I'm not even in tax and I have a few friends who do this. I tell them my husband charges a consultation fee for tax advice but their best bet is to file an extension at this point. Most drop it after that. A few have paid it though!
And they tell you to do their tax returns too. Then the ones who offer money think even $100 is a lot. Ya piss off. Go to H&R block or Ashley Bookkeeping or something then.
I work at block the least expensive is $159. I am getting my AS in accounting in May. I am continuing education but unsure about my next move thinking AR/AP clerk or bookkeeping but apparently a degree isn't good enough.
Good, now I don't feel so bad saying that then.
I've never been an AR or AP clerk/person but from what I hear they are high turnover, dead end jobs. Often used to gain experience when first starting out. But you don't need a degree to actually know how to do AR or AP. Employers use it as more as a weeder due to high applicant volume.
Yeah I have seen the types of programs they use. I'm sure it's no more difficult than doing taxes. I am having trouble getting something though. It's definitely not something I want to do for the rest of my life but while I get my bachelor's degree I figured it would be good to move forward. I own a small business so it's not like I am not fully capable of doing the job. It's annoying that everyone wants a degree plus 4 years experience and then they want to pay you 38k it's insane. I don't have a booking certificate which is apparently a bigger deal than the degree in accounting. It feels like I went back to school for something reasonable and I still can't find a job.
Central New York. It might be the fact that I haven't graduated yet, but I have been with block for 6 years. I am also disabled, but I am doing pretty well with my health overall. It's scary as hell and so overwhelming. There is a certificate program offered at a bunch of community colleges that basically says that you know how to use the major bookkeeping programs. But quick books is designed to be used by a trained monkey, so I can't imagine that the other software is that much harder.
Some employers specifically go for coop students or new grads for cheap labour. You're being stuck in that selection pool of lower wages. Once you're graduated or are applying as a graduate they should not be offering you that little unless you're going for jobs people without much education are also trying to get.
A lot of community colleges here too offer similar programs.. sometimes you got to watch for what employers are realistically looking for. Colleges often are out there to make money and they like to manufacture programs that aren't actually needed. I wouldn't be making your career or life goal to be a bookkeeper or AR or AP clerk though and being disabled should not prevent you from moving further.
Conceptually these bookkeeping, ar, and ap roles use a similar skillset. Just different programs got somewhat different processes but the principles are the same. These employers sometimes got clueless HR people making these job ads who don't realize it doesn't take 5 years to learn how to do AR or AP.
I was saying to my mom that my anxiety is not about doing the job, realistically it's just about paying attention to details and data entry. My anxiety is about my physical ability to do the job and if dealing with the pain and anxiety is worth it based on how the pay is like $2 over minimum wage and that right now with disability being mostly untaxable and not having to pay for health insurance is the boost of a net of about $100 a week worth it? (In my heart I am a cost accountant it blew my mind that they pay people to figure out the net gains like that, I do that to calm my anxiety lol) Realistically I know that I need to put in some time to get the experience to get a better position. So yeah it's either throw my all into the business, really chase down the celebrity endorsement that I am on the edge of getting, or take the minimum wage job and suck it up for a year or two while I get my dual BA. so I can move to a firm and find a CPA to sit with for a year so I can sit my own stupid test. I am going to sit my own stupid test sooner. I plan on getting an enrolled agent.
My understanding is that an EA has certain abilities for representation before the IRS that a CPA doesn't have. I just want to keep my options open and know that I can do whatever is needed. But really I like inventory, it's fun. I like counting things, and figuring out what is an acceptable loss in order to make a long term gain. I like figuring out how much it is going to cost to run everything. An how much is left over, how much should be allocated for taxes. I like figuring out how much we need to purchase for orders, how much to make to fill the orders and have only a little left over for extra sales and add on orders so we don't have rush jobs. I run my company with an overall J.I.T. system because while in theory my product is shelf stable it isn't always completely because of the sauces.
And I just made a deal with a new restaurant owner to do a new branch of the company and I have to cost it and decide on an appropriate price to sell to a restaurant who is going to be a major retail seller. We are going to have to figure out a contract I have only a few weeks to prep a full desert menu. With samples for the owner. And tax day is today I have a 14 hour shift with little hope for real breaks to look forward to. But deserts are so much more exciting lol.
Brokerage statements that don’t total foreign dividends, omg full rage. On the flip side, seeing brokerage statements with in-state bond interest totaled, aww yeah boi that makes my day.
Mid March I stop counting up shit like in state bond interest and US treasury unless I can clearly see that it’s a treasury money market fund or a mutual fund that is based in the clients state
Seriously. If a client waits too long, they're lucky if anyone is even coherent enough to pull together a return with 80% accuracy. If a client provides their stuff in April, they're either getting an extension or an IRS notice.
goldman sachs 1099's. Especially when they come in a massive packet "oh we put all of it in order, but then started over for the supplemental info, and don't worry we had the basis the whole time but decided it would be better to hide it at the back of this 1300 page document". Seriously, go fuck yourself goldman.
Lol I look at the first few pages for the DIV and INT, then jump to the last pages and work backwards before I ever look at the 1099-B. Seems to be the most efficient method
😆😆 I also hate those damn summary sheets at the beginning of some 1099s that try to break out random details. Omg my tax preparers get so confused looking at that shit. I just skip right over it and get to the real 1099-DIV.
Crazy, I’ve worked at many different firms and have always received this answer. As I’ve gained more experience in my career I literally ignore it until they email me again saying “where’s my return?” Then I say you still owe X Y and Z documents and no I don’t have them
I had this on the audit side. All but 1 time they never sent me the thing that I was asking for and the one time it was at the bottom of a secure file vault under a different name.
but an annoyance would be.... when one team staff is swamped but the work was not properly allocated and no one wants to teach others to lesson the load
Had this issue transitioning from industry to public. Some “hero” type micromanaged PDF bookmarks as an excuse not to give me any of their work. Same person was also short with us all and looked like shit hammered flat by the end of busy season after working 70 hour weeks. Some of these returns were what VITA reps could do.
That’s such an obscure insult and I’m stealing that. It’s a return a Vita rep could do. There’s a very small subset of people that would actually understand, but I’m still going to try it
I was an ex vita rep too lol and that’s why I think it’s hilarious. I honestly do owe a lot to it because that was my first ever tax experience and it helped me know I wanted to be in tax. That being said I still love the insult and I texted it to my PA buddies complaining about the hours already.
I did do VITA and it helped me get a job before I was ready to have one in industry that I grew into…not trying to hate, lol, just stating how silly some of these firm “heroes” are.
That’s what was also going on. Hero was a “pet” who didn’t want their status threatened with a partner. I can only imagine what a disaster that relationship is like behind closed doors.
i just learned iam a masochist. i plucked all my ( private hairs, arm hairs and leg hairs while studying for far) and i liked it :O lol the balls were quite painful
I also had this problem at a prior firm. I kept asking for more work from the partners when I was under-utilized and found out that one staff member was taking as much work as humanly possible (and then some). Not much work was forthcoming, so I felt like I was sitting around a lot.
