tax season

coronavirus rattles tax season

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can you turn a crisis into an opportunity?

the 卡塔尔世界杯常规比赛时间 busy season barometer
benchmarks, trends & analysis
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by 卡塔尔世界杯常规比赛时间 research

coronavirus—covid-19—is coming. don’t imagine it won’t reach your community. it will. and even if you manage to keep it out of your office, and even if its lethality is less than the flu, just the threat of covid-19 is already impacting many tax and accounting firms.

how accountants are preparing for the worst:

  • do you have the portals, web-based apps, and cloud accounts necessary for staff to work from home? have you tested them? maybe you should have an everybody-works-from-home-day drill.
  • do you have policies and procedures in place for home-based work?
  • do individual staff have plans for caring for their family without disrupting work?
  • have you prepared clients for the possibility of electronic delivery of data and documentation? do they understand what to do?
  • are you ready to request filing extensions due to staff or client illness or local quarantine?
  • have you established sanitation procedures for your office?
  • do you have a vision of the worst-case scenario? this could include a) long-term quarantines of your office, other businesses, and all clients, b) widespread illness and absence of staff, c) general economic downturn, d) interruptions in cash flow, e) slower than usual responses from the irs, and f) well…what else can go wrong?

the 卡塔尔世界杯常规比赛时间 busy season barometer has always asked a variety of poignant questions about everything from the status of firms to the state of the economy. this is the first year, however, that it includes a question about disease. read more →

can your reviewers answer these 10 questions?

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businessman looking up answers in a bookwe’re nice and provide the answers just in case.

the 卡塔尔世界杯常规比赛时间 busy season barometer:
today’s bonus question:
are you ready for covid-19 conditions?
join the survey. get the results.

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.

more: what makes a good tax season client? | do your clients feel important? | 5 small leaks that can sink a tax season | 5 tax review keys | 4 reasons to push ahead with tax question research | one can’t-skip touch for tax season | 5 steps for tax season success | help tax clients help you | 3 steps to tax season happiness
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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.
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the irs needs more to get more

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man with net chasing winged moneytighter enforcement leads to more service needs.

the 卡塔尔世界杯常规比赛时间 busy season barometer:
today’s bonus question:
are you ready for covid-19 conditions?
join the survey. get the results.

by 卡塔尔世界杯常规比赛时间 research

between 2010 and 2019, the budget of the internal revenue service was cut by 20.4 percent, after adjusting for inflation. the situation has been severely aggravated by legislative changes that demand more work from the irs even as it has less to work with.

more: more firms falling behind | does irs need a practitioner services division? | irs urged to form tax preparer strategy | accountants cautiously bullish on the economy | survey results: tax pros forecast a better 2020 | can the irs enforce the tax code? | tax pros upbeat on cusp of busy season | irs undertakes overhaul
goprocpa.comexclusively for pro members. log in here or 2022世界杯足球排名 today.

over the past decade, the irs has had to spend

  • more than $2.6 billion to implement the affordable care act
  • more than $500 million to implement the foreign account tax compliance act
  • more than $600 million to implement the tax cuts & jobs act

read more →

what makes a good tax season client?

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green cast iron sign with white 16 painted on it16 positive qualities.

by ed mendlowitz
tax season opportunity guide

clients are our customers who pay our salaries and present us with stimulating opportunities allowing us to grow.

more: do your clients feel important? | 5 small leaks to beware during tax season | 5 tax review keys | 4 reasons to push ahead with tax question research | one can’t-skip touch for tax season | 5 steps for tax season success | help tax clients help you | 3 steps to tax season happiness | 12 ways to have more fun this tax season | bill with the tax return, get paid faster
goprocpa.comexclusively for pro members. log in here or 2022世界杯足球排名 today.

there is no such thing as a bad or nuisance client – although there are clients who sometimes do bad or nuisance things.
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call the irs for answers? good luck!

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irs levels of service for total enterprise, accounts management, consolidated acs, and installment agreement telephone lines for fiscal years 2015–2019

irs insists your call is important. but the numbers don’t add up.

the 卡塔尔世界杯常规比赛时间 busy season barometer:
new year, new strategies
join the survey. get the results.

by 卡塔尔世界杯常规比赛时间 research

nothing kills a day like a phone call to the internal revenue service. a caller put on hold during the busy season literally has enough time to go out to lunch and come back before anyone answers.

more on tax season 2020: does irs need a practitioner services division? |  slow start for tax pro e-filing |  irs urged to form tax pro strategy | accountants cautiously bullish on economy | tax pros forecast better 2020 | can irs enforce the tax code? | tax pros upbeat on busy season | irs undertakes overhaul
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unfortunately, given the inhuman complexity of the irs tax code, taxpayers often need to call for guidance or advice. last year, 99.3 million did so, and only 28.6 million of them actually hung on long enough to talk with someone. over the course of the year, the average time it took to get connected was 16.2 minutes.

