Category: Operate A More Efficient Tax Firm

Unlocking Your Productivity Potential: A Tax Professional’s Guide to Time Mastery, Part Deux

As a licensed tax professional, obviously you’re no stranger to the pressures of deadlines and the constant juggling of client demands. But what if I told you that there are ways to not just survive but thrive in this high-stakes environment? Today, we’re diving into a treasure trove of (our second blog post) productivity boosters that will revolutionize the way you work and live. Let’s unlock your true potential and transform your practice!

Harness the Power of Time-Tracking

Imagine having a crystal ball that shows you exactly where your time goes. That’s what time-tracking software offers. By meticulously logging your activities, you gain invaluable insights into your work patterns. Are you spending too much time on low-value tasks? Is there a particular type of return that’s eating up more hours than it should? Are you doing tasks that you should simply not be doing at all? With this data at your fingertips, you can make informed decisions about how to allocate your time more effectively. It’s like having a personal productivity coach, guiding you towards peak performance.

Standardize Your Way to Success

In the world of tax preparation, consistency is king. By building standardized processes for repeating activities, you’re essentially creating a productivity superhighway. Think about it – how much mental energy do you expend each time you start a new tax return, trying to remember all the steps? Or using the copier to copy double sided and remove blank pages. By developing and documenting (on paper or video) standard procedures, you free up that mental bandwidth for more complex problem-solving. Plus, standardization makes it easier to train new team members and ensures quality across the board. It’s the secret sauce that allows you to scale your practice without sacrificing excellence. You cannot scale your practice effectively without this step

The Art of Saying No
In a service-oriented profession, it’s tempting to say yes to every request that comes your way. But here’s the truth bomb – every yes to a non-essential commitment is a no to something that truly matters. Learning to say no is not just about time management; it’s about energy management. By carefully curating your commitments, you ensure that your finite resources are directed towards high-impact activities. Remember, you’re not just saying no to a task; you’re saying yes to your priorities and your sanity. This could be saying NO to work you don’t want to do, say foreign income or … Continue reading

What is the singular focus of your tax firm?

Last year, we were one of the first companies to provide comprehensive CPE on the PPP and EIDL processes so that you could assist your clients with such matters.

Because of that, I’ve been getting a ton of emails from people over the last three weeks asking when we’re going to teach PPP/EIDL update classes.

Here’s your moment of disappointment: This year, we are choosing NOT to present such classes, despite recent legislation.

Why not? For a number of reasons:

1). The PPP program hasn’t changed that much from last year. You should be able to fill in the gaps easily from journal articles and official guidance from SBA and Treasury.
2). The EIDL program has changed even less, so ditto to above.
3). It’s not our core competency, doesn’t fall into our central mission, and is therefore something we shouldn’t even focus on.

It’s this last thing that I really want to address.

Our website is https://TaxResolutionAcademy.com.

Tax. Resolution.

Hmmm… If something needs “resolution”, that must mean there is some sort of issue. A problem. A dispute.

About taxes.

See, the name itself provides a clue about where our boundaries are.

In my normal email signature, I include a quote from author and entrepreneur Oliver Emberton: “Monomaniacal focus on a single goal is perhaps the ultimate success stratagem.”

What’s he talking about? Focus on what you do best.

If you’ve been reading my emails for a while, you may be thinking that I’m about to go off on a rant about niching your business. Focusing on specific services and serving specific industries or professions.

Yes, yes, I am. But not here. If you want to read my past rants, start here or here.

My monomaniacal focus right now is on finishing development of the CTR™ program. There are still about 20 classes, of two hours each, still to prepare. There’s a case study practicum to create. An exam to write. In terms of new content creation, this is my focus right now, as it should be — not PPP and EIDL matters that are not directly related to our core focus.

You should be applying a filter, also. If 100% of your client base consists of W-2 wage earners, it’s an absolute waste of your time, money, and brain cycles to learn about PPP and EIDL stuff. Absolute waste. Shouldn’t even be a consideration. On the other hand, if your … Continue reading

Why You Should Become An Enrolled Agent

Note: If you’re already an EA, CPA, or attorney, then this post will be of zero interest to you. If you’re an unenrolled preparer, however, keep reading…

It’s becoming increasingly common for me to receive emails like this one from a return preparer in Sacramento, CA:

I would like to pursue this opportunity. I am currently not an EA. What ways have others moved ahead until they became an EA? Can I hire one? What do you suggest?

Here was my verbatim reply to this particular email:

By “this opportunity”, I presume you’re referring to collections representation services?

While hiring an EA, CPA, or attorney is definitely an option, I would still encourage you to obtain your Enrolled Agent license yourself. Honestly, the test isn’t that difficult for an experienced tax preparer that puts in a couple weeks of study. The Gleim test prep books are the ones I used, and they were pretty good.

The reason I would encourage you to get your license yourself, even if you hire a licensed person to do the work, is because by IRS regulation, you must be licensed in order to solicit representation services. In other words, it’s a violation for an unlicensed person, even an experienced preparer, to sell licensed representation services.

A couple weeks of study and a few hundred dollars for the tests is a tiny price to pay to be able to sell something as lucrative as tax resolution, in my biased opinion. 🙂

Since this comes up frequently, I figured it was finally worth it’s own blog post, so here we go.

Let’s start with the one thing that I feel I’ve become a broken record about over the past few years:

In order to sell tax resolution services, you MUST be licensed. This is non-negotiable.

I’m starting with this, instead of “why you should be licensed”, because I feel like it’s the most salient point for anybody reading this blog. Most folks end up here because of the information I provide on marketing and selling tax resolution services.

In case you’re not familiar with Revenue Procedure 81-38, this was the original Revenue Procedure covering limited practice without enrollment. Section 8 of this Revenue Procedure explicitly bars individuals that are NOT an EA, CPA, or attorney from soliciting representation services (which is what “tax resolution”) is.

Many folks erroneously believe that every provision of 81-38 was replaced by Revenue Procedure 2014-42… Continue reading