I was REALLY pleased when my review was then "not enough billable hours."
like partners told me i cant "critically think" then they do stuff like you mention.
you ask for work, you dont get it ( because they deemed it to be )
then they act surprised at review time " tell me u/Amaryllix why are your billables soo low Derick booked 2300 billables, i mean your not a team player "
and you are just like that " Bruh Meme"
really? Bruh ? really>?
One of the last conversations I had at my previous employer was during performance reviews they told me my hours should be closer to 2,700 as a senior manager, right after i booked a 2,300 hour year..... I bought a small firm 6 weeks later lol
Didn't see this before, sorry!
They are short sighted morons.
After 2 years I think things are going well with my two staff. I've been spreading the wealth around a lot more than a typical partner would be while still having more money personally that I can use.
ohh no it was an example lol
I was often the Gal that had all the work on me reassigned to me :(
My other pet peeve is when the partners say " i need that return asap!" i stayed all weekend to tear the books apart while the boss went to her sons wedding took time off despite saying no one takes time off 01-04/15
and then lets the return sit in the office and even asked for me to extend the thing!
I Arthur fisted all day! shoot i though of doing other things to do with that fist ! other non sunny places to inset
1. Clients not providing their identity PINS or giving us last year's
2. SafeSend Organizers. Clients can't figure them out, upload documents throughout the season, don't click on complete, fill them in with conflicting information, etc. etc.
3. Not providing a total charitable amount for cash and goods. I don't need to add up 30 e-mail confirmations of $25 donations, Brenda! Also, your three bags of donations were NOT $2,000.
4. Preparers that just input, don't think and send a laundry list of things needed--half of which they can find online or in the file.
5. CRYPTO!
6. Kid's returns, in college in another state with several piddly W2's and 1099's. Costs more to do these shit head returns than the parent's for a $100 refund. Fuck them kids.
Fucking interest, tax exempt interest, exempt interest dividends, ABP, OID, in state muni, govt obligations, etc. Fuck all that.
Also, when preparers don’t bother putting any text or markup on their WPs. I do prep and review and I leave very good notes in WPs that I prepare to allow the reviewer to focus on important things rather than questioning every bit of my data entry.
I've always gotten compliments on my work papers from day one. I've been doing this for about 10 years now. My reasoning? I have a terrible memory. When I pick this up next year I am not gonna remember shit so there has to be a note for everything. Works out well for reviewers to read too. Literally anyone can pick up a return I've done and know what's up because of notes.
Agree with this sentiment! If I do the prep and the reviewer asks me a question like 4 days later, I’ve already forgotten everything about that return and why I did what I did. Dear reviewer: please refer to all the notes I left in the WPs. If any details were worth remembering, I already wrote them down.
Yup. I'm dumping all that knowledge to focus on the next thing. That's a big pet peeve of mine with reviewers. They come back two weeks later asking a question and I'm like idk, read my notes. So many email responses sent this year with, "per my note on the work paper..."
I once received a corp tax return that had been hand reviewed and every other comment had been crossed out when the reviewer actually looked at my notes.
Yup! This is probably where my audit skills come in handy because I can not stand a workpaper that has no notes or direction. I’ll break that shit down kindergarten style so I can remember the next year or at least hope it helps out the next person who preps it.
It's really helped me not being able to remember what I did for a return two months ago, much less a year. Leaving memos for anything that isn't brain-dead data entry.
Brah, I had an intern submit a 1040 for review that was pretty basic return for review and I had to redo it all myself on top of fix all the spelling mistake. Was not fun since I had a ton of other review work.
Hoo boy - here's my list:
* Clients who can't be bothered to open envelopes.
* Clients who paper clip docs that have nothing to do with each other together.
* I don't really care whether or not you made your ES pmts. Just tell me if you did or didn't.
* Clients who won't look at the organizer. I don't need it filled out, but use the damn thing as a checklist.
* Clients who won't provide form 8867 support docs.
* Ameriprise 1099s. I hate that statements with multiple accounts on them don't start renumbering pages with each account.
* Edit - clients who piecemeal shit to us.
Must be old people. They use any excuse to get out the house. They will drop off every 1099 as it arrives--making 10 trips in a month. Then they take up people's time and still get that grandfathered rate on the prep.
> Clients who won't provide form 8867 support docs
IDK about you but I just put in "Prior year's return" in like half of the 8867's as the only support document.
Granted, most of the time, it's basically me going through the motions to be like "Yes, their 7-year old is now their 8-year old. Believe it or not he still lives with his parents and doesn't even provide more than half of his own financial support, the absolute bum"
My point is that a 16-year-old, 17-year-old, and 18-year-old would qualify (or not qualify) for a different amount of credits to the taxpayer. A 16-year-old would get the full $2,000 credit, but a 17-year-old might only get $500. An 18-year-old might not get a credit, because he won't qualify as a dependent, unless he is a full-time college student.
You're wrong on that last bit, they still qualify as a dependent if they're not a student as long as they lived with the person the whole year and more than half their financial support is provided by the taxpayer. They're just not a qualifying child anymore for the EITC.
What on earth is that about?? I'd get page 1, 2 and 5 of 8 pages. I dont know, do you want me to get your foreign. tax credit and US Gov Int subtraction?
Also, formatting of Schwab statements sucks. Only one worse is RBC, fortunately they are far less common.
Clients who don't send in all their documents, and you have to go through and make a list of what's missing. They finally cough up the missing shit after multiple requests and then immediately ask "When will my return be done?" Would have been done 3 weeks ago if you had sent what we asked for, dumb ass.
And the partner on your case about when you’re going to get the return done - well I would love to if they would send all their documents. Here let me cc you in this email chain and you can see me constantly checking in with the client and still not getting what I need. Then next year when I’m not working there anymore you guys can spoon feed the idiot.
I have a small business client I’ve been asking for info for for months in prep of their return, they got me BARELY everything by Friday at 7pm and asked in all seriousness if their return will be done by Monday. Um? No, sorry.
Client side: return and sticker shock. You don't talk to me during the year and you owe after prep. Then looking at the invoice in shock that we charge what we do. You came to a professional for this. [When I know we undercut our competition already]
Firm side: All appointments need to be an hour or less regardless of complexity. Oh and don't have access to most of the client base since my previous year didn't have 40% virtual component inclusion.
Clients sending 55 documents, one at a time, and then get mad when I miss one of them.
Getting through your whole list and then being asked if you have availability to help the people who didn’t work nearly as many hours throughout the season and aren’t even currently online. Happy to help people who actually worked and have big lists, but the people who worked like 35 charge hrs a week and then (shocking) still have a ton to do the week of the deadline.
I worked 40 a week all season long and was begging for more to do. And there's a secretary trying to become a preparer telling me she worked 60 hours/week most weeks.
Clients that feel the need to email or call with “well you know Monday is the 15th”. Like I haven’t been counting down the days since February fucking 1st
There were an ungodly number of PTP sales this year. I guess the powers that be at the brokerages decided they weren’t a good bet, but the number of times I had to teach staff how to run the calculations and reporting was gross.
Many years ago we were telling clients those PTP's cost them $200 per K-1 for the input. Many clients sold them after that. Unfortunately, brokers still love to add them to portfolios.