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slow start for tax pro e-filing

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data charttax pro market share down 409,000 from year-ago.

by beth bellor

as of the week ending feb. 7, the latest data available, the internal revenue service had received 28.7 million individual income tax returns, down 0.4 percent from the same week last year. it had processed 27.5 million, down 2.1 percent.

more: data points down as tax season opens | the fight for new tax clients
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the irs had processed 96.1 percent of returns received.

e-filing receipts read more →

does irs need a practitioner services division?

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typing numbers for income tax return with pen and calculator

practitioner orgs say “yes!”

by 卡塔尔世界杯常规比赛时间 research

the internal revenue service has less than six months to provide congress with a comprehensive strategy for providing taxpayers with better service. the report, due july 1, is mandated by the taxpayer first act of 2019.

more: irs urged to form tax preparer strategy | accountants cautiously bullish on the economy | survey results: tax pros forecast a better 2020 | can the irs enforce the tax code? | tax pros upbeat on cusp of busy season | irs undertakes overhaul
goprocpa.comexclusively for pro members. log in here or 2022世界杯足球排名 today.

the irs is already hammering out a strategy on several fronts – enforcement, technology, modernization, training, cybersecurity, overall structure and organization, and, yes, taxpayer experience.
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irs urged to form tax preparer strategy

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portrait of bridget t. roberts
roberts

taxpayer advocate says it’s long overdue.

by 卡塔尔世界杯常规比赛时间 research

every year by legal mandate, the national taxpayer advocate, who heads the taxpayer advocacy service within the irs, files a report to congress. the report identifies problems within the irs and offers recommendations to solve them.

more: accountants cautiously bullish on the economy | survey results: tax pros forecast a better 2020 | can the irs enforce the tax code? | tax pros upbeat on cusp of busy season | irs undertakes overhaul
goprocpa.comexclusively for pro members. log in here or 2022世界杯足球排名 today.

this year, the acting director of the tas, bridget t. roberts, has identified the lack of a comprehensive strategy for the tax practitioner community as one of the irs’s most serious problems. although 80 million americans depend on tax preparers to do their civic duty, the irs’s efforts to serve practitioners is focused mostly on misconduct issues, not on helping them get the job done.
read more →

tax season is hacker season

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checklist: five things to do today to protect your firm and your clients.

the 卡塔尔世界杯常规比赛时间 busy season barometer:
new year, new strategies
join the survey. get the results.

by jess coburn
applied innovations

businesses of all sizes are targets from what has become the most vicious, innovative, and lucrative criminal endeavors we’ve ever witnessed. and tax practitioners are particularly easy targets.

more on busy season 2020: irs urged to form tax preparer strategy |  5 small leaks that can sink a tax season |  data points down as tax season opens |  the fight for new tax clients |  5 tax review keys |  tax pros forecast a better 2020 |  see all tax season 2020 coverage here

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the financial services industry is perhaps the most targeted because of the value of data it possesses. and the most frequently targeted are cpas and those who prepare tax returns.

read more →

5 small leaks that can sink a tax season

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tiny businessman standing on dripping faucetshut them off before they cause great damage.

by ed mendlowitz
tax season opportunity guide

some people are micromanagers and anal with details. others are big-picture managers, letting details take care of themselves.  neither is completely effective and both disciplines need to be balanced.

more: 5 tax review keys | 4 reasons to push ahead with tax question research | help tax clients help you | bill with the tax return, get paid faster
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there is a time for details and a time for big-picture thinking. when setting up procedures and processes it is essential that all details be considered and planned for. once the process is set up, there should be brief but continuous monitoring. and then the big-picture thinking should take over – that is where you will make your money.
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data points down as tax season opens

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data chartdiys, refunds are up.

the 卡塔尔世界杯常规比赛时间 busy season barometer: new year, new strategies?
join the survey. get the results.

by beth bellor

filings were behind last year’s marks as tax season opened, according to the irs, and pros handled about 35 percent of e-filings.

more: the fight for new tax clients | 5 tax review keys | treat review procedures like quality control |  survey results: tax pros forecast a better 2020 |  can the irs enforce the tax code? |  tax pro’s upbeat on cusp of busy season |  use tax return prep for training and growth |  irs undertakes overhaul  | all 2020 tax season coverage
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the internal revenue service received 15.8 million individual income tax returns for the week ending jan. 31 – the first of the season and just five days long – down by 1.6 percent from the year before. it had processed 12.9 million returns, down 2.7 percent, for a processing rate of 82 percent.
read more →