some individuals choosing e-filing but paper return checks.
the irs has received nearly 82.3 million individual tax returns as of march 20, down 0.6 percent from 2014. it has processed more than 80.4 million of them, down 0.9 percent from last year and a rate of over 97.7 percent complete for this year. read more →
next question: what’s the best way to fix the tax system? register your comments here.
by 卡塔尔世界杯常规比赛时间 research
the u.s. tax system has become so complex and dysfunctional that even professional tax practitioners are bitterly frustrated and angry – outrage that’s been boiling over in the 卡塔尔世界杯常规比赛时间 busy season barometer.
this year accountants are talking about staff problems, client problems, overload problems and affordable care act problems. but the anger with new forms and regulations isn’t stopping there.
“all reason has gone out the door,” says a cpa in montrose, colo. “i have been preparing tax returns for over 35 years. there has never been a tax season like this one – and there will never be another one like it.”
you may believe you have a great team in place. but does your team agree?
a new set of 卡塔尔世界杯常规比赛时间 research findings shows room for improvement. read more →
top nine client management solutions.
next question: lessons learned.
join the survey; get the results
by 卡塔尔世界杯常规比赛时间 research
the 卡塔尔世界杯常规比赛时间 annual busy season barometer is uncovering some frank and candid talk about clients. yes, we love them. couldn’t live without them. most of the time. but, well, not always.
it’s not that they’re bad people. but let’s face it, they aren’t always sweating tax prep much in advance of april 1, they have no idea what new regulations are in effect this year and their advisories from their cpa are filed under “migraines that can wait.” plus, they truly believe their cpa is exclusively dedicated to their company and doesn’t really have much else to do but wait around for their phone call.
“no matter how proactive you try to be at scheduling and planning ahead, clients still delay providing information for their taxes,” bryan lantz says. “seems the irs, congress and the media are out to make our jobs even more compressed and stressful.” his solution: “keep communicating with clients to ensure that we can do the best we can at equalizing workflow during busy season.”
from their remarks, 卡塔尔世界杯常规比赛时间 draws at least nine lessons in smart client management.:
not enough trained staff, not enough seasonal staff, not enough staff.
next question: the smartest moves this busy season? join the survey; get the results.
by 卡塔尔世界杯常规比赛时间 research
the 卡塔尔世界杯常规比赛时间 annual busy season barometer is eliciting a panoply of lessons learned and plans for a smoother season next year. a lot of professionals’ comments this year are nothing short of outright complaint. and not without reason. it’s been a rough year. if the snow didn’t get you, forms 3115, 8962, 8965 or 1095a did. plus all things irs got more complicated, clients got more desperate and, apparently, tensions rose as cpas and staff stretched themselves to the limits of professional endurance.
one of the main lessons learned is the need for enough staff — enough staff hired early enough and trained well enough. nancy casburn at casburn cpa in lee’s summit, mo., sums up the importance of the softest of software: “staffing is the most important reason for failing or succeeding at tax season.”
if we can draw any conclusion from all the staff-related lessons reported in this year’s busy season barometer, it is that the profession needs more staff, better trained staff and an availability of seasonal staff. given the increasing complexity of tax returns, the solution of this problem — more training, more accounting majors — needs to arrive quickly and be broadly based.
‘aca is pita bs for cpas.’ next year’s plan: ‘become a monk.’
next question: the smartest moves this busy season? join the survey; get the results
by 卡塔尔世界杯常规比赛时间 research
as busy season 2015 grinds down, tax prep professionals are grappling with myriad and continuing issues with new rules, thin staffing and difficult clients, according to the 卡塔尔世界杯常规比赛时间 annual busy season barometer. but the new affordable care act seems to be causing the most widespread aches and pains among accountants.
don’t make this common but potentially expensive error.
by marc rosenberg
retirements & buyouts
i have done extensive polling of firms in recent years on client transition and offer here some of their practices.
the best transition practice of course falls under the category of “the best way to solve a problem is to never let it happen to begin with.”
