BUSY SEASON MANAGEMENT

Shut Down the Tax Charlatans

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Why shouldn’t tax practitioners be regulated? Ask Congress.

By CPA Trendlines

What do lawyers, CPAs, truck drivers, and beauticians have that many tax preparers don’t?

Certification.

MORE in TAX: Imagine a Fully Online IRS | The Real Cost of Interstate Sales Tax | IRS At Death’s Door? | Beyond Tax Prep: The Big Cha-Ching! | Crisis at the IRS | The IRS’s 10 Biggest Problems | Fear and Loathing for Tax Season ’22 |  Padar Joins VC-Backed Tax Fintech for Banks |  COVID Chokes an Already Crippled IRS | Tax Regs for the Metaverse | 10 Steps to a Superior Tax Department | Accountants Critical of Competitor Price-Cutting |  Automate Busy Season with Apps You Already Use | Sales & Use Tax Costs Are Higher than Anyone Thought | Survey: Nobody Loves the Wayfair Decision | Busy Season Forecast: More Chaos  | A Woman Named Wanda Leaves an IRA Nightmare  | Are You Under-Pricing Your Client Accounting Services?  | Your Best Advice: Get Smart, Get Tech, Get Moving | Worries for Small Business Clients |

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Or, to use other words, proven competence. The tax preparation industry is a mixed bag of highly skilled and credentialed professionals, less skilled newbies trying to learn the trade on the job, and charlatans skilled in not much more than ripping off the unsuspecting or, at best, doing a slapdash job. READ MORE →

Six Fixable Problems at the IRS

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And the IRS already knows what they are.

By CPA Trendlines

Tax practitioners beware: the IRS has become a mess of misinformation and missing information.

MORE TAX: Two Big (and Obvious) Ways IRS Could Work with Practitioners  | Imagine a Fully Online IRS | The Real Cost of Interstate Sales Tax | IRS At Death’s Door? | Beyond Tax Prep: The Big Cha-Ching! | Crisis at the IRS | The IRS’s 10 Biggest Problems | Fear and Loathing for Tax Season ’22 |  Padar Joins VC-Backed Tax Fintech for Banks |  COVID Chokes an Already Crippled IRS | Tax Regs for the Metaverse | 10 Steps to a Superior Tax Department | Accountants Critical of Competitor Price-Cutting |  Automate Busy Season with Apps You Already Use | Sales & Use Tax Costs Are Higher than Anyone Thought | Survey: Nobody Loves the Wayfair Decision | Busy Season Forecast: More Chaos  | A Woman Named Wanda Leaves an IRA Nightmare  | Are You Under-Pricing Your Client Accounting Services?  | Your Best Advice: Get Smart, Get Tech, Get Moving | Worries for Small Business Clients |

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It’s isn’t a complete mess, but there are problems… and solutions. We can think of six no-brainer easy fixes. READ MORE →

IRS Loves e-Filing. So Why the Barriers?

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IRS BURIED IN PAPER: Even with 91 percent of returns e-filed, that leaves more than 33 million paper returns pouring into the IRS annually.

What to do with clients who insist on paper?

By CPA Trendlines

E-filing may be the best thing to happen to the IRS—and tax preparers—since the invention of paper and red tape.

  • It beats paper on cost—just 36 cents to process, vs. $15.21.
  • It beats paper on speed—a couple of hours from sending to acceptance, vs. days to mail, more days to open, more days in storage, more days to transcribe, and maybe months more to process.
  • It beats paper on accuracy—no need for transcription.
  • It beats paper on convenience—taxpayers can e-file in minutes from a desktop; IRS can store and move e-files easily and instantly.
  • It beats paper on inconvenience—e-filing allows continuous processing regardless of weather, pandemics, etc.

