busy season benchmarks in free fall

major declines in all kpis: clients, revenues, profits, revenue per client, and profit per client.

busy season barometer:
how accountants are battling the coronavirus recession
join the survey. get the answers.

by 卡塔尔世界杯常规比赛时间 research

last year’s busy season was complicated, no doubt about it. the tax cuts and jobs act and the irs shut-down made life difficult for tax practitioners. but ultimately, they had a good year. a good 56 percent enjoyed an increase in clientele, and only 16 percent saw a decrease.

flash forward to the annus horribilis, aka 2020. according to this year’s 卡塔尔世界杯常规比赛时间 busy season barometer, only 46 percent of accountants are gaining clients — a 10-point reversal from last year. and another 25 percent are losing clients – a 15-point swing from 2019.

more busy season 2020: fiinal rs efiling stats: the end of tax season? | say hello to the new 24-month busy season | 9 big ways the irs could help accountants | the mystery of 10 million missing tax returns | tax pro e-filings down 20 percent | irs web traffic doubles over year-ago | covid drowns irs in new filings percent | irs web traffic doubles over year-ago | covid drowns irs in new filings | 2020 tax season comes to a screeching halt | the tax season 2020 dumpster fire | tax pros fall behind 6.2% in returns filed
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it’s impressive that so many tax offices have actually expanded their clientele during such hard times. and it’s not surprising that so many have lost clients.

what happened?

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down by 400,000 returns – the end of tax prep?

red alert: tax professional e-filings drop by 0.5% year-to-year, first year-to-year decline ever.

final irs stats for busy season 2020 shows professionals filed 0.5% fewer returns than last year and lost market share to diy’ers.

busy season barometer:
how accountants are battling the coronavirus recession
join the survey. get the answers.

by beth bellor
卡塔尔世界杯常规比赛时间 research

in what may be an alarming turning point for the profession, tax practitioners finished an already chaotic and bruising tax season 2020 after preparing a total of 73.8 million e-filed returns – a decline of 400,00, or 0.5 percent, from tax season 2019 – the first such reversal on record. ever.

jon baron

more on tax season 2020: say hello to the new 24-month busy season | when covid ‘got real’ | tax pros hold efiling market share as tax seasons winds down | the top six irs #fails this tax season (so far) | how covid has pulverized irs operations | the mystery of 10 million missing tax returns | covid cuts accounting profits | why busy season may never be the same again | covid tests accountants’ entrepreneurial talents | pro tax prep stalls to a crawl amid covid-extended season | clients, revenues, profits – trending down, down, down |

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“if you are in public accounting and relying on personal return revenue, the results this year are troubling as it is the first time that professionally prepared returns actually fell from the prior year,” says jon baron, the longtime ceo of thomson reuters tax & accounting, and now a venture capitalist with more than a couple startups in stealth mode.

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effective communications in the age of covid

misunderstandings and shortcuts in the workplace can create a hostile and stressful environment.

by steven e. sacks
the new fundamentals

with more people using mobile devices for communication shortcuts, are we facing troublesome challenges in speaking in a recognizable language in the u.s.?

more: why proper communication is critical | syncing up for the covid era | the new covid-19 workplace: are you prepared? | how to create effective internal communications | profit is not a mission | confronting leadership: not such a bad thing | new opportunities for a ‘new normal’ | is trust elusive?
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while it may be convenient for some, for others it leaves them scratching their heads. i am not seeking to be a public scold. however, if you want your communication to be effective, then understand your audience, situation, and topic.

this is especially relevant with teams working virtually, and at a distance, in the age of covid.
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say hello to the new 24-month busy season

deann auman hill and mike shost at aicpa engage: “the 24-month tax season?”

covid chaos turns busy season 2020 from bad to worse.

busy season barometer:
how accountants are battling the coronavirus recession
join the survey. get the answers.

by 卡塔尔世界杯常规比赛时间 research

last year—the good old days!—busy season seemed to be about as bad as it could get. congress enacted the tax cuts and jobs act without explaining how it was to be enacted, and then changed some things. and then the irs shut down before the rules could be set and the new forms and schedules made available. and all of a sudden it was april 15.

more on the 2020 season: the mystery of 10 million missing tax returns | tax pro e-filings down 20 percent | irs web traffic doubles over year-ago | covid drowns irs in new filings | 2020 tax season comes to a screeching halt | the tax season 2020 dumpster fire | tax pros fall behind 6.2% in returns filed
goprocpa.comexclusively for pro members. log in here or 2022世界杯足球排名 today.

tax practitioners had little good to say about 2019. according to last year’s 卡塔尔世界杯常规比赛时间 busy season barometer, 46 percent said 2019 was worse than the previous year. only 13 percent thought it was “much better.”

that was then.

this is now. and, now is worse.

