one in four tax practitioners say they’ve learned from last year.
by 卡塔尔世界杯常规比赛时间
the 2022 卡塔尔世界杯常规比赛时间 busy season barometer isn’t turning up much optimism, but a good quarter of respondents are telling us that this year just might be better than 2021.
judging from their comments, however, “better” seems to mean “not as bad.”
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out of the 577 practitioners who’ve responded so far, only five percent said that this year is “much better” than last year, though another 21 percent granted that so far it’s “somewhat better.”
but that’s compared with 47 percent who say it’s somewhat or much worse.
bye-bye bad
eileen ramos, a cpa in maryland, sums up a common opinion, basically defining “somewhat better” as the elimination of what was so bad about last year.
“last year was affected by unusual non-recurring factors,” ramos says. “retroactive tax law changes, multiple filing deadline changes for federal and state returns, extraordinary government assistance packages requiring special analysis and treatment and significant irs delays. other than the horrific irs delays, the negative factors should not affect the current filing season.”
another cpa, r.e. wright, boiled the notion down to this: “we will not have to deal with the insanity caused by all the federal pandemic relief programs concurrent with tax return filing”
lynwood ford, an enrolled agent in los angeles, is among the rare practitioners who say things are going to be “much better.” why? because what didn’t kill him made him stronger.
“survived the worst,” ford says, “and prepped and ready for 2022.”
like the vast majority of respondents, one of his main concerns is irs operations. just over 80 percent laid a lot of blame there.
is fewer better?
we’re noticing something intriguing in many of the “better year” comments. quite a few are saying that what’s better this year is…having fewer clients.
for eric yergan, an accountant with a small firm in new york city, fewer clients really means better clients.
“going to increase prices and going to fire some clients,” he tells us. “also planning on being more efficient from the technology point of few.”
an anonymous small-firm manager who sees much better days ahead has also been culling clients and also seems to be well prepared for a great tax season, though still cautiously optimistic about tax legislation.
“we were able to find additional qualified staff,” the manager says. “we fired clients that didn’t fit. we upgraded our technology to become more efficient. and there appears to be less legislation that will be an interrupter, other than simply a tax change in the works. hopefully, any tax changes will not be retroactive.”
jeff toye, a cpa in essex, mass., is singing a similar song, telling us “earlier start, fewer changes, less time spent managing covid regs and stimulus.”
michelle tanner, with a small firm in san rafael, calif., expects a better year as her firm gets its ducks in a row.
“we are letting go of 25% of our clientele this year,” she says, “and implementing new procedures to help alleviate some of the additional stresses we experienced last year.”
responses better, answers worse
one anonymous sole practitioner sees hope of a somewhat better year in the slight improvements at the irs.
“the irs was pretty bad last year,” the respondent says, “there are more hires by the irs but not enough training, so responses will be better but answers will be worse. some in-person appts will make it better as we get used to the ‘new normal.’”
tax practitioners really have some good reasons to see an improvement over last year’s tax season, though we’re still a long way from ideal. a lot of the problem is now in the hallowed halls of the irs. if they can get their underfunded act together, we just might have reason to see a “much better” season…someday.
3 responses to “for a few: why busy season 2022 beats 2021”
trish beckwith
very encouraging article! implemented ed stitley’s life changing article is the tax season meeting dead? (spoiler alert – yes!) and we are so much more productive this year and will definitely be fine-tuning along the way.
frank stitely
welcome to the dark side trish!
steve short
imho, the irs needs to clear the backlog, if the return being manually handled is anywhere owe to correct and is not suspected of a major underpayment or fraud, clear it! move on. if the irs spends much more time studying belly button lint, they will be three years behind on ‘manually processed’ tax returns.
here is a question for the revenue service: how did your correspondence unit allow millions of notices to be mailed out informing taxpayers that they have $x credit for 2020 but no tax return was filed? the credit they state the irs says the taxpayer has is typically the 2020 balance due sent with form 1040v as part of of the form 1040 filing. the most bizarre phenomenon about this particular notice is both efilers and paper filers got them! how do you have a valid acknowledgement file number on the efile, but the irs does not know the return is filed based upon these erroneous notices.
the only thing achieved by the irs allowing or ‘creating’ this fiasco is the rapidly declining trust citizens have in our voluntary tax compliance system. by putting tax preparers in an impossible position by not timely answering correspondence, which most often have very simple explanations or answers to the irs inquiry, this causes their customers to believe that the tax guys do not know what they are doing! the lack of trust in revenue collection and honest elections will destroy the best system in the world!
how much over time pat was paid to senior irs management and the processing units scanning returns and reconciling minor errors? i bet my house the amount of over time recorded given the nature of the crisis is minuscule!
one final note, i have paper filed extension requests as a courtesy to my prior year clients for 36 years. the extensions have always been filed in one envelope with a cover letter detailing the extensions and their fein. the 2019 extension requests for s corporations and c corporations were due at the beginning of the shut downs. of the 24 extensions i sent in one envelope 10 were considered late filings and 14 were considered timely. the 10 considered late all had the, now archaic, punitive civil penalties assessed against the companies based on the number of shareholders and the number of days it was late filed because they were s corporations.
how are 10 late and 14 timely when all of the extensions were in one envelope? the only correlation i observed was the supposed late files were all s corporations subject to the excessive and archaic civil penalty.
the irs has the people and the resources to do their job. what us going in now is a purposeful slowdown in work production, most likely to extort more money from congress, because spending more money in government is always the answer. to fix irs malaise – require all irs personnel to have an office in an irs facility, no more work from home agents, no more contract agents, and no more for profit collection agencies! conduct audits with local auditors and stop the centralized anonymous auditing. the audit details can be handled that way but if you are going to bill someone $46,789 for a mistake, error, or something – can the irs not present that bill with a readable letter explaining adequately what the irs position is and why the tax is being assessed?