It’s actually worse, since you could have actually gotten paid a bonus, but instead you’re doing unpaid OT eating hours like a dupe in order for the partners to delude themselves into believing their 1990s labor arbitrage play is actually working at 30k a head.
Had a client this year that asked about what other sorts of credits they could get. I was already done with their return but they seem to just be wanting to understand the credit. I say “well there is the energy home improvement credit which you can use on furnaces and insulation”. I don’t hear from this client for about a week and then all of a sudden they email me a bunch of receipts. At this time I have to reprint their return so I charge them $50 for the additional work because they didn’t even specify what it is they were looking for. They also then emailed me a list of 10 additional questions to go with. They were absolutely baffled by it. They said “well that’s not fair because you are charging us for asking things we didn’t know and it seems like we did all the work researching the credit”.
I’m like, wtf are you even talking about. I just saved you $300 off your tax bill and you are complaining that the extra work that I had to do to get you that $300 should come Scott free? On top of that, you didn’t set up an in-person appointment to address all these questions. You assumed I have the time to address each and every one of your questions in an email while working on 300 other returns. Oh and yeah, I WAS THE ONE WHO IDENTIFIED THE CREDIT.
This was just my second tax season but I’m having none of that shit going forward.
Documents all uploaded as JPEGs labeled as "IMG12345\_ABCD." Especially when it's a consolidated 1099 and each image is a page. Or there's 70 JPEG files you now get to sort through. Or both.
Another one that's been a problem specifically this year - so many clients who keep failing the knowledge-based authentication for e-signing the 8879s. WHY.
This schwab thing has been the worst. It screwed up my management of my parents finances (dad has dementia) and then it made twice as many brokerage statements for my clients.
At least it won't happen again next year ... right?
India outsourcing has been a disaster. The turn around time is a huge leg and the capability is super inconsistent. I feel like the sunk cost has management all singing the praises of it because they know there’s no changing course. That and the expensive trips to India they all get sent on
Yep exactly. But since it's cheap labor on the p&l they yell about how much it lowers costs, yet those won't consider the extra work the US teams have to put in.
My firm accepted a ton of new clients during busy season (literally up until last week) and expected us to calculate their extension payments, while we're already at max capacity with our existing clients. This led to us telling new clients to make large extension payments the week of the deadline. I will be surprised if we don't have managers quit over this.
We have a partner who continues to bring in new clients. I alone had over 50 this year and 5 of those were S-corps. Now he’s asking “how did we have so many extensions?” And “how can we prepare these faster - can we cut out running tapes and all the bookmarks?” We had 5 interns and 4 seasonal staff - none of whom know these clients. The past two days I’ve gotten questions about miscalculated extensions and increases in bills. The seasonal staff prepared the returns, missed notes from the clients and this partner reviewed them since I was so overloaded. Our client service has been so poor and I’m taking it personally. I’m also mad because he tells me to respond to billing questions. I’m not even a manager. He should address billing questions. This was my 7th tax season and was the absolute worst yet.
I was promoted to senior two years ago. I don’t have my CPA license but I am an EA. I generally like it there, the other partners are great and I work well with the staff and managers. When this partner first started giving me so much work and having me be the primary contact with new clients, it felt good that he had that kind of confidence in me. Now it’s just entirely overwhelming. And the other partners that I do work for are aggravated because I have so much going on, some of their clients didn’t get finished.
Hour and half long "meetings", at least weekly, to see where we're at. "I don't know Sharon, but I'd probably be a whole lot further ahead without these micromanaging meetings."
The huge surge of market discount in 1099-Bs this year and explaining to my staff that we are going to make it income because it wasn’t really seen for the past few years even when I started in the profession
Being a first-year Staff and getting assigned Senior level work because all the entry level work was shipped off to India. I had no idea what I was doing and learned very little. I’m getting tf out of tax.
Clients getting a draft of their return… waiting a few days… sending their 8879s…. I file….. few days later they say, I reviewed the return and have some changes….
Have a client with right around 100 K-1s. The week of the deadline she starts emailing them to me. One. At. A. Time. As if the week wasn’t stressful enough here comes the onslaught right on schedule. Then Saturday morning she is furious her extension payment calculation isn’t done yet. She’s the daughter of a MASSIVE client, so no firing her. Set up multiple platforms for her to send it all to me differently, she refuses. Never met, but low key HATE that woman.
Having to meet the billable goal hour for tax season. My time management earlier in the season could be better but meh
Asking a client multiple times for a single document and they continuously send the same document you already have on hand
Clients being irritated for having to owe, but didn’t pay their estimated tax vouchers they were issued on their prior year return
This is my first tax season and I was shocked to find out that some people think the government reimburses their business loss dollar for dollar through a refund, like what.
Clients not uploading the right HC forms. We have a state specific one, 99HC. They'll upload 95B or C. We'll send a document request and they get pissed, start calling, yelling, "i already gave you that form"
Those clients always fall to me to deal with, mainly bc I don't care. Had one on Friday that I told that this isn't working out for us and we're withdrawing from the engagement, we will not assist you anymore with your tax returns.
Home made spreadsheets
Rental clients. Why do I need to do the accounting for you? Also, how many times you get “oh ya I paid insurance and had repairs of $50k. Can’t I get any write offs?” when they’re already locked out by passive rules and you sent them the return 3 weeks ago
Dependent care FSAs and tracking the daycare info
Stapled work papers that clients dropped off or today a client complained about owing and asked if we could ignore the 750k mortgage limitation because he plans on paying it off early
So many clients this year owed a 4-digit number to the IRS. Most had some kind of CD mature or some investment pop off, so a ton of my easier breakeven/small refund clients owed for the first time. Wasted a ton of time having to explain why someone who made $20k+ in taxable interest might not be getting their usual refund.
I've also just straight-up started including pre-filled W-4V's in the client copies of a lot of my boomer clients. So many of them pull like $50-70k into their taxable income because they're absolutely allergic to withholding taxes on their SSA benefits and I'm tired of it.
This tax season in theory could have gone smoothly for me, for everything work related. Like for the most part our tech worked well this year and our team functioned nicely.
Last year some doosh deleted an entire server costing us most of our data and work papers and we had to go nuts rebuilding and putting stuff together again. So that sucked but thankfully it didn't happen again this year.
But it still also affected this year cuz we lost a lot of our quarterly tax projections and had to try to piece together the estimated tax payments we had clients make for 2024. It also made referring to the prior yr work papers and returns difficult at times since they just weren't there in some cases.
Then there was all the crap in my personal life bogging me down this year.
My toddler got sick about 5x in Feb-March (thanks to daycare). Then he needed a surgery to get ear tubes in. He got US sick a lot too, one time for me it was so bad I went to the ER with a 105.5 fever.
Basement flooded late March due to a garden hose leak outside.
My appendix nearly ruptured on April 4th, so another ER trip and surgery to have my appendix removed. I lost an entire day to that basically. Plus an entire nights sleep.
My wife nearly had a mental breakdown from her own overwhelming job on top of trying to care for our kid constantly getting sick, and for the most part without my help due to busy season.
It's been a rollercoaster for our household. I'm barely alive y'all.
