YEAH1 Down to my last 16 returns

[michaelmars]

still waiting for them to send me their tardy K-1's

16 to prepare and 130 to review from staff.

[Jack from Ohio]

still waiting for them to send me their tardy K-1's

16 to prepare and 130 to review from staff.

Sounds like here at the firm. All the procrastinating procrastinators are showing up.

[michaelmars]

I do add a vig to their fees when they come in very late. I do this for each deadline but its still not worth the wear and tear on my body or my family life. 7 days a week since 9/1 and now till 11 each night or so.

[Jack from Ohio]

I do add a vig to their fees when they come in very late. I do this for each deadline but its still not worth the wear and tear on my body or my family life. 7 days a week since 9/1 and now till 11 each night or so.

I think your vig needs to be much larger.

[MAMalody]

I had two new contacts today....talking about putting it off.

[michaelmars]

years ago I had a long time client that worked on my floor. About $200 fee since I was the cpa for the office he subletted from. well one year he came in on 4/10 and I told him no; to backed up and too many others ahead of him. Sch A, B, C, D and E. He wouldn't do an extension either.

The next year he came back around February even brought his adult sons info. he had the prior year done by hrblock for over $400. I charged him $325 that following year. He was happy knowing I was still cheaper than hrb and convenient to him. I got a nice increase in fees and a compliant client.

sometimes you just have to stand your ground.

Just yesterday someone dropped off her stuff, I told her it was 1/3 higher this time of year and she agreed, apologized and prepaid before she left my office. Next year she will be timely or I will earn a great fee for 20 minutes of work.

[kcjenkins]

Yes. it's important to include in each fee not only the complexity of the return, but also the timing. And always charge extra for being late, without any embarrassment over that. Your time, even your peace of mind and the stress of being given the data too near a deadline should go into your fee.

[SaraEA]

michaelmars, you need to add an experienced person to your staff to help with the "16 to prepare and 130 to review" returns. I am not trying to be unkind, but I think you have an issue with trusting anyone but yourself to accurately prepare a return. I remember an instructor I had years ago cautioning us students about believing that we were the only ones who knew how to do things right. I do think that most of us believe that we know more/do a better job than a prior preparer whose return a new client gave us. Yes, sometimes we find mistakes or something we would have done differently. But maybe that's why the new client is sitting in front of us instead of returning to their prior. Many people stay with their priors because they've never had an issue or uncomfortable feeling, and we don't get to meet those folks.

If you're working until 11PM from Sept 1, you clearly need competent help. In our office for the first time this past season we hired someone to input raw data from W2s, 1099s, etc. At the end of the day a CPA and I each took half his returns to finalize them. At first I thought it took longer to check the work than to do the whole thing myself. Then I realized that the data input was nearly error-free (sometimes there were issues WHERE it was input). As the season rolled along I appreciated the tedious work being done for me. I just checked totals, and then went on to deal with the things I told the guy not to input (OIH, Sch C and E items, etc.). I can't tell you how wonderful it was to have someone input Sch D entries, and if they were "see attached" to copy and label the appropriate pages for the 8453. My point, though, is that there were two of us checking these returns. Sure we worked until 11PM, but that was during tax season.

There are a lot of experienced people in my office and we normally check our own work. When any of us finishes something really complex or that we're just not sure of, we always hand it to another to review. Simple Schs A, B, C, D, E are really just data input that we're competent enough to check ourselves (unless there is all of the above schedules, in which case we want someone else to look at it in case we got dizzy). I do hope you can hire, or recognize someone already on staff, that is as good at tax prep as you are and take a load off yourself.

[michaelmars]

THANKS for the advice but I guess you don't know my situation, I think most here do. The returns I prepare are for my side practice which I never merged into my firm, mostly individuals and small businesses.

