I have a client who I have been bugging to send me his information since March. We finally get it the last week of September. He owes since he sold a rental property and had a gain. I manage to get his return done and send it to him to sign. He is now INSISTING that he does not owe at the state level because, when he logs into the DOR site, it shows $0. Of course, because we haven’t even filed his tax return. He even called them and they told him that no balances are due now. I just can’t anymore. I’ll wait for the letter from the state to come saying he never paid the balance due and then I am firing him.

Happy 10/15!

Just had two clients come in basically one time. One was a lady with a rental property. Tried to use TurboTax for schedule E. Got confused with AI and then came to me. I did her return and then she complained about my fees. Then she basically asked me to show her how I prepared her return probably so she can try and do it herself next year.

Had another one come in who basically wants me to analyze her withholding so she doesn't owe taxes. Originally wanted to use me for tax prep but seems like she just also wants to keep using turbo tax herself.

I'm just annoyed by these one timers who are only coming to me so they can take the correct returns I prepare and try to copy them next year.

Has anyone seen them?

Basically, I am a new partner as of 2024 but have been with the firm 9 years now. It’s a small firm of now 3 partners and 10 employees. There was a 4th partner who is no longer part of the firm, but is working their last year as an employee while they transition the remainder of their clients to me and the other partners.

I was naive when I agreed to adopt my share, but now I know this was a mistake. I am in a position where I turn down probably 5 new clients a week in the off season and countless ones during busy season, so I am by no means hurting for work.

Basically, this partner was doing their own thing, not following office procedures and just allowing clients to set the rules with when and how they wanted things done and I will not operate like this as any sane person shouldn’t. Examples like, clients not signing engagement letters and then dragging their feet when I make them. Turning documents in at the latest possible second and expecting an immediate turn around time. Unreconciled books or just flat out terrible books and then a refusal to fix them. There’s more things, but I’d be here all day.

I wish I could take back my word and just fire them all, but I am a new enough partner that I don’t think that would go over well and it’s a small community who the previous partner is well known in. The other 2 current partners are in agreement with me though that we need to get them retrained asap.

So, as soon as tomorrow is over I will be starting the process of retraining as many as possible. I would like to do this without meeting with every single person if possible, but I know I will have to eventually meet with most of them to get my point across.

My question is, how would you go about it? My current thought is sending out a letter of my expectations and what I will require for me to prep your return, but I am afraid these are the types of clients who will just immediately pitch something like that. Curious to hear from anyone who has gone through something similar.

Thanks for reading my novel during the extension crunch.

I just moved down to Ft. Lauderdale last summer. My office is in Vermont with two staff and very big clientele, but I would like to start building a book of clients down here as well and open another office. I was wondering if anyone would be willing to chat with me and give me the lay of the land. Trying to stand out in FL is very different from Vermont, where I'm pretty well known statewide. Big fish, little pond, to little fish, big pond. I've been trying to find any tax preparer groups or similar around here that I could join. NATP doesn't have anything until January. Any guidance would be greatly appreciated.

I have some larger clients that are becoming more complex and complicated and I can’t keep up with all the moving parts. My knowledge only goes so far. What’s the best way to disengage clients like that? 2025 returns were only just completed but I’m thinking I need to unload them soon so they have time to find someone else for 2026 taxes.

I last made a timesheet entry August 27th. I made it until today, October 12th, before anyone complained. Previous record was like 2.5 weeks tops. I was told "You didn't make a single entry in September. Not just September but half of October. And some of August. No one else has ever done anything like that before"

I am department head, staff people please don't try this.

Is it just me or have they ramped up marketing. Never heard much about this firm any thoughts? They are popping up in my sm lately.

Has anyone found or made a repository for the tax treaty text as amended? It's really annoying looking at six different successive documents that each reference the one before and the paragraphs they are changing.

What is everyone’s immediate thoughts when they hear “business development” as tax professionals? Did anyone get any training on it? Know where to start? How to find and meet people and make offers? Wish you had more leverage with leadership from bringing in money to their firm?

I’ve heard only platitudes most of my 20+ year career:

“go knock on doors”
“Sell cross-line of service”
“you need to build a book of business”
“attend a conference”
“develop client relationships”
“build trust”

I never saw any training on it, and no rainmaker shared their specific process - why would they? I’m sure they’d feel less valuable sharing. Where do you turn?