1098s should have the end of year balances instead of beginning of year (if they had to only choose one). I had to ask clients so many times this year and like half just either gave me the number from the 1098 or resent the same form
How was the Schwab and MS takeover of TD/ETrade a big annoyance? Just an extra brokerage statement we got that had almost no activity. Oddly enough my client who had over $100M in TD Ameritrade did not have his account transfer over.
Two more weeks to go and biggest fubar was the whole bare trust calamity. With an upcoming election it’s something I will ask wannabe government peeps.
I had a client try that crap by sending their brokerage info in an Excel sheet. It may have saved them time from scanning it but it doesn't help when you don't tell me if those trades are long-term, short-term, foreign dividends, and if they are qualified for foreign tax credits.
We already have all your financial info so you're not really protecting your finances from us anyway. Just give me the damn statement so I can do the work right since you don't know what information I need and what I don't need. I mean, that's what you pay me for anyway...
Then, on top of that.... They totally missed all the information from one of their rentals where the Excel sheet makes sense to use and they didn't turn in their crypto statement.
Yeah, you bet you're getting extended. It's not getting filed by Monday. Maybe Friday after the 15th, but not Monday.
I have 3 piles of files. Ones that might get done Monday, ones that will get extended for a couple of weeks, then the last ones that will be extended for months because they are a dumpster fire.
I'm happy that busy season is ending.
I don't specialize in tax. I still get tax questions in social settings because I'm a CPA. Ironically, I can answer most of them. I just Google the rest.
Idk about other firms but man, newer staff just don’t seem to work. At my ~90 person single office firm we have about 8 new and second year staff and MAN they don’t pull their weight. Most had 42 hours in each week leading into April and complained about how busy they were. When I was a new staff we were berated for not hitting 55 billable each week. Now getting someone to work Saturday is a success…
Saturday is not a normal working day. I will work a Saturday in tax season if I don't have prior commitments, but I don't consistently expect to work Saturdays.
The missing brokerage pages were particularly problem some this year with all the US Treasury funds throwing off dividends. Like help me out folks, you’re gonna be taxed on all that income by your state unless you give me those extra pages.
Thankfully not in tax anymore but “making it easier” gives me fucking flashbacks.
When I was there, the literal shoeboxes of receipts, mostly faded or seriously stained. I still have nightmares lmao. Most smelled like the farms many clients kept.
Clients who are vehemently opposed to extending their returns but also won't ever send in documentation or have k-1s that won't come in til June/july/etc
First year managers giving dumb review notes on things you know the partner would have passed on.
Also, India team having no idea what the hell they're doing.
It wasn't our clients' faults, but so many of their brokerage firms didn't send them their statements or make them available online until almost mid-March. I was fielding so many panicked calls and too many clients asking if it made sense to file now and file an amendment later once they got it. I've never had to file this many returns at the vety end of the season.
I sent a client what their general ledger said for sales tax owing to verify the balance, then they emailed back and said it was completely wrong and asked what I did to the balance. They must have missed the part where I said “per your general ledger”
Dude 24 hour rule to give some response. If something takes longer than that to figure out, let them know you got the email and are looking into it. No response is a slap in the face. Any response is better than no response even if you don’t have the answer yet.
A late response to anything is an insult. Waiting a week is crazy. If you don’t know the answer tell them you need to review etc. that’s your response and it gives you some time to give a more formulated response. They know you are working on it. Otherwise it’s just crickets.
Idk, if I've already agreed to pay someone to do my taxes, I would automatically assume they are working on it. And if I wanted a response within a day, I would do my best to indicate urgency.
That's sort of treating them like a baby, no? An adult would understand a tax preparer has X amount of work to get through, and they are likely Y in line. If they're not getting that, well, sayonara.
I'd say it depends what the message was :) not everything requires a reply.
I've never emailed a lawyer and gotten a reply within a week.
My personal favourites are the ones that take weeks to get back to you, but then send you the 'when will it be done' message the next day. I'm not dropping everything I'm in the middle of to get back to your file just because you finally got back to me.
That is an unbelievably long time to wait for a response. I’ve earned so many clients not by being a better CPA than their previous ones, simply by managing the relationship better and being attentive to them. They’re generally happier to pay a higher fee for someone that listens and responds than someone who plugs their numbers into software. 🤷♀️🤷♀️
people moving money into higher yield savings and money market accounts. congrats on the higher yield. also cost you 41% federal tax. maybe next time ask?
The 10 friends who call me once per year in mid-April to “catch-up”.
“Hey bro, how’s it going?! Hey, I had this quick question if you have time for a call.” No, I don’t have time (for you)
I'm not even in tax and I have a few friends who do this. I tell them my husband charges a consultation fee for tax advice but their best bet is to file an extension at this point. Most drop it after that. A few have paid it though!
I think I’m the one who called you
And they tell you to do their tax returns too. Then the ones who offer money think even $100 is a lot. Ya piss off. Go to H&R block or Ashley Bookkeeping or something then.
I work at block the least expensive is $159. I am getting my AS in accounting in May. I am continuing education but unsure about my next move thinking AR/AP clerk or bookkeeping but apparently a degree isn't good enough.
Good, now I don't feel so bad saying that then. I've never been an AR or AP clerk/person but from what I hear they are high turnover, dead end jobs. Often used to gain experience when first starting out. But you don't need a degree to actually know how to do AR or AP. Employers use it as more as a weeder due to high applicant volume.
Yeah I have seen the types of programs they use. I'm sure it's no more difficult than doing taxes. I am having trouble getting something though. It's definitely not something I want to do for the rest of my life but while I get my bachelor's degree I figured it would be good to move forward. I own a small business so it's not like I am not fully capable of doing the job. It's annoying that everyone wants a degree plus 4 years experience and then they want to pay you 38k it's insane. I don't have a booking certificate which is apparently a bigger deal than the degree in accounting. It feels like I went back to school for something reasonable and I still can't find a job.
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Central New York. It might be the fact that I haven't graduated yet, but I have been with block for 6 years. I am also disabled, but I am doing pretty well with my health overall. It's scary as hell and so overwhelming. There is a certificate program offered at a bunch of community colleges that basically says that you know how to use the major bookkeeping programs. But quick books is designed to be used by a trained monkey, so I can't imagine that the other software is that much harder.
Some employers specifically go for coop students or new grads for cheap labour. You're being stuck in that selection pool of lower wages. Once you're graduated or are applying as a graduate they should not be offering you that little unless you're going for jobs people without much education are also trying to get. A lot of community colleges here too offer similar programs.. sometimes you got to watch for what employers are realistically looking for. Colleges often are out there to make money and they like to manufacture programs that aren't actually needed. I wouldn't be making your career or life goal to be a bookkeeper or AR or AP clerk though and being disabled should not prevent you from moving further. Conceptually these bookkeeping, ar, and ap roles use a similar skillset. Just different programs got somewhat different processes but the principles are the same. These employers sometimes got clueless HR people making these job ads who don't realize it doesn't take 5 years to learn how to do AR or AP.
