speaking with close colleagues inside the IRS, I can say it is basically chaos at the moment.
Remember These Nine Tax Season Resources
Don’t take them for granted.
By Ed Mendlowitz
Tax Season Opportunity Guide
We have many resources and need to recognize that. And we need to treat each with its own importance. Even if you did everything yourself, you’d still need to rely on your tax software company, FedEx and the Postal Service, stationery supplier, computer consultant, the internet and email, cell phone provider and copier/scanner machine. And that’s just a few of the resources we rely on. Managing your resources well creates an aura of security and consistency to your practice.
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But there more. And they are often overlooked. Or taken for granted. Here are some more resources that need to be managed:
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Check These 41 Items on Business Tax Returns
A handy reviewer’s checklist.
By Ed Mendlowitz
Tax Season Opportunity Guide
Client ________________________ Year _____
Prepared By ___________________ Date _____
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Notes: 1) The term “owners” will be used to refer to stockholders, partners or members, as the case may be. 2) Even though “trial balance” is used in this checklist, you can use the company’s financial statements if those were what were used for the preparation of the tax return, or computer-generated statements.
Following is a suggested checklist of things for the reviewer to consider:
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Four Challenges of Managing New Tax Preparers
… and three tips to make it easier.
By Frank Stitely
The Relentless CPA
How do you train up newly hired tax preparers?
Hint: Don’t start with taxes.
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Having standardized processes is key. Teaching processes is much easier than teaching tax return preparation. Learning your processes teaches tax return preparation if your processes are well defined. Much of tax preparation is data entry-oriented. Then you teach the variations.
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Tax Season 2025 Begins. Ready or Not.
Most pros will hit the ground running.
By CPA Trendlines Research
Ready or not, here it comes: the marathon of the tax season. The W-2s are in the mail, the K-1s shouldn’t be far behind, and the 1099s are being filed.
MORE: Every Tax Reviewer Should Be Able to Answer These Ten Questions | Art Werner: Corporate Transparency Act and FinCEN Reporting | Quick Tax Tip | Taxpayer Advocate Sees Big Improvements at IRS | Ask Tax Clients the Right Questions | Major Changes to Circular 230: Implications for Tax Professionals
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So far, most of America’s CPAs and tax preparers are ready for the tax season and reasonably optimistic about this year’s revenues.
According to early results to the CPA Trendlines Busy Season Barometer, 44 percent of respondents are better prepared than they were last year, and almost as many are in about the same position as last year. Only 14 percent say they’re less ready than last year, with a mere 3 percent much less ready. Fifteen percent are “much better” prepared.
But that was before a Trump-ordered government-wide hiring freeze and new threats of over $20 billion in budget cuts.
Every Tax Reviewer Should Be Able to Answer These Ten Questions
Yes, we included the answers … just in case.
By Ed Mendlowitz
Tax Season Opportunity Guide
The primary people who should review tax returns are trained tax department reviewers. However, often the bunching and compression of work shifts some of the review to higher level, non-tax personnel such as audit managers and partners who might not necessarily have the comprehensive training, background and experience to handle everything that might come up during the tax preparation process.
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Additionally, in many firms, almost everyone on the staff prepares some returns. That lack of dedicated preparers with the trained skills places an added burden on the tax reviewers, making it important for them to have the range of experience needed to perform the review.
Following are 10 questions reviewers should be able to answer to qualify for their role.
Make ‘Done But’ Tax Returns a Thing of the Past
Eliminate bottlenecks by asking better questions.
By Frank Stitely
The Relentless CPA
A project hung up in process is one where there is a disagreement between people involved in a project as to the status. For example, a client thinks he has answered your tax return questions, while you believe he has not. Another example is when a tax return preparer believes a return is ready for review while the reviewer does not believe it’s ready.
MORE: Use Humor to Get Tax Documents in Early
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The result of a hung-up project is a dead project – one that’s not moving to completion.
If a tax return gets hung up, eventually your client calls you, and you get to waste time determining why the project stopped moving. This increases work in progress (WIP), which increases turnaround time.
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Use Humor to Get Tax Documents in Early
My secret? Humor, sarcasm and a bit of shame.
By Frank Stitely
The Relentless CPA
There are easy ways to get clients to do what we need them to do. In our office, we call the process “training” clients. One of our biggest headaches is the late delivery of tax materials. So, we train our clients to bring their tax documents in early.
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We accomplish this through a series of e-blasts explaining our deadlines. The e-blasts start in December, and we call them “Countdown to Tax Season.” They cover much more than our deadlines for clients to provide business and personal income tax returns documents.
We use the blasts to train clients in other areas – such as minimizing the use of staples when they give us their documents. We also discourage people from putting their documents in three-ring binders. As I’m certain you already know, staples and binders drive your admin staff crazy when they’re trying to scan documents.
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Art Werner: Post-Mortem Estate Planning | Quick Tax Tip
It’s never too late.
Quick Tax Tip
With Art Werner
Three Ways to Thrive with Limited Capacity
Turn the staffing shortage into a new opportunity.
By Frank Stiteley
The Relentless CPA
Charles Dickens had to be writing about the accounting profession when he wrote, “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.”
Clients are plentiful. I met a new client coming out of the restroom at our office complex. We get four to five inquiries a day – out of tax season. During tax season, we turned down four out of five prospective clients.
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Staff are not plentiful – at least not good ones. I’m getting two or three resumes a day, but they’re the warm body sort most of us learned the hard way not to hire during the pandemic. You’ve seen these resumes too. They are people with six employers in eight years. You are certain to be number seven in nine years. They claim eight years of experience, but you can see from their job history that it’s really two years of experience repeated four times. And – they want $100K for those two years of real experience.
The Top Tip for Reviewing Tax Returns
What would you say?
By Ed Mendlowitz
202 Questions and Answers: Managing an Accounting Practice
Question: I know you have a lot of advice on how to review tax returns. What’s your single best tip?
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Response: I had never thought about this until this question was asked.
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The IRS Tidal Wave Is Here
What you need to know now.
By Eric Green
For over a year now, we’ve been saying that the IRS was properly funded and warned it would unleash a tidal wave of work. We also warned you that we would be dealing with all sorts of untrained employees. The bad news, at least for clients, is that day has come.
MORE: S Corp Clients Beware | Four Ways to Handle Federal Tax Liens | The IRS Is Coming! Get Your Clients into Compliance | Tax Chat: Eric Green Reveals The Tax Rep Guide to Tax Season | What I Wish Clients Knew about Tax Liens | Tax: Explaining the Bad News about Canceled Debt to Clients | Offers in Compromise Aren’t for Everyone
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The good news for tax pros is that with this wave of enforcement spells opportunities for representation work. What you do still have to navigate is the impact of untrained employees, who are creating their own set of challenges.
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