MORE TAX: Two Big (and Obvious) Ways IRS Could Work with Practitioners  | Imagine a Fully Online IRS | The Real Cost of Interstate Sales Tax | IRS At Death’s Door? | Beyond Tax Prep: The Big Cha-Ching! | Crisis at the IRS | The IRS’s 10 Biggest Problems | Fear and Loathing for Tax Season ’22 |  Padar Joins VC-Backed Tax Fintech for Banks |  COVID Chokes an Already Crippled IRS | Tax Regs for the Metaverse | 10 Steps to a Superior Tax Department | Accountants Critical of Competitor Price-Cutting |  Automate Busy Season with Apps You Already Use | Sales & Use Tax Costs Are Higher than Anyone Thought | Survey: Nobody Loves the Wayfair Decision | Busy Season Forecast: More Chaos  | A Woman Named Wanda Leaves an IRA Nightmare  | Are You Under-Pricing Your Client Accounting Services?  | Your Best Advice: Get Smart, Get Tech, Get Moving | Worries for Small Business Clients |

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So why does the IRS still have barriers limiting e-filing? READ MORE →

Two Big (and Obvious) Ways IRS Could Work with Practitioners

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Both could be simple and cheap. If only.

By CPA Trendlines

The IRS has been making some progress in improving the functionality of individual taxpayer Online Accounts. Progress has been slow but in the right direction.

MORE TAX: Imagine a Fully Online IRS | The Real Cost of Interstate Sales Tax | IRS At Death’s Door? | Beyond Tax Prep: The Big Cha-Ching! | Crisis at the IRS | The IRS’s 10 Biggest Problems | Fear and Loathing for Tax Season ’22 |  Padar Joins VC-Backed Tax Fintech for Banks |  COVID Chokes an Already Crippled IRS | Tax Regs for the Metaverse | 10 Steps to a Superior Tax Department | Accountants Critical of Competitor Price-Cutting |  Automate Busy Season with Apps You Already Use | Sales & Use Tax Costs Are Higher than Anyone Thought | Survey: Nobody Loves the Wayfair Decision | Busy Season Forecast: More Chaos  | A Woman Named Wanda Leaves an IRA Nightmare  | Are You Under-Pricing Your Client Accounting Services?  | Your Best Advice: Get Smart, Get Tech, Get Moving | Worries for Small Business Clients |

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Now it’s time for the IRS to aim for two huge new improvements: online accounts for businesses, and expansion of the functionality of Tax Pro Accounts for tax practitioners.

READ MORE →

What’s the IRS Hiding?

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A lot. It’s bad and getting worse.

By CPA Trendlines

Taxpayers and their tax preparers have a right to be informed about what’s happening at the Internal Revenue Service. It’s the law, duly legislated and mandated by the U.S. Congress in the Taxpayer Bill of Rights.

But that doesn’t mean it actually happens.

MORE: IRS At Death’s Door? | Beyond Tax Prep: The Big Cha-Ching! | Crisis at the IRS | The IRS’s 10 Biggest Problems | Fear and Loathing for Tax Season ’22 |  Padar Joins VC-Backed Tax Fintech for Banks |  COVID Chokes an Already Crippled IRS | Tax Regs for the Metaverse | 10 Steps to a Superior Tax Department | Accountants Critical of Competitor Price-Cutting |  Automate Busy Season with Apps You Already Use | Sales & Use Tax Costs Are Higher than Anyone Thought | Survey: Nobody Loves the Wayfair Decision | Busy Season Forecast: More Chaos  | A Woman Named Wanda Leaves an IRA Nightmare  | Are You Under-Pricing Your Client Accounting Services?  | Your Best Advice: Get Smart, Get Tech, Get Moving | Worries for Small Business Clients |

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The IRS has never been especially good at providing information. Taxpayers have a hard time finding out:

READ MORE →

When Tax Collectors Go Digital

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…Where will you hide?