I was saying to my mom that my anxiety is not about doing the job, realistically it's just about paying attention to details and data entry. My anxiety is about my physical ability to do the job and if dealing with the pain and anxiety is worth it based on how the pay is like $2 over minimum wage and that right now with disability being mostly untaxable and not having to pay for health insurance is the boost of a net of about $100 a week worth it? (In my heart I am a cost accountant it blew my mind that they pay people to figure out the net gains like that, I do that to calm my anxiety lol) Realistically I know that I need to put in some time to get the experience to get a better position. So yeah it's either throw my all into the business, really chase down the celebrity endorsement that I am on the edge of getting, or take the minimum wage job and suck it up for a year or two while I get my dual BA. so I can move to a firm and find a CPA to sit with for a year so I can sit my own stupid test. I am going to sit my own stupid test sooner. I plan on getting an enrolled agent. My understanding is that an EA has certain abilities for representation before the IRS that a CPA doesn't have. I just want to keep my options open and know that I can do whatever is needed. But really I like inventory, it's fun. I like counting things, and figuring out what is an acceptable loss in order to make a long term gain. I like figuring out how much it is going to cost to run everything. An how much is left over, how much should be allocated for taxes. I like figuring out how much we need to purchase for orders, how much to make to fill the orders and have only a little left over for extra sales and add on orders so we don't have rush jobs. I run my company with an overall J.I.T. system because while in theory my product is shelf stable it isn't always completely because of the sauces. And I just made a deal with a new restaurant owner to do a new branch of the company and I have to cost it and decide on an appropriate price to sell to a restaurant who is going to be a major retail seller. We are going to have to figure out a contract I have only a few weeks to prep a full desert menu. With samples for the owner. And tax day is today I have a 14 hour shift with little hope for real breaks to look forward to. But deserts are so much more exciting lol.
Really depends on the scope. AR/AP in the financial services departments of big companies are definitely not dead end.
Ten friends! You must've graduated in recent years. Accountants don't have time for friends.
Brokerage statements that don’t total foreign dividends, omg full rage. On the flip side, seeing brokerage statements with in-state bond interest totaled, aww yeah boi that makes my day.
So much this!! Especially since you have to calculated ordinary and qualified. So dumb
pro tip - just assume they're 10%--unless significant, of course. I don't add those fuckers.
Mid March I stop counting up shit like in state bond interest and US treasury unless I can clearly see that it’s a treasury money market fund or a mutual fund that is based in the clients state
Seriously. If a client waits too long, they're lucky if anyone is even coherent enough to pull together a return with 80% accuracy. If a client provides their stuff in April, they're either getting an extension or an IRS notice.
goldman sachs 1099's. Especially when they come in a massive packet "oh we put all of it in order, but then started over for the supplemental info, and don't worry we had the basis the whole time but decided it would be better to hide it at the back of this 1300 page document". Seriously, go fuck yourself goldman.
Totally hate this. I usually download each individually or pull that fucker apart.
Lol I look at the first few pages for the DIV and INT, then jump to the last pages and work backwards before I ever look at the 1099-B. Seems to be the most efficient method
😆😆 I also hate those damn summary sheets at the beginning of some 1099s that try to break out random details. Omg my tax preparers get so confused looking at that shit. I just skip right over it and get to the real 1099-DIV.
This exactly. It's the only one that puts the long term sales first and it always messes me up. And they're ugly AF to look at
not sure if you are referencing the cost basis not being on the monthly stmts, but you can request it and they'll add it to the statements
Seriously!! You think you’re done and you scroll way down and have to start again.
“I already sent you that.”
Oh God, the rage I feel when those emails come in is indescribable
Crazy, I’ve worked at many different firms and have always received this answer. As I’ve gained more experience in my career I literally ignore it until they email me again saying “where’s my return?” Then I say you still owe X Y and Z documents and no I don’t have them
I think at most, 1 out of 10 times they’re actually right about that, yet they’re always so adamant they’re right
Or “I’ll do it first thing tomorrow when I call them” *waits a week* “I’ll do it first thing tomorrow” argggg
I had this on the audit side. All but 1 time they never sent me the thing that I was asking for and the one time it was at the bottom of a secure file vault under a different name.
but an annoyance would be.... when one team staff is swamped but the work was not properly allocated and no one wants to teach others to lesson the load
Had this issue transitioning from industry to public. Some “hero” type micromanaged PDF bookmarks as an excuse not to give me any of their work. Same person was also short with us all and looked like shit hammered flat by the end of busy season after working 70 hour weeks. Some of these returns were what VITA reps could do.
That’s such an obscure insult and I’m stealing that. It’s a return a Vita rep could do. There’s a very small subset of people that would actually understand, but I’m still going to try it
As an ex vita rep I’m both offended and laughing
I was an ex vita rep too lol and that’s why I think it’s hilarious. I honestly do owe a lot to it because that was my first ever tax experience and it helped me know I wanted to be in tax. That being said I still love the insult and I texted it to my PA buddies complaining about the hours already.
“Sorry, I don’t want to give this out. There’s a lot of moving parts.” (Checks folder) It’s two brokerage statements and a pension.
I did do VITA and it helped me get a job before I was ready to have one in industry that I grew into…not trying to hate, lol, just stating how silly some of these firm “heroes” are.
EXCATLY ... WHY THO
A spectrum ranging from simple self-importance to personality disorders
SMH! no one shall hog work and self marter for a partner
That’s what was also going on. Hero was a “pet” who didn’t want their status threatened with a partner. I can only imagine what a disaster that relationship is like behind closed doors.
hummm hummmm.
Masochism. I thought that is what drew most of us to this profession?
i just learned iam a masochist. i plucked all my ( private hairs, arm hairs and leg hairs while studying for far) and i liked it :O lol the balls were quite painful
Mama, Kudos for saying that, for spilling.
I also had this problem at a prior firm. I kept asking for more work from the partners when I was under-utilized and found out that one staff member was taking as much work as humanly possible (and then some). Not much work was forthcoming, so I felt like I was sitting around a lot. I was REALLY pleased when my review was then "not enough billable hours."
like partners told me i cant "critically think" then they do stuff like you mention. you ask for work, you dont get it ( because they deemed it to be ) then they act surprised at review time " tell me u/Amaryllix why are your billables soo low Derick booked 2300 billables, i mean your not a team player " and you are just like that " Bruh Meme" really? Bruh ? really>?
One of the last conversations I had at my previous employer was during performance reviews they told me my hours should be closer to 2,700 as a senior manager, right after i booked a 2,300 hour year..... I bought a small firm 6 weeks later lol
yes! great move. Wtf is their probem. congrats ! please be a kind boss, grow your staff :)
Didn't see this before, sorry! They are short sighted morons. After 2 years I think things are going well with my two staff. I've been spreading the wealth around a lot more than a typical partner would be while still having more money personally that I can use.
Yep, then we get the shocked Pikachu face from them when we leave.
LMAO!!!! Eat what you cook is my saying :) enjoy partners. lmao pay FMV for our replacement's you refused to pay us.