I am a partner in a mid size firm 3 partners, 8 professional staff, 3 admins and at anytime 3-4 interns. It is their work that I review. I never merged in my clients because the firm clients need net worth of at least 10mil. The firm specialty is 65% involved in real estate the rest are jewelry. Its not unusual for these returns to have 50-75 k-1's in them, one return for example has 75 single member llc's and is 14 states. These are not basic returns and as Tax Partner I have to sign off on them. our total return count including entities is around 1800 and the last couple of years with the increased exemption we are doing about a 100 gift returns a year.

I used atx and now proseries for my side clients because I like formed based, and until 2010 we used prosystem for the firm but after paying $30,000 for the software we switched to Lacerte.

[Guest Taxed]

>>> The next year he came back around February even brought his adult sons info. he had the prior year done by hrblock for over $400.

Was this return done by HRB premier office? i have found that the only HRD office in my area that charges those type of fees are the premier office that is staffed by a CPA or a EA and you have to make an appointment to see them. It is not the walk off the street type. Also their quality of work is generally much better than the regular storefronts.

[michaelmars]

still waiting for them to send me their tardy K-1's

16 to prepare and 130 to review from staff.

just finished my last one to prepare and down to 45 or so, to review. Tomorrow I can finish mine. Amazing what you can do if you give up sleep for a couple of weeks. Looking at one now with 70 properties on sch E, yikes.

[mcb39]

I would rather work extra hours during or right after tax season than back myself into that kind of corner. Even the few that I have to finish are slow on the input with the info that I need. BTW, the guy who said that he shredded all of his deceased mom's checkbooks, magically found them today. He had all sorts of nice numbers for me this AM, including the Estimate payments. Amazing what they can do when you tell them that they owe $3400. It is now down to less than $800. It didn't make sense to me that a slowly dying woman wouldn't have any medical expenses.

[michaelmars]

I would rather work extra hours during or right after tax season than back myself into that kind of corner. Even the few that I have to finish are slow on the input with the info that I need. BTW, the guy who said that he shredded all of his deceased mom's checkbooks, magically found them today. He had all sorts of nice numbers for me this AM, including the Estimate payments. Amazing what they can do when you tell them that they owe $3400. It is now down to less than $800. It didn't make sense to me that a slowly dying woman wouldn't have any medical expenses.

its not always our choice, K-1's don't come in till after 9/15 and then there are those doing cost segs and since this year is the year to give, we are doing more gift tax returns that ever. As of 9/15 we had about 400 individuals waiting for k-1's. the due dates need to be more staggered.

[SaraEA]

Is it just me, or is the Oct 15 deadline worse than April 15? We're certainly as busy now as we were in April. Yet the clients are different. Most owe money, some LOTS of money. They are at this late date still disorganized, which is likely why they couldn't meet the April deadline. I almost fell over this week when I asked a client (who delivered his stuff on Friday) for 10 missing documents or numbers and the very next day had every single one of them. At this time of year most of our clients prefer the piecemeal approach.

Many of these clients have unusual tax situations that require a good deal of research, which I could have done all summer if they had only given me a clue. And then there are those who owe so much money they are getting desperate. During regular tax season we are used to some clients trying to fudge some numbers. Now the clients are downright egregious. Like the one who gave me his entire printout for his "business card," showing expenses for vacations, clothes, jewelry stores, etc. Or the one who purchased 10 times the supplies for the number of products she purportedly sold. When asked for her real income, she said she already gave it to me. Or how about the one with no employees even though her Facebook page proudly introduces the two new hires. Oh and then there's the one who I asked for child care expenses who answered that he hired live-in help. ARGHHHHH!

[Guest Taxed]

My worst case situation owes $12945 to Fed and $5480 to state. And yes this year 10/15 has been a challenge compared to 4/15.

Tomorrow at 5pm he will be in my office to face the truth.

This one client was warned by me in April that he will have a serious balance due problem and we need to deal with it. But he always had some excuse that his books (his wife does them) needs more TLC for me.

Has anybody dealt with the DOME Record keeping system?? It looks easy compared to QB, but you can really mess it up because it is single entry system.

