8 Questions To Ask When Choosing An Accountant

The vast majority of small businesses could use the services of an accountant. The number of ways in which it is possible to introduce errors into your business through accounting practices is staggering. Your accounting includes issues related to payroll, monitoring profitability, inventory control, avoiding penalties and interest on taxes, and much, much more. It is wise to select a competent professional in this field to help you navigate the minefield of accounting pitfalls. Selecting such a professional can be difficult, especially since not all accountants are created equal.

Here are some questions to ask to help ensure that you are selecting the best accountant you can for your business.

1. Do they have any complaints with the Better Business Bureau?

When many individuals decide to take action and make a complaint against a firm, they often think first of the BBB. Check with your local division, or look them up online, and make sure that the company you are considering hiring has a good record with the BBB. If they have a Gold Star award from the BBB, then you’re on the right track to working with a company that is reputable and stands by their word. The BBB’s new letter grading system can also help you in selecting a good firm.

2. Have they ever been investigated by your state Attorney General’s office or state board of accountancy?

This is another place to do your own due diligence. Complaints with the state AG or Board of Accountancy is an automatic red flag and should be highly considered before selecting a firm.

3. What services do they provide, and what services do you need?

Think about exactly what you’re looking for in a service provider. Do you need full service accounting, outsourcing all functions to another person or firm? Or do you just need year-end tax preparation? Knowing the answer to what services you need will help you pick the best person to do what you need, and will affect your budget for getting it done. For example, if you just need tax preparation, then you might be better off with an experienced tax preparer instead of a CPA firm that mostly does auditing and general accounting. If you only need payroll services, then you might want to hire a payroll company rather than a bookkeeper that does payroll on the side. If you need the books updated weekly or monthly, most communities … Continue reading

New video series: “Inside the IRM”

I’m very excited to announce the launch of a new video series, Inside the IRM.

I’ll be providing commentary and insight into interacting with the IRS, based on a guided tour through the Internal Revenue Manual. I’ve decided to start with IRM Part 5: Collections, simply because that is the section of most interest to myself and, I’m sure, to most of you.

The purpose of each video will not be to simply read you the IRM. Rather, I think it’s worth dissecting the IRM as a means of learning how the IRS thinks and, more importantly, how they’re supposed to act. My goal is really to provide you with a better understanding of how the IRS works, and make sure you know what the IRS really can and can’t do based on their own procedures.

Most important of all, however, I hope to show you how to use the Internal Revenue Manual to better represent your clients. I will be pointing out provisions of the IRM that could be applied to your advantage in certain situations, and discussing how Revenue Officers and other IRS personnel are supposed to act in specific circumstances, so that you can know when things are going right and when a Revenue Officer is abusing their authority or not properly treating a taxpayer. Correlating the Service’s internal procedures with specific client situations and sharing my experience in working with Revenue Officers as it relates to the IRM will hopefully benefit you as a fellow practitioner.

I’ll most likely do these several times per week, and post them along with each day’s marketing update. I didn’t think I could go on about one little section of the IRM for an entire hour, but in this first video I managed to do that (I’ve long known that I have the gift of gab, I guess now I just found another way to embrace it beyond just the written word!). I’ll definitely try to keep them shorter in the future.

These will be posted on YouTube, so feel free to collect them all and trade them with your friends!

Please provide feedback, comments, and even criticisms on these so that I can make them more applicable to your practice.

Here is the first edition, covering IRM Section 5.1 and the basics of how the IRS is supposed to work collections cases.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iM0xXJ0HaB4[/youtube]… Continue reading

Tax resolution assistant training outline (free document)

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