more on retirement: retirement plan funding? what funding? | vesting can cover part-timers, too | compromise is in order for some goodwill payouts | when retiring partners take a specialty with them | why you’ll get less from your partners in a buyout than you might by selling the whole firm | eat what you kill? then maybe ‘book of business’ is for you | 5 points to consider when paying out goodwill | clients leaving? time to reduce retirement benefits | 4 ways to decide how to pay out capital | partners may balk at guaranteeing retirement obligations
said one mp: “the ‘transition’ process should start as soon as the firm gets a client (some start even sooner – on the sale pitch). clients should be assigned a team, including a backup partner and a manager. the client should be told who the team members will be. some call this institutionalizing the clients. if you do this, there is very little else that needs to be done when a partner announces his/her retirement.”
some other points: read more →
some predict those clients will be coming back for cleanup.
tax professionals are sounding off in 卡塔尔世界杯常规比赛时间 comments on an apparent upsurge in do-it-yourself amateur self-filers while e-filing by professionals is lagging last year’s rates for four straights weeks so far.
“interesting that self-prepared is up and professionally prepared is down on a ytd basis,” says bea nahon, a bellevue, wash., cpa, and long-time advocate of women’s and small-firm interests.
“is that because business is shifting to the do-it-yourselfers?,” nahon says. “i suspect instead it’s due to the professionals bogged down in the mire of the tpr regulations. and the increasing trend of fraudulent self-prepared returns,”
“in fact,”nahon adds alarmingly, “some of those self-prepared returns are likely going to turn out to be our clients, which we don’t discover until we attempt to e-file.”
irs processing nearly 98 percent of returns received.
tax professionals e-filed more than 38 million returns through march 13, lagging 3.4 percent from the same time in 2014. yet, that’s an improvement from last week’s 4 percent deficit.
related: have fun this tax season! | tax preparation fees: the national averages [infographic] | irs form 3115: a sin and a travesty | how to get paid faster this tax season | accountants see solid business gains in 2015 | as market share slips away, accountants look beyond the 1040 | irs emerges as major tax season competitor | tax pros losing market share to self-filers
last week, 卡塔尔世界杯常规比赛时间 reported that the industry’s 33.4 million e-filings accounted for 53.6 percent of all the e-filed returns, compared with 56 percent in 2014. read more →
don’t like selling? call it something else. by martin bissett winning your first client being a successful person according to your own measurement of that, and your own goals and your own standards, is different for everyone. if you’re comfortable … continued
if you don’t dream big for your business, who will?
by sandi smith leyva
the accountant’s accelerator
do you have a business bucket list?
did you see the movie “the bucket list”? morgan freeman and jack nicholson played men who didn’t have too long to live. they each wrote up a bucket list, a list of things they wanted to do or accomplish before they kicked the bucket (as we say in the south).
why not apply the concept to your business? you can do this whether you have your own business or a job, although you have a bit more control when you’re the boss. what do you want to do before you retire or sell your business?
here are 15 ideas: read more →
no transition – no goodwill.
by marc rosenberg
retirements & buyouts
if there is one takeaway in retirement planning, it would be this: “no transition – no goodwill.” here’s what i mean.
more on retirement: retirement plan funding? what funding? | vesting can cover part-timers, too | compromise is in order for some goodwill payouts | when retiring partners take a specialty with them | if clients leave, do you reduce retirement benefits? | three ways to calculate goodwill payable in partner buyouts, none of them great | eat what you kill? then maybe ‘book of business’ is for you | the ins and outs of aav for goodwill | 5 points to consider when paying out goodwill | clients leaving? time to reduce retirement benefits | 4 ways to decide how to pay out capital | partners may balk at guaranteeing retirement obligations
the best of times and the worst of times…
with apologies to charles dickens, who famously opened his classic “a tale of two cities” with the above, here are two real experiences i had regarding transition, one of which was the best example of retiring partner transition i’ve ever seen and one the worst.
some questions for both accountants and it.
by donny c. shimamoto
intraprisetechknowlogies
budget season is a good time for accountants and it wonks to get together for a heart-to-heart about hardware. computers and peripherals aren’t like the hardware of yore. they’re omnipresent in the organization. they have strings attached. they have special issues in obsolescence. sometimes it’s hard to draw a line between hardware and software.
related: how accounting geeks and techie nerds can play nicely together
here is a suggested a series of questions that accountants and it wonks should address as they make budget decisions. here are a few of the ones that relate to hardware: read more →