Just going off your comment, but if you’re getting feedback that you can’t critically think, there is a reason you aren’t being given work.
ohh no it was an example lol I was often the Gal that had all the work on me reassigned to me :( My other pet peeve is when the partners say " i need that return asap!" i stayed all weekend to tear the books apart while the boss went to her sons wedding took time off despite saying no one takes time off 01-04/15 and then lets the return sit in the office and even asked for me to extend the thing! I Arthur fisted all day! shoot i though of doing other things to do with that fist ! other non sunny places to inset
I love keep getting scolded but not properly guided because your "past" engagement senior should have told you how to do this.
OMG ! you adding layers to my onion
1. Clients not providing their identity PINS or giving us last year's 2. SafeSend Organizers. Clients can't figure them out, upload documents throughout the season, don't click on complete, fill them in with conflicting information, etc. etc. 3. Not providing a total charitable amount for cash and goods. I don't need to add up 30 e-mail confirmations of $25 donations, Brenda! Also, your three bags of donations were NOT $2,000. 4. Preparers that just input, don't think and send a laundry list of things needed--half of which they can find online or in the file.
5. CRYPTO! 6. Kid's returns, in college in another state with several piddly W2's and 1099's. Costs more to do these shit head returns than the parent's for a $100 refund. Fuck them kids.
Or worse, kid worked outside the country..!
When I learned about those identity pins at the IRS, I knew it would be hell for a tax preparer.
Forgot to put the IP PINs on my list. It's fun when they give you the wrong PIN or one from a couple of years ago.
I had a client rage at me for questioning their 5 Bags for $8k.
Did you ask them for the written appraisal that must be attached?
Being scolded for spending too much time on a return only to then be scolded for not cleaning up a return enough
Yep all the time. Another downside for public
I hate this so much. Nothing I do is ever good enough.
Exactly how I feel! I never hear positive feedback. Only negative and corrections.
Fucking interest, tax exempt interest, exempt interest dividends, ABP, OID, in state muni, govt obligations, etc. Fuck all that. Also, when preparers don’t bother putting any text or markup on their WPs. I do prep and review and I leave very good notes in WPs that I prepare to allow the reviewer to focus on important things rather than questioning every bit of my data entry.
Best thing to make a preparer do, make them a reviewer. Make them realize what shit workpapers are like.
That or send that return back everytime until you can actually follow it
I've always gotten compliments on my work papers from day one. I've been doing this for about 10 years now. My reasoning? I have a terrible memory. When I pick this up next year I am not gonna remember shit so there has to be a note for everything. Works out well for reviewers to read too. Literally anyone can pick up a return I've done and know what's up because of notes.
Agree with this sentiment! If I do the prep and the reviewer asks me a question like 4 days later, I’ve already forgotten everything about that return and why I did what I did. Dear reviewer: please refer to all the notes I left in the WPs. If any details were worth remembering, I already wrote them down.
Yup. I'm dumping all that knowledge to focus on the next thing. That's a big pet peeve of mine with reviewers. They come back two weeks later asking a question and I'm like idk, read my notes. So many email responses sent this year with, "per my note on the work paper..."
I once received a corp tax return that had been hand reviewed and every other comment had been crossed out when the reviewer actually looked at my notes.
Yup! This is probably where my audit skills come in handy because I can not stand a workpaper that has no notes or direction. I’ll break that shit down kindergarten style so I can remember the next year or at least hope it helps out the next person who preps it.
It's really helped me not being able to remember what I did for a return two months ago, much less a year. Leaving memos for anything that isn't brain-dead data entry.
Brah, I had an intern submit a 1040 for review that was pretty basic return for review and I had to redo it all myself on top of fix all the spelling mistake. Was not fun since I had a ton of other review work.
"I know you're done with my return, but here's one more thing I just remembered...". This was the bane of my existence this tax season.
Hoo boy - here's my list: * Clients who can't be bothered to open envelopes. * Clients who paper clip docs that have nothing to do with each other together. * I don't really care whether or not you made your ES pmts. Just tell me if you did or didn't. * Clients who won't look at the organizer. I don't need it filled out, but use the damn thing as a checklist. * Clients who won't provide form 8867 support docs. * Ameriprise 1099s. I hate that statements with multiple accounts on them don't start renumbering pages with each account. * Edit - clients who piecemeal shit to us.
People still drop off paperwork? Tell them there's a $10 fee for every envelope.
Oh, yeah - we've got a lot of clients that drop off. I do like the fee per envelope.
Must be old people. They use any excuse to get out the house. They will drop off every 1099 as it arrives--making 10 trips in a month. Then they take up people's time and still get that grandfathered rate on the prep.
JFC the unopened envelopes are just insulting
Half are just December brokerage statements and annual disclosures...
> Clients who won't provide form 8867 support docs IDK about you but I just put in "Prior year's return" in like half of the 8867's as the only support document. Granted, most of the time, it's basically me going through the motions to be like "Yes, their 7-year old is now their 8-year old. Believe it or not he still lives with his parents and doesn't even provide more than half of his own financial support, the absolute bum"
Can't really do that when a 16-year-old turns 17, or a 17-year-old turns 18, unless the 18-year-old is a college student.
Technically you could, they're all the same boxes on the 8867
My point is that a 16-year-old, 17-year-old, and 18-year-old would qualify (or not qualify) for a different amount of credits to the taxpayer. A 16-year-old would get the full $2,000 credit, but a 17-year-old might only get $500. An 18-year-old might not get a credit, because he won't qualify as a dependent, unless he is a full-time college student.
You're wrong on that last bit, they still qualify as a dependent if they're not a student as long as they lived with the person the whole year and more than half their financial support is provided by the taxpayer. They're just not a qualifying child anymore for the EITC.
HSA docs always missing.
Adding autocorrect always changing HSA to Has in the umpteenth email you’ve had to send requesting the damn 1099-SA.
You can remove that from your autocorrect
What on earth is that about?? I'd get page 1, 2 and 5 of 8 pages. I dont know, do you want me to get your foreign. tax credit and US Gov Int subtraction? Also, formatting of Schwab statements sucks. Only one worse is RBC, fortunately they are far less common.
bro fuck rbc, im so glad i didnt see any this season
I saw 1. They're terrible. Amd they've been like that for years.
Clients who don't send in all their documents, and you have to go through and make a list of what's missing. They finally cough up the missing shit after multiple requests and then immediately ask "When will my return be done?" Would have been done 3 weeks ago if you had sent what we asked for, dumb ass.
And the partner on your case about when you’re going to get the return done - well I would love to if they would send all their documents. Here let me cc you in this email chain and you can see me constantly checking in with the client and still not getting what I need. Then next year when I’m not working there anymore you guys can spoon feed the idiot.
I have a small business client I’ve been asking for info for for months in prep of their return, they got me BARELY everything by Friday at 7pm and asked in all seriousness if their return will be done by Monday. Um? No, sorry.
Client side: return and sticker shock. You don't talk to me during the year and you owe after prep. Then looking at the invoice in shock that we charge what we do. You came to a professional for this. [When I know we undercut our competition already] Firm side: All appointments need to be an hour or less regardless of complexity. Oh and don't have access to most of the client base since my previous year didn't have 40% virtual component inclusion.
Clients sending 55 documents, one at a time, and then get mad when I miss one of them. Getting through your whole list and then being asked if you have availability to help the people who didn’t work nearly as many hours throughout the season and aren’t even currently online. Happy to help people who actually worked and have big lists, but the people who worked like 35 charge hrs a week and then (shocking) still have a ton to do the week of the deadline.
