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some are raising fees and trimming unprofitable clients.
by 卡塔尔世界杯常规比赛时间 research
as we get close to the end of the tax season, tax pros are telling us that for the first time in years, things are going pretty well.
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according to the late-march stats of the 卡塔尔世界杯常规比赛时间 busy season barometer, with data streaming in from over 500 practitioners across the country, a heady 18 percent say this year is much better than last year, and another 41 percent acknowledge that this year is at least somewhat better.
last year, around this time, only 5 percent said their season was much better, and only 21 percent could say it was somewhat better than 2021.
the numbers are also up from earlier this year. in february, just as the returns were rolling in, only 10 percent thought the year was much better than last year. within 60 days, that percentage almost doubled.
while the “somewhat better” numbers have dropped a bit since february’s 54 percent, it’s only because so many shifted upward from “somewhat” to “much” better.
yay, right?
well, not for everybody. over the past couple of months, a few have suffered a downturn as the 17 percent who said things were worse swelled to just over 21 percent.
why the better season?
the reasons vary.
ken wolfe, at brown schultz sheridan & fritz, with offices across pennsylvania and maryland, attributes his firm’s “much better” year to “using ai, more of a team approach, and better staffing.”
tanya silves’s firm, larson gross, sees the season doing much better thanks to the efficiencies of technology and the economies of scale. her explanation: “cloud-based tax software, have merged with another firm so working through onboarding and training on new system and processes for them. centralized scheduling.”
somebody else, anonymous, apparently learned something from last year. this year, “better flow of work was set up prior to tax season.”
higher fees, fewer clients
david b. daniel is achieving a somewhat better year thanks to three basic performance techniques.
“i turned off my cell phone,” he tells us. “i make better utilization of support staff to prepare files before i touch them. i set a goal of only touching a file once.”
we’re also getting quite a few reports of using higher fees to trim the client list.
“new clients have minimum fee,” says angie dyches, reporting in from cpa financial solutions, just outside of sarasota, fla. “older clients that are not at minimum are being told that will be the new rate next year.”
someone else, unnamed, got even more serious and is doing much better.
“fired clients and if they didn’t want to pay increased fees they could leave,” the anonymous practitioner says. “made room for better clients.”
and martha e. zamora, at zamora’s agency, is doing somewhat better after jacking up her fees and streamlining processing.
“i increased prices,” she says, “and i am still having clients drop off documents, and they get a call back within 24-48 hours to come to pick them up. i also have many clients who moved out of state and used docusign for them. i also tried to make it easier for clients who don’t live in the immediate area to use docusign.”
as for those who aren’t managing a better season despite generally better conditions, staffing seems to be a common cause of problems.
“staffing problems have wiped us out,” says one anonymous respondent who’s doing much worse, and another says, “as a partner, it’s the first year in a long time where staffing issues are necessitating that i prepare returns vs. just reviewing.”
on the other hand, steven bankler says he’s doing much better, telling us he “hired additional staff last year.”
so overall, it seems that tax offices have recovered from covid-19 with a better grip on their clientele, a better mastery of technology and, to the extent possible, more staff who are better prepared to handle america’s tax returns.