Category: Operate A More Efficient Tax Firm

There are only a few hours remaining for you to pre-order the first edition of the Tax Resolution Systems manual. I’m meeting with my local printer at 3pm Pacific today, so I absolutely need a final unit count prior to that.

If you’ve been on the fence about ordering, don’t forget that, after today, the price for this complete set of checklists for running a tax resolution practice will go up to it’s normal price.

Order your copy here –https://taxresolutionacademy.com/systems

If you’ve never used a checklist-based system to do anything in your practice, then you’re in for a high-efficiency injection of organization and systemization into your practice by following checklists.

This manual includes checklists for everything from your lead generation marketing and conducting sales consultations, all the way to actually resolving the tax debt itself. Using checklists like these to establish procedures and routines in how you do things streamlines your entire operation. It sets standards that you can enforce upon your employees. It also makes your practice worth more if you intend to sell it.

You’re always going to want to spend time tweaking and improving systems, and creating new ones for unique situations in your own practice. And most tax professionals intuitively know this. The problem is that it’s such a daunting task to get started, because nothing like the Tax Resolution Systems checklist compendium has ever existed before.

In exchange for this 50% off price, all I ask is for your feedback on the manual itself. If a checklist step doesn’t make sense, or you think of a checklist that should exist but I didn’t think of it, let me know. All users will be mailed an “update packet” in October with any significant additions/revisions.… Continue reading

It’s one of the most critical questions in the tax resolution industry: To accept or not to accept client payment plans for fees.

I’ve written quite a bit about fee structures and payment arrangements, and this morning Danny sent me an email with several questions pertaining this topic:

How many months do you allow someone to pay? What sort of upfront fee do you collect? Do you use an online auto bill to their credit card? Do you have a written agreement and do you file the agreement?

Let me first start with this: I no longer offer payment plans to clients, and I advise other solo practitioners not to, either. My stance is that if a client wants my help, and cannot pay my full fee up front, then that client does not meet my established criteria for my ideal clients. When you are a solo practitioner in particular, you should set fairly strict criteria regarding the clients you will work with. When it’s only you, you should be far less willing to deal with problem clients, and you don’t have to.

Please note that this entire article really applies to those doing flat-fee client work (aka, value billing). If you are billing hourly against a retainer, then most of this will not apply to you, because these tips are sort of built in to the retainer model.

With that said, if you either choose to accept payment plans from clients, or own a larger firm and are going after the volume angle in order to compete on the playing field with the large national firms (which is perfectly OK, of course), then you should set strict guidelines regarding your fee payment arrangements.

First of all, collect as much of the fee up front as possible. Never go for a series of equal payments over time — always insist on the first payment being significantly larger. The reason for this should be obvious: Tax resolution work is heavily front-loaded in terms of your time commitment to the client. It’s not uncommon for half your billable hours on a tax resolution case to occur within the first week of a client hiring you. Collect enough in the initial payment to cover this work.

Second, whatever payment arrangements you do make, automate it. In other words, set up the payments on automatically recurring ACH drafts or credit card drafts, so that you don’t even have … Continue reading

Today’s message is one of the shortest that I’ll ever send you, and it involves adding a tremendous efficiency level to your tax resolution practice: Hiring and training an administrative assistant.

If you are a solo practitioner and have never had an assistant before, I would encourage you to consider hiring one. This is one of the tips that we’ll be covering in the Tax Practice Success Automation webinars, in the section on delegating certain tasks to other people to allow you to accomplish more.

When you hire an assistant, there is going to be a learning curve, because tax resolution admin tasks aren’t taught at paralegal schools or in retail tax preparation courses. Therefore, you need an organized approach for training this new person. Doing so is worth your time, because ultimately it will allow you to carry a much larger case load, which means making more money.

Here is an example tax resolution paralegal assistant training program outline that you can adapt within your practice. I would suggest going through this training with new personnel in short sessions, one or two hours each. If you have purchased the Tax Resolution Mastery Course, then you can have your assistant go through the applicable portions of that course as well. Since that material is intended for licensed professionals, encourage your assistant to write down a list of questions they have as they go through those audio and video presentations, and answer those questions for them to catch them up to speed.

Download Example Paralegal Training Program Outline

I’m putting a lot of time this week into finishing additional modules for some of our courses, as well as working on the latest round of re-writes for The Tax Resolution Sales Handbook.

I’m very excited about the next few months, and am thankful that I have the opportunity to share with you the journey of growing our tax practices. Happy Thanksgiving!… Continue reading