tax pros file 33% of early returns

table of irs filing data for week ending feb. 2, 2024

a shorter season to date makes comparisons difficult.

by 卡塔尔世界杯常规比赛时间 research

the internal revenue service has fired up the machinery and begun cranking out tax returns. and so begins our annual ritual of tracking how well they do that.

all of the initial figures are double-digit down, largely because of seven days’ fewer collections. the 2023 filing season began on jan. 23 vs. 2024’s jan. 29, so 2023 totals cover 12 days as opposed to this season’s five days.

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can’t irs online accounts be more useful?

angry man wearing tie and glasses, punching fist through laptop screen

taxpayers and pros alike are frustrated, exasperated, disappointed and angry.

by 卡塔尔世界杯常规比赛时间 research

ever-improving internet commerce is one of the great developments of this first quarter of a century. the process and potential of dealing with products and services, including government services, has come a long way from the toddling brouhaha of the world wide web of the 1990s.

more: id theft a problem for irs even when it doesn’t exist | the nightmare of non-credentialed tax preparers | taxpayer assistance centers: a good idea that should be better | irs still falling short on service | must the irs be a dark hole? | 10 tips to the irs for beefing up staff | eight ways the irs can speed up processing tax returns | irs plays whac-a-mole with the phones | ten irs problems that need solutions | treasury ig sees progress at irs
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the internal revenue service still dreams of joining these early years of the 21st century. to get started, the service has gone so far as to launch an individual online account program. iolas allow taxpayers to

  • view basic information,
  • make payments,
  • enter into payment plans and
  • view and download certain notices.

all of which is very nice but soooo 1998.
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let tech make communication easier

man seated at laptop talking on phone

how to create effective systems.

by penny breslin
it’s not just the numbers

open and clear communication is essential when you provide back office support (bos) services. you cannot take on this type of work and not stay on top of it. previous examples have shown what happens when you do it right. here’s what happens when you don’t.

more: how to craft a service level agreement | three examples: pricing your bos value add | use timesheets for productivity, not billing | revisit your back office support procedures | federated search: what it is, why it matters | accounting tech tools to minimize your pain | do your apps play well with others? | it’s ok to have favorite clients | ten questions for teamwork | yes, you can be an outsourcer
goprocpa.comexclusively for pro members. log in here or 2022世界杯足球排名 today.

case study: when you don’t keep up your side of the agreement

a cpa wanting to provide bos services to his clients contacted us to help with the first setup. the software of choice by the business owner was quickbooks.
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nuclear battery could keep your future phone running for 50 years

you would need a new phone before you ran out of juice.

by rick richardson
technology this week

a new nuclear battery created by a chinese company might power your phone for 50 years with no need to be charged.

more: did ancient romans find a solution for climate change? | tack one launches new location tracker for children and seniors | windows is now an app for pcs, apple products | bill gates says america has a math problem | what is an heic file? | congress: tax prep companies shared private data with google, meta for years | what an a.i.-powered workforce means for accountants | smartwatch saves two lives | chatgpt unlikely to replace accountants
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at 15 x 15 x 5 mm, betavolt technology says it has successfully shrunk atomic energy batteries. through the process of radioactive decay, the small battery produces 100 microwatts and a voltage of 3v using 63 nuclear isotopes.

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health, wealth, stealth: challenges on the path to partnership

and why we need them.

by martin bissett
passport to partnership

now we move on to our sixth “c” in the passport to partnership – challenges.

again the heading has more than a single application, which we’ll explore here.

more: it’s time to prepare the next generation | walk the commitment walk | two steps toward mastering selling | thirteen ways to show commitment | clients can’t grow without you | seven mistakes in winning new fees | how to develop your communication abilities | five questions for measuring partner potential | five ways to rally your firm to its culture | when would-be partners aren’t candidates | make your expertise a new-client magnet
goprocpa.comexclusively for pro members. log in here or 2022世界杯足球排名 today.