COLLECTING TAXES UPFRONT: In Mexico, tax returns, accounting records, and other tax disclosures must be filed in standard electronic format, driving down the cost of tax collection by 57 percent between 2006 and 2018. Meanwhile, revenue generated by audits rose an astonishing 117 percent between 2015 and 2020. (Source: Better Than Cash Alliance, The U.N., via Avalara)

By CPA Trendlines

Accounting professionals may be focused for now on Tax Season 2022. But right around the corner, a revolution in tax is coming, if the United States can get out of its own way.

Ready or not, here it comes: digitized sales tax compliance. The compliance might happen immediately after a transaction or right in the middle of it with a tax agency in between the buyer and the seller.

MORE: Brain Drain Hobbles IRS | Crisis at the IRS | The IRS’s 10 Biggest Problems | Fear and Loathing for Tax Season ’22 |  Padar Joins VC-Backed Tax Fintech for Banks |  COVID Chokes an Already Crippled IRS | Tax Regs for the Metaverse | 10 Steps to a Superior Tax Department | Accountants Critical of Competitor Price-Cutting |  Automate Busy Season with Apps You Already Use | Sales & Use Tax Costs Are Higher than Anyone Thought | Survey: Nobody Loves the Wayfair Decision | Busy Season Forecast: More Chaos  | A Woman Named Wanda Leaves an IRA Nightmare  | Are You Under-Pricing Your Client Accounting Services?  | Your Best Advice: Get Smart, Get Tech, Get Moving | Worries for Small Business Clients |

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It isn’t happening in the U.S. yet, but at least three states are thinking about it, and in 83 other countries, it’s already a thing. In California, Florida, and Massachusetts, it may soon be a thing. The Federal Reserve and the Business Payments Coalition have already launched a pilot program to standardize electronic invoicing systems.

Digitized tax compliance is far more than the mere e-filing of invoices and tax returns. It’s the movement of paper compliance activities to the cloud, where tax authorities can not only see transactions but, in some countries, actually, get involved in them.

The potential opportunities for accountants, auditors, and tax practitioners are as yet unknown, but where there is change, there is opportunity.

Also, danger. READ MORE →

Is This How the IRS Dies?

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IRS, losing staff it can’t replace, slides further into chaos and oblivion.

Sound-Off: How would you fix the IRS?
Join the survey. Get the results.

By CPA Trendlines

Internal Revenue Service employees are resigning and retiring in droves, leaving the agency increasingly powerless to fulfill its mandate as the nation’s tax collector.

MORE: Crisis at the IRS | The IRS’s 10 Biggest Problems | Fear and Loathing for Tax Season ’22 |  Padar Joins VC-Backed Tax Fintech for Banks |  COVID Chokes an Already Crippled IRS | Tax Regs for the Metaverse | 10 Steps to a Superior Tax Department | Accountants Critical of Competitor Price-Cutting |  Automate Busy Season with Apps You Already Use | Sales & Use Tax Costs Are Higher than Anyone Thought | Survey: Nobody Loves the Wayfair Decision | Busy Season Forecast: More Chaos  | A Woman Named Wanda Leaves an IRA Nightmare  | Are You Under-Pricing Your Client Accounting Services?  | Your Best Advice: Get Smart, Get Tech, Get Moving | Worries for Small Business Clients |

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Like every other problem the IRS has, inadequate staffing is fundamentally caused by inadequate funding. As the IRS budget declined by 20 percent between 2010 and 2021, staffing declined by about the same percentage, dropping from 94,711 full-time positions to just 75,773. Meanwhile, of course, the number of taxpayers increased.

READ MORE →

Crisis at the IRS

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Sound-Off: How would accountants fix the IRS? Join the survey. Get the results.

By CPA Trendlines

Tax preparers and taxpayers aren’t the only ones with tax problems. The IRS has problems, too.

Ten of those problems have been laid out in an annual report to Congress from the Taxpayer Advocate Service.

How to save the IRS?
Make your voice heard:
Join the survey. Get the results.

We covered the top five here. And here are the next five explained. READ MORE →