And Good Friday! May you all have a great holiday weekend, whether it be Passover or Easter. So what is on your plate for the holidays? I'm getting up early Sunday morning and taking mom to church. Aftwards we will go out for an early brunch. Then I will head to work.
As for the rest of the post for today, the regular posters and readers know the drill. It is update day. Tell me your secrets, your concerns, your joys, vent, ask questions of the regulars or myself. If you are a new reader or a long time reader that hasn't posted we would love for you to post an introduction. You will not find a better group of folks anywhere on the Internet then you will find here. This is a chance for you to make new friends!
My update is two things: work and a solution for next tax season. The guys that bought my business are just working way to hard and we have had initial talks about me working twenty hours a week for them next year. In those twenty hours I can make almost as much as I'm making now and have more time for my own health and my own thing. I'm also in the initial stages of looking for tax practices for sale in Seattle and the Los Angeles area. This would be more of an investment where I hire a person I trust to manage the office for half the profits and I just act as a mentor and a one or two day a week reviewer. I decided this would be a better route than a franchise route because I will be more free to put my personal stamp on the practice.
That is is from Oregon. It is now your turn to post anything you damn well please!
About Me
- William J.
- First, I think the birth sign is wrong. 6-21, some papers say Gemini, some Cancer. Guess that means I have so many personalities that I can do group therapy alone. For those that don't know how to read Google profiles I have put what I really mean in ( ). Hot (Good looking enough to be in movies(if I buy at ticket). A body like a God (Buddha). Romantic (Thinks begging is foreplay.) Physically fit (Heart trouble. Put 911 on speed dial before we get initmate.) Good Provider (has good life insurance in case you forget to put 911 on speed dial.) Loyal (has reference letters from Mom and parole officer.) Intelligent (scored 1600 on his SATS but you have to total the scores of the four times that I took the test.) Looking for someone compatible (Be between 30 & 99 and not inflatable.)
14 comments:
I also send good wishes for a nice holiday weekend for all.
Good job on the solution for next year's tax season! I shall hold good thoughts it works out. Any time you can make more money and have more time for you, it's a Good Thing!
Relatively quiet week here, which I'm relishing, as I've no idea what the next few months may bring. The weekend was glorious, sunny and seventies, with the garage sales and several hours in the yard and a lot of catch up. Tuesday we drove to NC to ransom the rig from maintenance and repair, driving in snow flurries all the way and covering plants for the hard freeze here that night. Today we've had everything from rain to sleet to large pea-sized hail to tornadoes (still under warnings). Mom stuff, from mail and bills to drafting the note to go about the card party to contacting doctors here about whether she could take meds prescribed by doctors out there. Had the aquacize class doing line dance in the water (a request), which received mixed reviews. Still no idea what the plans or schedule or expectations are for Mom's return/move/doctor app'ts here or there may be. Working on an analysis, but no other real projects in sight at the moment. Not sure if that's a good or bad thing. Not good for cash flow, but maybe good for getting my head a bit more together.
I'll second what DR said. Nice holiday wishes to all, and your plan for work next year sounds good, Bill.
Nothing new to report on the mom front. All is going as well as can be expected. After two years at Las Casitas, and with meds adjusted, she has settled in, and while she doesn't really understand that she lives there, there's no longer any talk about going home or catching the train or any of that agitated stuff. Well, hardly ever. She seems quite content almost all the time now, which is a Very Good Thing.
I've been working on the local mail-in election yesterday and today. Will be back at it Monday & Tuesday. Saturday, I have a shift at the library bookstore, and I'm beginning to feel un-retired. But Sunday is a day of rest, the flurry of work will soon be over, and after talking to DR about line dance, I may look for a class. I really need more exercise, and that looks like a fun and low-impact way to get some.
So two guys bought the practice you worked alone last year, and are having trouble keeping up? That says a lot about you, and how hard you work.
April 15 will be over five days from now. I am so ready!
Hi Dr
I'm glad your week was quiet you have been deserving of a quiet week for a long time.
Your weather sounds exciting!
I think it is time for you not to worry about cash flow but to worry about rest and reclaiming your energy!
Bill
Hi Pat
I'm glad your mom has settled in and I home she settles in enough to give you a break.
I always admire you for working on elections. That is a valuable service to all of even if we don't live in the precinct where you volunteer!
And the library how lucky they are to have you to give your time to them!
I really want to hear about your line dancing classes! Let us know how they go. That is really big news!