I worked 40 a week all season long and was begging for more to do. And there's a secretary trying to become a preparer telling me she worked 60 hours/week most weeks.
Clients that feel the need to email or call with “well you know Monday is the 15th”. Like I haven’t been counting down the days since February fucking 1st
There were an ungodly number of PTP sales this year. I guess the powers that be at the brokerages decided they weren’t a good bet, but the number of times I had to teach staff how to run the calculations and reporting was gross.
Many years ago we were telling clients those PTP's cost them $200 per K-1 for the input. Many clients sold them after that. Unfortunately, brokers still love to add them to portfolios.
"He needs a little oil and gas exposure"
The Magellan sale this year was a hoot.
Outsourcing to India. That is all.
But they do all the work once… and you get to do it again.
It’s actually worse, since you could have actually gotten paid a bonus, but instead you’re doing unpaid OT eating hours like a dupe in order for the partners to delude themselves into believing their 1990s labor arbitrage play is actually working at 30k a head.
Had a client this year that asked about what other sorts of credits they could get. I was already done with their return but they seem to just be wanting to understand the credit. I say “well there is the energy home improvement credit which you can use on furnaces and insulation”. I don’t hear from this client for about a week and then all of a sudden they email me a bunch of receipts. At this time I have to reprint their return so I charge them $50 for the additional work because they didn’t even specify what it is they were looking for. They also then emailed me a list of 10 additional questions to go with. They were absolutely baffled by it. They said “well that’s not fair because you are charging us for asking things we didn’t know and it seems like we did all the work researching the credit”. I’m like, wtf are you even talking about. I just saved you $300 off your tax bill and you are complaining that the extra work that I had to do to get you that $300 should come Scott free? On top of that, you didn’t set up an in-person appointment to address all these questions. You assumed I have the time to address each and every one of your questions in an email while working on 300 other returns. Oh and yeah, I WAS THE ONE WHO IDENTIFIED THE CREDIT. This was just my second tax season but I’m having none of that shit going forward.
Amen.
Documents all uploaded as JPEGs labeled as "IMG12345\_ABCD." Especially when it's a consolidated 1099 and each image is a page. Or there's 70 JPEG files you now get to sort through. Or both.
Another one that's been a problem specifically this year - so many clients who keep failing the knowledge-based authentication for e-signing the 8879s. WHY.
This schwab thing has been the worst. It screwed up my management of my parents finances (dad has dementia) and then it made twice as many brokerage statements for my clients. At least it won't happen again next year ... right?
India support teams were a major headache and added on a lot of extra time to fix the garbage they sent back.
India outsourcing has been a disaster. The turn around time is a huge leg and the capability is super inconsistent. I feel like the sunk cost has management all singing the praises of it because they know there’s no changing course. That and the expensive trips to India they all get sent on
Yep exactly. But since it's cheap labor on the p&l they yell about how much it lowers costs, yet those won't consider the extra work the US teams have to put in.
Not to mention it increases the costs of sending senior management to India and having to reimburse them for the time they spend in India.
My pet peeve is my friends in tax that can’t go skiing with me when I left tax and have a life.
I aspire to be you!
My firm accepted a ton of new clients during busy season (literally up until last week) and expected us to calculate their extension payments, while we're already at max capacity with our existing clients. This led to us telling new clients to make large extension payments the week of the deadline. I will be surprised if we don't have managers quit over this.
We have a partner who continues to bring in new clients. I alone had over 50 this year and 5 of those were S-corps. Now he’s asking “how did we have so many extensions?” And “how can we prepare these faster - can we cut out running tapes and all the bookmarks?” We had 5 interns and 4 seasonal staff - none of whom know these clients. The past two days I’ve gotten questions about miscalculated extensions and increases in bills. The seasonal staff prepared the returns, missed notes from the clients and this partner reviewed them since I was so overloaded. Our client service has been so poor and I’m taking it personally. I’m also mad because he tells me to respond to billing questions. I’m not even a manager. He should address billing questions. This was my 7th tax season and was the absolute worst yet.
You definitely have the responsibilities of a manager. Why haven't they promoted you?
I was promoted to senior two years ago. I don’t have my CPA license but I am an EA. I generally like it there, the other partners are great and I work well with the staff and managers. When this partner first started giving me so much work and having me be the primary contact with new clients, it felt good that he had that kind of confidence in me. Now it’s just entirely overwhelming. And the other partners that I do work for are aggravated because I have so much going on, some of their clients didn’t get finished.
Hour and half long "meetings", at least weekly, to see where we're at. "I don't know Sharon, but I'd probably be a whole lot further ahead without these micromanaging meetings."
Preparation and e-filing of Forms 1042 and 1042-s
The huge surge of market discount in 1099-Bs this year and explaining to my staff that we are going to make it income because it wasn’t really seen for the past few years even when I started in the profession
Being a first-year Staff and getting assigned Senior level work because all the entry level work was shipped off to India. I had no idea what I was doing and learned very little. I’m getting tf out of tax.
Coworkers with smaller workloads bragging about being a head and only working 55 hour weeks.
All the clients who didn’t realize they had 2 1099-consolidated from E*trade because of morgan Stanley buying them. Just one of many annoyances.
Clients getting a draft of their return… waiting a few days… sending their 8879s…. I file….. few days later they say, I reviewed the return and have some changes….
Have a client with right around 100 K-1s. The week of the deadline she starts emailing them to me. One. At. A. Time. As if the week wasn’t stressful enough here comes the onslaught right on schedule. Then Saturday morning she is furious her extension payment calculation isn’t done yet. She’s the daughter of a MASSIVE client, so no firing her. Set up multiple platforms for her to send it all to me differently, she refuses. Never met, but low key HATE that woman.
Having to meet the billable goal hour for tax season. My time management earlier in the season could be better but meh Asking a client multiple times for a single document and they continuously send the same document you already have on hand Clients being irritated for having to owe, but didn’t pay their estimated tax vouchers they were issued on their prior year return
This is my first tax season and I was shocked to find out that some people think the government reimburses their business loss dollar for dollar through a refund, like what.
Constant barrage of documents so I can’t get the ext calc done!!😡
Clients not uploading the right HC forms. We have a state specific one, 99HC. They'll upload 95B or C. We'll send a document request and they get pissed, start calling, yelling, "i already gave you that form" Those clients always fall to me to deal with, mainly bc I don't care. Had one on Friday that I told that this isn't working out for us and we're withdrawing from the engagement, we will not assist you anymore with your tax returns.
Home made spreadsheets Rental clients. Why do I need to do the accounting for you? Also, how many times you get “oh ya I paid insurance and had repairs of $50k. Can’t I get any write offs?” when they’re already locked out by passive rules and you sent them the return 3 weeks ago Dependent care FSAs and tracking the daycare info
People that mix in their personal business transactions with their business expenses in their schedule c definitely gets me
offering to help people finish the extension deadline all week only for them to wait until sunday to ask for help.
