Sch D Fees - 60 inputs or more...

[ETax847]

Do you charge a flat fee for a Sch D or do you charge by the number of inputs? I just received a client's 1099B with over 80 transacations and am wondering if I am undercharging for this schedule.

[JohnH]

Charge by the hour. Some 80-transaction schedule D's might take an hour to input and proof, while a 2-transaction schedule D that's missing key basis info can eat up multiple hours.

[gfizer]

I charge by the hour for these as well. My time is too valuable to just give it away for a flat fee.

[Cathy]

Keep up with the time you spend on the Sch D and 8849. Once you determine what you should charge your client, you can then divide the amount by the number of entries and tell him $10, $15 or $20, etc... per transaction or $xx per hour. The important thing is to charge enough to compensate yourself for the amount of time spent reporting the transactions. You might find that your client will limit the number of trades in the future once he realizes the new reporting rules now require much more time spent on reporting them than they did in the past. Again, charge enough to where you won't get nauseated when a client tells you he sold some securities! (I find it's almost impossible to pre-set a standard fee of $X per entry or $X per hour as some broker statements are better than others.....each case is different. The time you spend will either be pleasant or a PITA. I charge more for the PITA's.)

Take care,

Cathy

[taxxcpa]

if you can enter the transactions on an excel worksheet and import them into your tax program, it goes much faster. Doing it that way, you could charge just $ 5.00 per Form 8879 plus $4.00 or $5.00 per transaction and still be making over $150 per hour.

My software lets me do it that way, and you save time by copying and pasting repetitive data and you can sort and re-sort the information and get sub-totals for matching to 1099B totals.

[BulldogTom]

$20 Flat fee for the form, $1 per entry. Comes to about $100 per hour.

Tom

Hollister, CA

[SFA]

We are mailing the Form 8453 transmittal (with the box checked for Form 8949) and attaching a copy of the brokerage house's transaction statements. The only entries that we are making on in the return is one line for each group type of trades (such as short-term A, short-term B, Short-term c, etc. Our entry says something like: "Edward Jones - See F8453 attached statement."

We didn't make this up. We found this in the instructions.

[Lion EA]

Tell your client to have his broker email you the gain/loss statement in Excel format; import into return. Charge a lot for knowing to do this.

[SCL]

Do you charge a flat fee for a Sch D or do you charge by the number of inputs? I just received a client's 1099B with over 80 transacations and am wondering if I am undercharging for this schedule.

you (have to be the one to) make the call about what you think is fair (for you).

as others have suggested...it is based on $/hour.

if you are inexperienced and slow to get there, it will be less $/hour.

if you are more experienced and efficient, it will be more $/hour.