Cure for your revenue problem

The cure for any revenue problem is simply to increase revenue. The more revenue flowing into your tax practice, the better things in general tend to be for everybody at your firm.

In order to get more revenue flowing into your practice, you must add more value to the world.

What does this mean, “add more value to the world”?

You add more value to the world when you make solve more people’s tax and accounting problems. When you give somebody a solution to a problem that keeps them awake at night, they happily pay you money for doing so.

In order to solve more people’s tax and accounting problems, they need to be made aware of the fact that there actually exists a solution to their problem. You need to make them aware of that solution. Also, realize that most people are a bit stubborn, and resistant to change. So, you need to tell them multiple times that there is a solution to their problem.

Because marketing isn’t a one-shot game, and you should be receiving marketing support on an ongoing basis, I have decided to make some drastic changes to how our programs here at Tax Marketing HQ are structured.

While our comprehensive systems courses and marketing toolkits will still be available individually, as will the new subject-specific courses we create each month (such as last month’s Direct Response Marketing course), we are also making that course content available through our new premium membership plans.

These new premium membership plans are an outgrowth of this daily newsletter, merged with our tax lien data subscriptions, and enhanced with the marketing plans, ready to use marketing templates, and other resources you need to grow your practice.

Where is this coming from? So many tax practitioners have asked me to either take over their marketing entirely, or to bundle different pieces of our bigger courses together just for them, that I started seeing the need. Many readers of this newsletter need more than just mailing lists — they need ready-made marketing pieces, very specific “how to” instructions for getting their message out, assistance evaluating tax resolution cases, or want their marketing done completely for them and they just take the phone calls.

Depending upon the membership level you choose, here are just some of the new benefits available to members:

  • Monthly premium marketing newsletter
  • Monthly tax lien download credits
  • Access to new ready-made marketing pieces
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Change is inevitable, especially in the tax world…

It’s been a wild ride for the past two years in the magical land of Taxlandia.

We’ve seen shifting IRS enforcement priorities, endless debate about the Bush-era tax cuts, burdensome new reporting requirements, and the dawn of IRS oversight of non-U.S. financial institutions with the passage of FATCA. Who would have thought we’d see a day where Swiss banks lifted the secrecy provisions they’ve maintained for eons, let alone see the devaluation of the Swiss franc?

We’ve seen five European nations declare the insolvency of their financial systems. Here at home, we’ve enacted an individual health care mandate that will be enforced through the IRC, and operated our Federal government without a firm budget solution for two entire fiscal years now.

In tax resolution, we’ve witnessed the bankruptcy or regulatory shutdown of the five largest national tax resolution companies, creating massive market opportunity for smaller firms. The IRS has expanded streamline resolution criteria, and fixed what I considered to be the most egregious flaw in the Offer in Compromise program, the remaining income multiplier for calculating RCP. Who would have guessed that they would ever actually fix that problem?

On the marketing side of things, we’ve seen the debt settlement provisions added to the Telemarketing Sales Rules, which gave us all momentary pause until the temporary exclusion of tax debt settlement was announced, but which still leaves many people asking questions since it’s not really settled yet.

When James and I first sat down two years ago to create a web-based platform for cost effectively delivering tax lien sales leads to tax practitioners, the TSR debt settlement provisions hadn’t been announced. The month we went live with this web site, the provisions came into force, causing a slight shift in our own long range business plan.

Acknowledging that change is inevitable is healthy. Looking to the future, what sort of changes can we expect to see that directly impact those of us that make our living through tax services?

This year’s PTIN requirement already eliminated tens of thousands of tax preparers from completing returns, and the examination requirement for next year will thin those numbers even more. I see this as nothing but a good thing for licensed professionals.

We have yet to see any enforcement at all of illegal telemarketing by unlicensed salespeople, but I think that is very soon to change. And yes, it is illegal for an unlicensed person to telemarket to … Continue reading

Overseas assets, FBARs, and FATCA

Last month while I was in Switzerland, I had the “opportunity” of visiting the US Embassy in Bern so that I could obtain a replacement for my stolen U.S. passport.

While I was there, I met several interesting people. One was attempting to obtain a U.S. Social Security Number so that she could file the U.S. income tax returns that the IRS was demanding that she file, since she was born in America, although technically German and Swiss. She had never been to the U.S. since she was 5 years old, and was now in her 50’s and the IRS wanted her returns.

Another lady was there to renounce her U.S. citizenship, under very similar circumstances. She had also been born on U.S. soil, technically making her a U.S. citizen. She had no family or other ties to the U.S., and not visited the U.S. since her teens, but had dutifully filed a U.S. tax return for the past dozen years. She was in her mid-30’s, had no intention of ever living in the U.S., and was very happily Swiss. She was renouncing her U.S. citizenship and turning in her U.S. passport for no other reason than to get away from the hassle of filing a U.S. tax return.

For those two individuals, it made absolutely no sense for them to being filing an American tax return.

But what if you do live in America, or intend to keep your U.S. citizenship, but spend time overseas? If you have overseas assets, especially banking and investment accounts, the IRS has you right in their crosshairs, and they are increasing the pressure.

The recently enacted Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act is the latest in a series of measures by the U.S. government to track down overseas assets and make sure that they are getting their cut. This legislation created a new form for us all to fill out, Form 8938, for certain overseas accounts. This is on top of the old Form TD F 90-22.1 Report of Foreign Bank and Financial Accounts (FBAR).

Now keep in mind, there is absolutely nothing wrong, immoral, or illegal about having overseas assets or investments. Holding overseas assets can be a perfectly valid component of your financial planning strategy.

But what the IRS doesn’t like is when you are earning returns on that money, and not paying U.S. income tax on it. You see, America is one of the few countries … Continue reading