ultimately, the partners interviewed in our research broke “challenges” down into two key areas:

  1. the ability for a manager to pull the firm out of the mire when there’s a problem
  2. the ability for a manager to pull the client out of the mire when there’s a problem

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when clients want to manage their own wealth

businessman sitting on stacks of paper currency

can they? maybe. but should they?

by anthony glomski

i have told you that your business owner clients will face new challenges, new transitions and new opportunities as they navigate their way through a liquidity event and emerge on the other side. i also have emphasized that you must do everything in your power to help them preserve, protect and maintain the wealth that they have worked so hard to build.

more: four attributes your experts need | your wealth management team needs these five people | there’s more to giving than tax implications | eight questions for estate planning | clients who don’t listen | how to outline your client’s big picture
goprocpa.comexclusively for pro members. log in here or 2022世界杯足球排名 today.

nassim taleb, author of the bestselling book “the black swan: the impact of the highly improbable,” argues that we can not only learn to navigate these frightening and overwhelming events, but learn to become stronger as a result of them and to take advantage of the opportunities they provide.

by helping your clients prepare the right way to withstand the next black swan event, you can help ensure that they’ll be able to have a huge impact not only in their life, but in their family’s life, in their community and even in the world at large.
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nine tips for a healthier tax season

woman and man walking and talking outside office building

how to be at your best through april 15th.

by ed mendlowitz
202 questions and answers: managing an accounting practice

tax season can be a marathon. everyone has their own tips and tricks, habits and techniques for staying sane and healthy. here are 10 of mine:

more: every accounting firm needs quality control | three ways to start an accounting practice | free consultation? not always | referral fee? forget it | how much is your tax practice worth? | merge in lower-priced work without losing out
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  1. eat lunch out of your office.
  2. go for a 15-minute walk in middle of afternoon instead of eating a snack.

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id theft a problem for irs even when it doesn’t exist

faceless hooded male person, low lighting and words "identity theft" repeated throughout

either way it consumes scarce resources.

by 卡塔尔世界杯常规比赛时间 research

tax return identity theft’s a bummer.

how big a bummer?

so big that even when there’s no theft, it’s a bummer.

more: the nightmare of non-credentialed tax preparers | taxpayer assistance centers: a good idea that should be better | irs still falling short on service | must the irs be a dark hole? | 10 tips to the irs for beefing up staff | eight ways the irs can speed up processing tax returns | irs plays whac-a-mole with the phones | ten irs problems that need solutions | treasury ig sees progress at irs | vcs plunk $60 million into ai-powered ‘autonomous’ tax prep
goprocpa.comexclusively for pro members. log in here or 2022世界杯足球排名 today.

it’s a bummer when it happens, not only because it happened but because the internal revenue service can take up to 19 months to recognize the problem, do something about it and send the hapless taxpayer a refund not for this year’s return, not for last year’s return, but for the year before last.

and it’s a bummer when there’s no theft involved because when the irs’s rickety technology flags a return as a possible id theft, the return gets delayed for months and months of manual processing.
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what could accounting-specific ai bring?

 

new tools are being built for finance. how can accountants best leverage them?

by hitendra patil
rise of the aiccountants

bloomberg released a research paper detailing the development of bloomberggpt, a new large-scale generative artificial intelligence (ai) specifically trained on a wide range of financial data to support diverse natural language processing (nlp) tasks within the financial industry.

more: how to use the three types of artificial intelligence | ai means clients need you more than ever | seven changes ai brings to accounting | humans beat ai in some aspects | why accountants should embrace artificial intelligence | ai brings opportunities for accountants | seven things you must know about ai
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according to bloomberg, “the team pulled from this extensive archive of financial data to create a comprehensive 363 billion token dataset consisting of english financial documents. this data was augmented with a 345 billion token public dataset to create a large training corpus with over 700 billion tokens. using a portion of this training corpus, the team trained a 50-billion parameter decoder-only causal language model.”