Bill
Hi Mary
Where I am at now it takes 15 people to do 900 tax returns, at the height of my career I was doing 400 returns on my own. Even there people 20 years younger than I am aren't producing as much as I do.
I share with you in being ready for April 15 to be here!
Bill
Are you serious? I have done just about 200 tax returns on my own this year, while managing full time and doing all the audits and claims. My biggest producer will do 600. My office will do 4000 plus with 20 employees. Why do your co-workers take so much time? I can do darn near any return in an hour or less. And we are truly asking all the questions and getting maximum deductions for people.
Hi Mary
They take so much time because of different systems. You can't do 3 returns a day with there procedures, impossible, they basically audit the returns. I
believe you are hired to prepare the returns not audited them they obviously don't. Plus they don't use input sheets. When I did 400 in my office that was from start to finish, including copying and assembling the returns.
At the firm I work at now most returns I do are done within an hour or two at most, then it takes four to six hours to do the worksheets.
Bill
Bill, when you say "do the worksheets", are those all the extra paper I see, for AMT and gosh knows what else? Are you talking about "regular" returns, or particularly complex ones? Are those worksheets required or some kind of insurance? Just curious.
And while we're talking taxes here, I have a question: How on earth have all these people I read about who are tapped for high office gotten away with not paying thousands of dollars' worth of taxes for years. Seems they only pay up when they want to be confirmed by Congress. So what have they been doing in the meantime? Contesting what they owe? Or just ignoring it? Did they know all along that they owed back taxes?
Hi Pat
The worksheets that you are talking about are automatically generated by the income tax computer program. The worksheets I am talking about are worksheets verifying everything on your tax return. The firm verifys everything on the tax return. If you have ten w-2 forms than all ten w-2 forms have to be copied put on a worksheet, totaled, agreed with the computer tax return, and the scanned into a computer client file. It stinks and is excessive imho.
As to the politicians not paying their taxes the problem is really the accountant's fault not the appointee's fault. I think I can say safely that people at their level don't do their own returns. A lot of the problems center around household employees and not paying their tax. It is rare to have a client that has domestic employees. So the accountant often doesn't ask that question. I doubt if some of those folks even what they were doing was subject to tax.
Their accountant should ask questions that generate correct response, most accountant's don't.
As to why the get away with it? The same reason anyone gets away with it. The IRS doesn't catch them. 98% of all taxpayers aren't audited. So they just don;t get caught.
That sounds tedious. Ugh. I'd rather finish the return and move on to the next one. We do have a quality check on anything out of the ordinary -- income on line 21, retirement distributions, K-1s, things like that. But most of our returns go straight through, and I file very few claims for errors. Like five so far this year.
Good grief, Bill, no wonder it takes this firm so long. Even though you answered Pat's questions, are these the worksheets that TaxCut automatically generates, to explain how I got to the numbers on my final return? I won't pretend to understand them, but they're in the tax file, if anyone ever asks questions.
As to the non-payers and accountants -- not many people are lucky enough to have folks who know the questions to ask. And I do wonder if the preparers hesitate to question the numbers and info they're given by high-powered folks. Still, as you say, it's up to the accountant to ask the right questions, I gather. Thank goodness TaxCut asks the questions and then warns you of anything that looks questionable, when you think you're finished.
I get the feeling you'll be real glad to see the end of tax season and real hesitant to work with these folks again, for a lot of good reasons.
Hang in there, my friend. Just a couple more days, right?
Bill, you said:
If you have ten w-2 forms than all ten w-2 forms have to be copied put on a worksheet, totaled, agreed with the computer tax return, and the scanned into a computer client file. It stinks and is excessive imho.
I'd sure agree with that. If you have the actual W-2s or 1099s, isn't that enough? Or is it just a double-check to make sure they've entered the amounts correctly? I suppose it's always good to re-check things, but that does sound a bit excessive.
Hi Pat
Yes all ten w-2 forms not only have to be scanned into the computer file, totaled, and agreed with the computer returns. Wages, federal withholding, state withholding, etc.
I always agreed the w-2 forms and 1099's to the return, I just didn't take the two extra steps that they take.
And you have to do that with every single item on the return.
They basically audit the returns, I never thought I was hired to audit returns, I always thought I was hired to prepare them. Only very few returns get audited so what happens is two things:
1. You end of charging everyone for just the two or three returns that get audited.
2. You end of creating more work at a time when you don't need more work created.
Bill
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