“If you charge by the form, Schedule A’s are almost obsolete.”
By CPA Trendlines Research
With the countdown clock running down toward April 15, many tax professionals’ early-season optimism is turning into frustration and anger, according to the CPA Trendlines Busy Season Barometer.
The latest readings from the tracking poll show:
Only half as many professionals now predict “significant increases” in the number of clients, and who now expect a “significant decrease” has almost doubled.
The number of practitioners forecasting revenue gains has been cut in half.
The number expecting better profits than last year has been cut by a third.
Every year, the Taxpayer Advocate Service, an independent agency within the Internal Revenue Service, issues a report to Congress on the 20 most serious problems taxpayers face in trying to fulfill their patriotic duty to fund their nation.
Taxpayer Advocate Nina E. Olson, who just this year announced her retirement from the agency, notes that identifying the 20 problems that are most serious is not objectively possible or even desirable. Sometimes, for example, the problems are the same as those of previous years, so the legislated mandate allows for subjective decisions about what to include. READ MORE →
“All it takes is money.” Sounds easy? Except for the politics.
By CPA Trendlines
Wow! We asked for it, and we got it: an avalanche of advice on how to fix the IRS.
CPA Trendlines has always received smart, candid, and often outspoken responses to our Busy Season survey— thousands of tax preparers from sea to shining sea telling us what’s happening in their offices.
But this year, halfway through the season, we asked a loaded question: How would you fix the IRS? The professionals in the trenches of tax prep know what the problems are and what to do about them. They also seemed a bit miffed (to put it mildly) that the solutions seem so obvious, yet the problems keep compounding. READ MORE →
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