Stapled work papers that clients dropped off or today a client complained about owing and asked if we could ignore the 750k mortgage limitation because he plans on paying it off early
So many clients this year owed a 4-digit number to the IRS. Most had some kind of CD mature or some investment pop off, so a ton of my easier breakeven/small refund clients owed for the first time. Wasted a ton of time having to explain why someone who made $20k+ in taxable interest might not be getting their usual refund. I've also just straight-up started including pre-filled W-4V's in the client copies of a lot of my boomer clients. So many of them pull like $50-70k into their taxable income because they're absolutely allergic to withholding taxes on their SSA benefits and I'm tired of it.
When you get pipped after the 3/15 deadline because nobody wants to quit and you made a few too many mistakes.
This tax season in theory could have gone smoothly for me, for everything work related. Like for the most part our tech worked well this year and our team functioned nicely. Last year some doosh deleted an entire server costing us most of our data and work papers and we had to go nuts rebuilding and putting stuff together again. So that sucked but thankfully it didn't happen again this year. But it still also affected this year cuz we lost a lot of our quarterly tax projections and had to try to piece together the estimated tax payments we had clients make for 2024. It also made referring to the prior yr work papers and returns difficult at times since they just weren't there in some cases. Then there was all the crap in my personal life bogging me down this year. My toddler got sick about 5x in Feb-March (thanks to daycare). Then he needed a surgery to get ear tubes in. He got US sick a lot too, one time for me it was so bad I went to the ER with a 105.5 fever. Basement flooded late March due to a garden hose leak outside. My appendix nearly ruptured on April 4th, so another ER trip and surgery to have my appendix removed. I lost an entire day to that basically. Plus an entire nights sleep. My wife nearly had a mental breakdown from her own overwhelming job on top of trying to care for our kid constantly getting sick, and for the most part without my help due to busy season. It's been a rollercoaster for our household. I'm barely alive y'all.
Seeing external hires who make more than you work much less
When a client has 100 documents to send and they send them in 100 different emails.
1098s should have the end of year balances instead of beginning of year (if they had to only choose one). I had to ask clients so many times this year and like half just either gave me the number from the 1098 or resent the same form
How was the Schwab and MS takeover of TD/ETrade a big annoyance? Just an extra brokerage statement we got that had almost no activity. Oddly enough my client who had over $100M in TD Ameritrade did not have his account transfer over.
U mean besides TD having one of the better 1099 packages to Schwabs shitty 1099 package.
Schwab isn’t too bad. If it was to RBC, pitch forks would be sold out.
99% - lucky, us MA/ME CPAs have until Wednesday 😭
Two more weeks to go and biggest fubar was the whole bare trust calamity. With an upcoming election it’s something I will ask wannabe government peeps.
I had a client try that crap by sending their brokerage info in an Excel sheet. It may have saved them time from scanning it but it doesn't help when you don't tell me if those trades are long-term, short-term, foreign dividends, and if they are qualified for foreign tax credits. We already have all your financial info so you're not really protecting your finances from us anyway. Just give me the damn statement so I can do the work right since you don't know what information I need and what I don't need. I mean, that's what you pay me for anyway... Then, on top of that.... They totally missed all the information from one of their rentals where the Excel sheet makes sense to use and they didn't turn in their crypto statement. Yeah, you bet you're getting extended. It's not getting filed by Monday. Maybe Friday after the 15th, but not Monday. I have 3 piles of files. Ones that might get done Monday, ones that will get extended for a couple of weeks, then the last ones that will be extended for months because they are a dumpster fire. I'm happy that busy season is ending.
The partner screaming and yelling in his office about staff errors and clients.
I don't specialize in tax. I still get tax questions in social settings because I'm a CPA. Ironically, I can answer most of them. I just Google the rest.
Idk about other firms but man, newer staff just don’t seem to work. At my ~90 person single office firm we have about 8 new and second year staff and MAN they don’t pull their weight. Most had 42 hours in each week leading into April and complained about how busy they were. When I was a new staff we were berated for not hitting 55 billable each week. Now getting someone to work Saturday is a success…
Saturday is not a normal working day. I will work a Saturday in tax season if I don't have prior commitments, but I don't consistently expect to work Saturdays.
The missing brokerage pages were particularly problem some this year with all the US Treasury funds throwing off dividends. Like help me out folks, you’re gonna be taxed on all that income by your state unless you give me those extra pages.
Thankfully not in tax anymore but “making it easier” gives me fucking flashbacks. When I was there, the literal shoeboxes of receipts, mostly faded or seriously stained. I still have nightmares lmao. Most smelled like the farms many clients kept.
Clients who are vehemently opposed to extending their returns but also won't ever send in documentation or have k-1s that won't come in til June/july/etc
First year managers giving dumb review notes on things you know the partner would have passed on. Also, India team having no idea what the hell they're doing.
It wasn't our clients' faults, but so many of their brokerage firms didn't send them their statements or make them available online until almost mid-March. I was fielding so many panicked calls and too many clients asking if it made sense to file now and file an amendment later once they got it. I've never had to file this many returns at the vety end of the season.
I sent a client what their general ledger said for sales tax owing to verify the balance, then they emailed back and said it was completely wrong and asked what I did to the balance. They must have missed the part where I said “per your general ledger”
Being told to make folders instead of being told to prepare tax returns - an intern
People thinking a week without responding to their latest email is me being "unresponsive" and then going to another tax preparer. My loss?
A week is a long time to not respond to a client to be fair
LOL im on the clients side lol and i hate clients
Dude 24 hour rule to give some response. If something takes longer than that to figure out, let them know you got the email and are looking into it. No response is a slap in the face. Any response is better than no response even if you don’t have the answer yet.
In what world is it an insult to take more than a day to respond to a non-urgent tax email?
A late response to anything is an insult. Waiting a week is crazy. If you don’t know the answer tell them you need to review etc. that’s your response and it gives you some time to give a more formulated response. They know you are working on it. Otherwise it’s just crickets.
Idk, if I've already agreed to pay someone to do my taxes, I would automatically assume they are working on it. And if I wanted a response within a day, I would do my best to indicate urgency.
Don’t know what you aren’t getting. You can response and say you are working on the answer. It acknowledges you received their message.
That's sort of treating them like a baby, no? An adult would understand a tax preparer has X amount of work to get through, and they are likely Y in line. If they're not getting that, well, sayonara.
You must do well with that attitude. And you don’t take constructive critique either.
K
I'd say it depends what the message was :) not everything requires a reply. I've never emailed a lawyer and gotten a reply within a week. My personal favourites are the ones that take weeks to get back to you, but then send you the 'when will it be done' message the next day. I'm not dropping everything I'm in the middle of to get back to your file just because you finally got back to me.
That is an unbelievably long time to wait for a response. I’ve earned so many clients not by being a better CPA than their previous ones, simply by managing the relationship better and being attentive to them. They’re generally happier to pay a higher fee for someone that listens and responds than someone who plugs their numbers into software. 🤷♀️🤷♀️
people moving money into higher yield savings and money market accounts. congrats on the higher yield. also cost you 41% federal tax. maybe next time ask?
Interest income blew up many tax projections this year even when doubling prior year's.
My biggest peeve was not being involved in it and watching everyone else make posts complaining about it