Am curious what questions this group has and if they are the same as mine. I don’t have actionable answers.

I know the general advice is to talk with a broker, but I just want to get a gut-check from this group.

I'm planning a big career change that will require me to pretty much completely shut down my firm. My plan with starting the firm was always that I would be able to sell when I'm done, but the problem is that this career change is coming a lot sooner than I expected.

I started the firm summer of 2024, so I really have tax season 2025 where I was just getting started, then tax season 2026 where things really heated up significantly. I'm planning on selling after tax season 2027. So realistically I'll have about three years of tenure with the firm before I'd be trying to sell it.

Ultimately my question is if my firm is sellable as-is, or if it would be a tricky sell, given how short-lived it's been?

Top line revenue in 2025 was $146k, 2026 will be around $300k, total of 271 returns this year (about 10 bookkeeping clients and then about 70/30 split between 1040s and 1065-1120s with a handful of trusts and 990s), outside of Raleigh, NC. One employee who is an office manager who assists with prep and all admin, but almost all of the tax prep is done by me.

Due to some changes in my life, I have reached a point where it's time to sell my firm. How do I even go about that?

I’ve been asked if I’d be interested in preparing the income tax filings for a local nursing home with two owners. Is there anything special I need to know about? I haven’t worked with any businesses that are involved in Medicare or Medicaid. I’m well versed with partnerships and a corps. Are there any special disclosures that apply to for profit nursing homes?

Looking for advice on what software to use. I named LaCerte and ProConnect because I only used these two before, but not only looking at these.

If LaCerte, what do you think about Intuit's basic hosting vs maintaining a LAN server?

This is more of an added service that some clients demand, so I end up filing ~10 returns total in a year.

Individual returns

• Often no state returns

• Often half a dozen or more 5471s on each return, a substantial portion of which are cat 4 and cat 5a. Most of these require 962 elections.

• Sometimes (though much less often) 8865 from PE funds. More commonly foreign partnership interests with no K-1s.

• Large number of SFFAs and FFAs on 8938/FBAR for each taxpayer.

• Often 8621s related to PE funds, some (but not all) have QEF statements.

• Usually no 3520/3520-A from trusts, but often 3520 from foreign gifts.

• Some have treaty resourcing for FTC.

• MFS with community property allocation is common.

Corporations

• On 1120, it's usually a corporation that has ceased doing business and is amending last x years to add Form 5472.

• On 1120-F, reporting imputed income on late returns in last x years. Sometimes (but rarely) has a treaty claim for reduced rate.

Advice is really appreciated.

So I have a client who filed FBAR in prior years but this year is under the 10K limit. Wondering if we just should file the FBAR anyways to keep the consistency vs not filing anything at all and appear noncompliant.

I wouldn't do this for 8938 but for the FBAR purposes, it just seems better to be consistent. What do you all think?

TIA

I have a client who is going through a divorce and is filing MFS. They reside in California, so Community Property. How do you get ProConnect to apply the 8958 to the return?

Also, the ex is not willing to share her full tax info, so I only have gross earnings from the attorney- she won’t turn over how much they actually paid in taxes. My though was to file
, and if my client overpays, we will file an amendment. Thoughts?

Does anyone here use Drake and could help? I tried calling support, we had a client in a partnership sell a rental and a portion of the suspended losses should be freed, however I don't see a section to enter the freed portion or can adjust the 8582. Anyone have any experience with this?

So I did some due diligence and signed up for SmartWiz, an AI OCR & data entry platform.

Wanted to give you all my thoughts and hopefully this review helps you.

Some context:

We only do 1040 work, mostly W2, retirees, some 1099 schedule C stuff, brokerage, the basics. No K-1, no 1120, no 1065, no estates, etc.

Tax prep is purely a marketing engine for us to find new financial planning clients.

I’m an EA and I have two non-credentialed contract workers that just do data entry. I review, sign & deliver all returns.

I was searching for something to help me expand capacity because we are going to grow significantly this year (like probably 3x-5x).