imagine how long it will take for a human being to grasp that volume of data!
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you don’t have a time problem

businessman running after clock in silhouette

three ways to fix what’s actually going on.

by sandi leyva
the complete guide to marketing for tax & accounting firms

i know it’s a bold statement and a lot of you will disagree. but please have an open mind and hear me out.

more: ten ways to have more energy this tax season | are you crossing off your business bucket list? | ten ways to make your business irresistible | five ways to target the low-hanging fruit | are your revenue projections realistic? | six strategies to make more without working more | the art of prompt engineering for accountants | calculate your business relationship ratios
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time is the great equalizer. we all have the same number of hours in a day, yet some entrepreneurs, many of them self-made, become wildly successful, while others languish. only one in 20 business owners in the u.s. make it past $1 million in annual revenues. i believe the way they use their time is a big factor in their success or failure.
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the nightmare of non-credentialed tax preparers

man in business suit and black ski mask flashing ok sign while sitting at desk with phone to ear

six solutions offered.

by 卡塔尔世界杯常规比赛时间 research

are you a sleazy, incompetent, unethical tax preparer?

if so, no problem! not for you, anyway. your clients might suffer, but as far as the internal revenue service is concerned, you’re as qualified to prepare other people’s taxes as any cpa or enrolled agent.

more: taxpayer assistance centers: a good idea that should be better | irs still falling short on service | must the irs be a dark hole? | 10 tips to the irs for beefing up staff | eight ways the irs can speed up processing tax returns | irs plays whac-a-mole with the phones | ten irs problems that need solutions | tax pros are expanding and earning more
goprocpa.comexclusively for pro members. log in here or 2022世界杯足球排名 today.

and that’s a problem.

a wild west environment

tax preparers good and bad prepare over half of the country’s individual income tax returns. they play an essential role in tax administration, and they are a frontline defense in preventing fraud and error.
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why strategic thinking impacts your firm’s future

what do “disturbing the present” and “paradigm shift” really mean?

by marc rosenberg
the rosenberg practice management library

roberto goizueta, the late chairman of coca-cola, and certainly one of the top two or three ceos of the last 30 years, said it best: “challenging the status quo when you have been successful is difficult. if you think you will be successful running your business in the next 10 years the way you did the last 10 years, you’re out of your mind. to succeed, we have to disturb the present.”

more: seven things good firms must do | five ways to separate accounting winners from losers | core values: why your firm needs them | voting on ownership basis? three better methods | fifteen big questions for your next strategy session
goprocpa.comexclusively for pro members. log in here or 2022世界杯足球排名 today.

compared to most vocations, cpa partners make a pretty good living. their success has been attributable primarily to a combination of the following:

  1. bringing in business
  2. providing great service to clients, which results in client retention and moving clients upscale in terms of services
  3. strong technical skills
  4. developing staff into leaders
  5. strong interpersonal skills

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the top 12 mistakes in tax return preparation

businessman horrified by what he sees on computer screen

 

there’s good news, though: they’re preventable.

by ed mendlowitz
tax season opportunity guide

here are the top 12 tax return preparation errors:

  1. number transposition and spelling errors. this includes income and deduction amounts and client social security numbers, addresses and zip codes. spelling errors should also be avoided – they indicate a lack of attention to what you are doing.

more on tax season: six types of person: which are you? | answer these two questions first | help your tax clients, help yourself | what’s your value to your tax clients? | are you excited about tax season?
goprocpa.comexclusively for pro members. log in here or 2022世界杯足球排名 today.

  1. unreported 1099 income. clients frequently leave out 1099s, but the preparer should make sure all 1099 items from last year are accounted for. missing 1099s that were not final for last year should be accounted for.
  2. tax payments. entering incorrect and unpaid amounts can be avoided by requiring the client to provide “proof” of the payments. entering “incorrect” amounts provided by the client is a major cause of tax notices.

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