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Preparer Terror – It’s Real – How to Prevent It
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By Stacie Clifford Kitts CPA
A phenomenon affecting tax return preparers often proceeded by recurrent nightmares centered around tax return preparation. People experiencing Preparer Terror may exhibit the following symptoms:
- Extreme anxiety and temporary inability to remember simple tasks such as how to spell your name
- Being jolted from sleep accompanied by an overriding desire to run to the office
- Weight gain or if you’re lucky weight loss
- Constant fear that you are forgetting something – like what return was I working on, where did I put that piece of paper, who am I – ya know stuff like that.
Ways to prevent Preparer Terror:
- Set the proper level of client expectations.
Let your clients know the drop dead due date for receiving 100% of their tax documents. If I receive tax documents after my due date, I let the client know that I might not be able to file the return on time. I will try my best. I’ll even stay up all night. But there are only so many hours in a day. If your stuff arrives late so might your tax return.
- Evaluate your level of staffing.
If you have a tax practice, the notion is that you have some idea how long it takes to prepare a tax return. Um maybe not. Sometimes partners are so far removed from the daily prep grind that they have NO idea how long it should take a staff to prepare a return. The general rule for me is if I can prepare a return in 8 hours, a new staff may take 3 to 4 times that amount of time. So partners, listen to your staff when evaluating your staffing levels.
- Be organized.
Well duh, you say. Well ya this is a duh moment. When your mind isn’t working and you are on the verge of losing it, knowing how and where to find the information you need might save you. So if your administrative staff is responsible for filing stuff away, you had better make darn sure your processes, and procedures are being followed like their lives depend on it!
- Set clear expectations of your staff.
The other day I was visiting a CPA firm, it was pretty late at night, and there were partners and staff in the office working away. Then an extraordinary thing happened, the staff up and left before the partners.
In my day, leaving the office before the partners created a clear and present career danger. It just wasn’t done. I am all about work life balance, heck my kids grew up in my office. However, if you want to have some sort of lasting career in this industry – might I suggest that you get permission before leaving the office during busy time?
Making sure your staff understands what it really means to OWN a project and take responsibility for its completion is an important part of not only managing your firm but also helping to prevent Preparer Terror.
Related Articles
- National Society of Accountants Opposes Any Tax Preparer Exemptions from Proposed IRS Rules (eon.businesswire.com)
- New Rule Strengthens Tax Preparer Enforcement (eon.businesswire.com)
Ping Your Way To a Successful Social Marketing Strategy – It’s A Whole Lot Better Than Being an A-Hole
By Stacie Clifford Kitts, CPA
A few weeks ago, I wrote a post about a company in the tax industry that appeared to be getting some bad advice on how to conduct a successful social marketing campaign. I discovered this unfortunate strategy when the company spammed the comment section of one of my blog posts. Flabbergasted Reputable Tax Service Company acting like an A-Hole
Jumping head first into a social marketing strategy without first understanding how the game is played is likely to tick off the players or at the very least, your company will have a bad social showing. As with all business strategy’s, you really need to make sure you hire advisors that know what they are doing. For goodness sake, people DO YOUR RESEARCH. For the CPA industry there are people who specialize in helping you with your social strategy – Michelle Golden of Golden Practices is one such advisor.
Which brings me to pinging your way to success. Yesterday I was barraged with “pingbacks” on my blog site. A pingback is simply a notification that someone is linking to my site. Wikipedia defines pingback this way:
A pingback is one of three types of linkbacks, methods for Web authors to request notification when somebody links to one of their documents. This enables authors to keep track of who is linking to, or referring to their articles. Some weblog software, such as Movable Type, Serendipity, WordPress and Telligent Community, support automatic pingbacks where all the links in a published article can be pinged when the article is published.
Now in WordPress, my blog host, I also have the option of posting the URL of the blogger linking to my post in the comment section of my blog. It’s kind of like a handy built in quid pro quo for you saying nice stuff and linking to my blog. I in turn allow a link back to yours. Neat! And might I say an appropriate use of the comment section of my blog.
Curious about what all the links were about, I instantly clicked over to read what was being said about my blog. I discovered that they were coming from a company that I assume got some good advice on how to promote their social networking strategy, Tax Resolution University. And let me say, if theirs isn’t a planned strategy, it certainly should be.
I was pleased to read the praise for Stacie’s More Tax Tips offered by blog author Michael Rozbruch at Tax Resolution. His writing shows that he actually read and appreciated the content of my blog. He spent the time to identify elements that he liked and continued on to make great comments in his post Tax Help and Tips from Tax Blogger Includes Refreshing and Candid Look at Issues Facing Today’s Taxpayers here’s some tid bits:
From why she thinks American Express sucks to the true story of a magazine door-to-door sales person who encountered nightmarish tax consequences from her self employment status, Stacie’s unique take is both entertaining and enlightening.
Stacie’s More Tax Tips provides a wide and eclectic mix of tax information. The blog is well organized and quite informative – taxpayers can find excellently categorized information concerning tax, accounting and business advice, mixed in with quirky commentary. The blog offers information published by the IRS, such as IRS Patrol and IRS Presents, news releases and tax tips.
Other great content featured on the blog includes interviews with interesting individuals who put a new spin on everything tax, book reviews, Education Credits, Tax Guidance (need any help filing out those numerous tax forms?), coaching, and types of tax explained. You can even check out Abigail’s story of sex, drugs, and taxes for a bit of jolting tax reading.
While these comments are well thought-out and flattering – heck they make me feel all good inside, more importantly they are a good social networking strategy. Because of this well written post, the Tax Resolution Blog will show up under, the blogs I like category on Stacie’s More Tax tips. And I will allow the ping backs all like eight of them – some quid pro quo.
And just as a side note – Well-done Tax Resolution, your blog campaign tells me that you are a good strategist. This is a wonderful quality to have when you are in the business of resolving tax controversies. I am a fan!
Stacie's Tax Stuff 