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the seven simple steps to thrive in the covid crisis

//www.g005e.com/2020/07/21/thriving-during-the-covid-19-crisis-and-beyond/leveraging the relationships you already have. step 1: make a list.

by anthony glomski and russ alan prince
your $5 million high-net-worth practice

the covid-19 crisis has put a lot of financial pressure on many businesses, including many accounting firms. at the same time, a percentage of professionals, such as accountants, lawyers, and wealth managers, are strategically taking action to deal with the economic pressures.

see also: the three new business models delivering significant profits for accounting firms | the 5 meetings of the (true) wealth management process | collaborative wealth management: defining the framework | protect your clients’ assets | even entrepreneurs must diversify | when clients cash out: four smart financial moves |

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the result is that they are doing well as the crisis progresses and are smartly positioned to do exceptionally well as the crisis abates.

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post-covid: not your usual summer to-do list

how will you spend your “vacation” time?

by bill penczak

in normal times, summer was the respite between tax and audit busy seasons, a pause in marketing activities, the time to take it easy and to catch up on cpe, and to conduct personnel reviews and other administrative duties delayed from the beginning of the year.

more: do you have the guts to beat the covid crisis? | how to inoculate your firm against covid competition | ‘found money’ delights clients | don’t buy a rolodex, buy a process | the three r’s for beating the corona crisis | 6 reasons why your marketing sucks
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this summer is different, on so many levels. the sunlight filters through your bedroom window a bit earlier, and these days, if you’re even driving to the office, the roads are strangely less crowded.  the general mood is more tenuous, as we all speculate about the new normal.

most cpa firms will continue the same pattern of waiting until september to ramp up their go-to-market efforts. but two or three out of 10 firms will use this summer to get a head start to make up for lost opportunities, and revenue, caused by the covid crisis.

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9 big ways the irs could help accountants

number 9 created by gaps between many small green plastic 9'sdeadlines could change. so could options.

by 卡塔尔世界杯常规比赛时间 research

the taxpayer advocacy service’s mission is to make life easier for taxpayers, but when it succeeds, it alleviates the burden on tax practitioners as well.

more: flexibility in a time of pandemic | what are irs faqs worth? | the top six irs #fails this tax season (so far)
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with that mission in mind, the tas has set itself a serious series of nine objectives for fiscal year 2021. each one touches on the services of cpas and tax practitioners, so it’s worthwhile to follow how successful the tas is.
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when covid ‘got real’

tax season turns into ‘advisory season,’ and a whole new niche is born.

^ click to play

by 卡塔尔世界杯常规比赛时间 research

gabrielle luoma, long one of the profession’s leading innovators, says the future under covid-19 belongs to the quick and the smart, in this exclusive video interview with 卡塔尔世界杯常规比赛时间. firms will need to deploy new services to attract new clients who may have not realized that they needed a firm like yours but now do.

more covid conversations: the covid outlook with darren root and joel hughes: a long, slow climb back to recovery | steven sacks: covid crisis management | jean caragher: how to fight ‘fear’ and ‘insecurity’ | sarah dobek: learning how to operate in the new normal | august aquila: what comes next? | jody grunden: covid and client communications | andrew argue: on a mission | martin bissett: covid slams u.k. accountants, too | bill reeb: separating the winners and losers |

goprocpa.comexclusively for pro members. log in here or 2022世界杯足球排名 today.

^ play or download the podcast version

in this conversation, luoma talks about what’s going on in the business, what’s going on with tax season, and what the future holds for cpa firms and the clients of cpa firms.

speaking from her base in tucson, ariz., the ceo of mod ventures is bringing some of her dna to regional powerhouse beach fleischman through a joint venture.

we started by asking about “when it got real?”

she responds, “we truly are affected by the whole world. we have clients in new york. things changed for them rather quickly. and when they started changing, we started realizing, ‘oh, my goodness, we’re going to have to really buckle down.’ in arizona, we started seeing shutdowns mid-march. that’s when things really got real for us because then we started seeing that the businesses that we work with on a regular basis – we’re outsourced accounting, so we work with clients weekly, – we knew that we could be in trouble. we started working really hard on transitioning, and seeing what we needed to do to help our clients quickly.”

for pro members-only: get the transcript:

[pro member bonus]
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the covid outlook: a long, slow climb back to recovery

why right networks’ acquisition of rootworks may be just what the doctor ordered

^ click to play

with rick telberg
卡塔尔世界杯常规比赛时间

the accounting world shifted a little with the acquisition by right networks, a cloud-hosting vendor, of rootworks, a technology platform provider to cpa firms.

though conceived before the pandemic, the deal was closed as the first wave of coronavirus was crashing against the shores of the u.s. and it may be a sign of the times under pandemic conditions, as accountants — and, indeed, business in general — race for new technology solutions and business models.

see: right networks acquires rootworks

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in this exclusive interview with 卡塔尔世界杯常规比赛时间, right networks ceo joel hughes and rootworks founder darren root, explain the reasons for the deal, and their forecast for the future under covid. warning: their forecast for the future under covid is not pretty.

but the combination of the two companies may augur hold clues to the future of the profession.

transcript

here’s the full transcript, only lightly edited:

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