We use TaxSlayer ProWeb and TaxDome. Decent amount of clients that give us paper forms as well.

We’re in PA so we have state returns and local returns to deal with.

I had a new client that was on extension so I figured this was a good time for a trial run. She has W2 and a couple 1099s (one NEC). And here’s how SmartWiz went:

First: it’s a Google Chrome extension. SOC 2 compliant, encrypted both ways, only US developers, data doesn’t train models. Checked enough boxes for me to be comfortable.

Opened TaxSlayer (TS). 20 seconds to login.

I downloaded the ZIP files from TaxDome (TD) for the client’s uploads and organizer and drag/drop into SmartWiz (2 min max).

SmartWiz (SW) compiled all the data in another 2-3 mins.

SW then started filling in the data in TS (another 2-3 mins).

I did have to make two minor adjustments (it didn’t put client address in for Schedule C and another minor PA thing).

I did have to do the local return manually. No big deal.

All-in, my first time running the program, I was done within 10 minutes. Of course, I spent more time reviewing accuracy but I’d be doing that anyway.

The cool thing is that you can run up to 10 clients simultaneously, so it can be a real time-saver for 1040 work.

They said it works with TaxSlayer ProWeb, Drake desktop, Drake online, OLT Pro and a couple other software systems right now.

Cost ranges from like $16-$20 per return.

Not a shill, not involved with the company, just a (so far) happy new customer.

Quick question. I'm in AZ so this is my first PA-677. As an EA, which designation do I use? I'm looking at the instructions and am not really seeing one that fits other than other. Am I missing something?

Howdy all! I’m close to acquiring another small office a few hours away. I want the location because I’m an FA too. If you have multiple offices, small firm, mostly just in take at one and work out of the other, what tech stack do you use and why? Thanks any input is greatly appreciated

Hello Pro's,

I have a potential client with 7 gas stations/Convenience stores. He claims that he pays around $200 per station for both bookkeeping and payroll + few thousand dollars for Tax preparation. so total around 18k.

I have no idea what his current accountant is doing, she is 75 years old lady in low cost of living city. How can she survive on this fees.....

I was really thinking of asking $400 per Month for each gas station Bookkeeping/Payroll+ $7000 for S-Corp returns.. so almost 45k yearly.

What do you think ? Is it less or more ?

I've used IRS TDS a zillion times but this is the first time I'm seeing this. For a certain taxpayer I couldn't get account transcripts for a couple years due to "NAP Check failed." But I could get other years, and I could also get wage and income transcripts for the same years than the account transcripts failed.

Any idea what this is about? I tried it several times.

Just curious about who likes it and why? I know the downsides would like to hear more raves? need to switch back to unless a something better pops up. We are on UT SaaS so limited with some other stack pieces.

Hello all. I've had my firm for about a year now and nothing really to show for it, although I have been working in construction concurrently.

Aside: Not the best idea if I wanted to build my firm more than it is now, I take responsibility for that. I wanted to take that construction job because I had some cushion to take something lower paying to let me learn the field side of my ICP. I just quit today because my cushion ran out from one medical bill and because I realized I was essentially paying to have that job with all the gas I guzzle to get to the jobsites. Aside over.

Because of an upcoming medical bill payment due on Oct 14, I am in a tight spot and need to generate low-cost revenue immediately. Given the impending Oct 15 deadline, which of these tactics should I sprint on?

1. Calling as many CPAs/tax pros in my area to let them know I want their panicked last-minute inbound leads if they're at capacity.
2. Going in person to my ICP's offices and just saying, "Hi there, I don't want to waste your time. My name is [Name], and I'd like to leave my card for my tax and bookkeeping firm. I'm a carpenter and federally licensed tax professional. My firm specializes only in construction, so we can help with your books, job costing, and taxes. Thanks."
3. Cold calling my ICPs instead.
4. Posting on local platforms like Facebook or Nextdoor to say I'm available for bookkeeping and tax services.
5. Host an event where I speak about the specific pain points of my ICP.

If you were in my shoes with 9 days to make something happen, what would you do?

Hi Everybody,

I am revamping website, and I honestly can’t decide on this point. I am wondering what yall think about this to help with information. if you do it what was the result compared to no transparent pricing?