[kcjenkins]

Dome used to just sell paper bookkeeping systems, and several of my clients used them. Especially beauticians. I've never looked at their software tho. Still, even with errors, it's probably better than no books at all, which is probably the realistic alternative. A single individual operating his or her personal service business often does not even bother to try to keep any real organized records. How I DO NOT miss the boot box clients. I know you all know what I mean by that description.

[jklcpa]

Ah, the dreaded Dome books. I hated those things, but you are right about it being better than nothing. Haven't seen one in years, but I do have three clients that still insist on using those old Safeguard One-Write sheets. Two are very well done, but one is horribly mess, AND she uses something like a Dome book for her payroll summary because her writing is too big to fit the numbers into the tiny blocks meant to for the gross and withholdings! All of the info is on there, but it is so much harder than it has to be because this person makes a mess of it. And guess what she has - a hair salon!

[Guest Taxed]

As you guys know with a single entry system you could be out of balance and have duplicate entries and not even know about it until you went through some manual calculations. I know it is quick if you do it right but most clients that I know do not update the system daily. They will wait for 2 weeks even month end and store receipts in a box. Then when they start entering expenses etc, they may have already entered it the previous time or made a mistake.

What I do is look at the total receipts first and sort it out by cash, check, credit card by month and then look at the expenses each month. If i see a big deficit I question because we all know you are not going to spend a lot of money unless absolutely necessary if you have a negative cashflow a particular month.

My other gripe is poor or inaccurate inventory records.

[mcb39]

Dome used to just sell paper bookkeeping systems, and several of my clients used them. Especially beauticians. I've never looked at their software tho. Still, even with errors, it's probably better than no books at all, which is probably the realistic alternative. A single individual operating his or her personal service business often does not even bother to try to keep any real organized records. How I DO NOT miss the boot box clients. I know you all know what I mean by that description.

I have some who have gone from a boot box to a carry case file system. One step up. I have set up a few clients with double entry spread sheets, done by hand, and they are doing amazingly well. Probably because they understand the concept.

[joanmcq]

Doing an audit of a traveling salesperson, I came across the Dome books for the first time; the Dome mileage logs. They were filled in to a 't'; 4 books worth for the year. Needless to say, it was a 'no change'.

[ADGFINANCIAL]

We use the Dome Software in the office for Bookkeeping. It's a great little program for the price.

http://www.domeproductsonline.com/software/

August @ adgfinancial.com

[kcjenkins]

Yes, IF they use them as intended, they actually work pretty well, especially the milage books. That is the big if, of course.

[Guest Taxed]

Posted this earlier: My worst case situation owes $12945 to Fed and $5480 to state. And yes this year 10/15 has been a challenge compared to 4/15.

Tomorrow at 5pm he will be in my office to face the truth.

The fellow came and after I reviewed the return with him he shut his eyes for 2 minutes and put his head back then he asked to be excused to go to his truck for a few minutes. I was worried if he was going to do something stupid so i peeked from a side window. He was drinking vodka or gin from a bottle and on the cellphone. Came in and asked me to prepare the installment agreement. On his way out yells back that he may file for disability??

[jklcpa]

For my last return, the client is coming in early Sunday afternoon and owes similar amounts, and we've already discussed his need for an installment agreement. He couldn't give me a time but that isn't bothering me. My husband has to work this weekend so it doesn't matter to me.

[Lion EA]

I just had a situation totally the opposite, for a change. Clients are getting refunds of $71,000 and $2,000. Never had that before. Late in 2011, spouse increased her withholding to cover $80,000 in income from various investments inherited a few years ago. She forgot to decrease her withholding in 2012, so was withheld at 47% for the whole year. Of course, the IRS is not issuing refunds until the shutdown ends.

My next up is an investor with no day job so no withholding. She just told me she thought I made her estimated tax payments! Her investments did VERY well, so she will owe a bundle. Maybe I should buy a bottle of vodka.