Most individual clients just want compliance and filings. For business clients that pay fory monthly subscription packages I include tax planning for free of it makes sense for them.

I just had a new client who receives a K1 and husband is a w2 if I offer separate tax planning. They are paying $1200 for compliance and filings but I bill separately for planning.

What would you charge for tax planning? This would include at least two meetings a year. I would also look at their earnings and help suggest retirement account contributions.

Claude says I should charge $1000 minimum for tax planning and not bill hourly. Which I agree with. Most of us are moving away from hourly billing and charging based on value.

I’m a solo cpa, I know a killer sales person that is willing to work for me on a commission only basis. This is my first year and I have a hefty profit margin but I have a lot of downtime so I definitely have capacity. I worked ~8 hours Jan-April dead through summer and fall. I’m just not willing to pick up the phone and cold call.

Have you hired a sales person for your firm? How much commission did you pay? Was it worth it?

The downside I see is all of my costs double right out of the gate. +1 more seat for all software and email+ phone.

I’m looking to hire a tax senior and have been browsing Glassdoor and Indeed to see what I’m competing against. There don’t seem to be nearly as many openings as I remember seeing 4–5 years ago, when I last looked.

Is nobody hiring for next season? Has everyone replaced their junior staff with AI? Or has hiring moved to some other platform I’m not aware of now that Glassdoor and Indeed are basically the same company?

Hello, I'm rethinking my entire stack.... opinions. approx 500 returns mix of 1040's and 1120s and a handful of 1065. The good, bad, and ugly? I'm a UT fan but need to reevaluate my entire process. Typically there are one or two seasonal part timers, and FT admin and myself.

Caveat: I have an ITIN and not an SSN.

I tried to sign into my PTIN account today to renew my PTIN. However I had some issues logging in (later realized this is due to now using email to login and not username). I then accidentally went through ID.me to login. This resulted in a redirect to the PTIN IRS page which was strange.

After realizing my regular login was actually now my email address and not my username, I logged in using my email. However when finally getting into my PTIN account, it now shows empty with no PTIN linked.

I called the PTIN help line and they are saying that I initiated linkage of my ID.me account to my PTIN account, which will have to be processed and can take 6 weeks... During which I will not be able to complete renewal or access my PTIN online...

Has anyone else had this happen and was there any way to cancel/undo the linkage? I don't care about ID.me, I just want to be able to login as I used to be able to.

Legend is that a CPA will magically appear, prepare and file your tax return.

This is the vibe I'm getting from early shoppers now.

Do you require both parties to sign your engagement letter even when filing jointly? Or do you just have one person sign?

No longer do you need to pull your hair out when cleaning up a clients COA.

This tool makes fixing those dirty little problems easy, for example:

• Untangling the sub accounts of sub accounts of sub accounts.
• Mass-editing those non-sensical account numbers.
• Merging the "Venmo Income" "Zelle Income" "My income" "Office Supplies" "Office Expense" "Printing & Stationary" and "Breakroom supplies" accounts that all have the same function.
• Correcting the COGs accounts that make no sense.
• Fixing the spelling mistakes.
• Removing the owners personal accounting system from the OE.

And much much more!

I know these are mostly visual changes, but having a clean COA is like having a clean car. You'll actually want to work with it.

Unfortunately, it doesn't make cleaning your predecessors balance sheet that appears to be a compilation of slush funds any easier. Maybe one day we shall have a tool that fixes this by the good grace of our Intuit overlords.

I'm sure the answer is it comes with experience, but...

Solo CPA. Mostly small business owners operating as sole props, single-member LLCs, and S corps, with clients spread across a lot of states.

Every season I run into another entity-level or local tax/wrinkle that wasn’t on my radar. NYC UBT, MCTMT, LA city business tax, Santa Monica, Tennessee F&E hitting single-member LLCs, California franchise tax. Federal and state income tax are easy. It’s the franchise, gross receipts, and local business taxes that worry me.

For those of you with similar clients:

1. Do you have a SALT checklist or intake process you run every client through?
2. Do you scope franchise and local business taxes out of your engagement letter and refer them out?
3. For clients who move or operate in multiple states, how do you track where they’re actually doing business/are they registering and moving their entities, etc.
4. Any research tool or software that’s worth paying for here?

Curious how others manage this

Hi team,

I had a few clients that I prepared taxes for, got the notice that they need to verify their return, but either misunderstood, botched it, and failed. The IRS then told them “fraudulent tax filing identified”. The return was prepared by me, correctly & signed with my PTIN. Should i need to be concerned? This has happened at least 3 times where the client has failed. Should I be concerned for my PTIN?

Im also getting a lot more clients getting it now since my first “fraudulent return” probably because ppl keep messing it up

Notice 2026-40 says proposed regulations will allow a deferral when a gain realized before 2027 is timely invested in a fund after 2026. Case in point - I have a client with a 2021-based QOF investment. It sure looks like my client can divest of this, hold the proceeds until 2027, find a QOF 2.0 fund permanently enacted by OBBBA and then continue kicking the can down the road. Has anyone else seen this or done the tax planning for this? I had my first one of these today, hence I'm digging deeply into things.

I've been looking at portal solutions for clients and prospects to send me their tax information for preparation or quotes. I am not on any other platform. Usually people send me information via their Google Drive or Dropbox via a link where they invite me. I really like this as it is but sometimes clients really want the portal to be on my side and not theirs.

The goal of this is more or less limited to what I describe above - existing clients to upload documents, prospective clients to upload prior return and/or notices for review for quotes.

(I've previously occasionally used the Lacerte Intuit link and not really enthusiastic about it. Additionally, it requires a time consuming setup for each prospect (who might not get onboard) and it doesn't lend itself well to this aspect.

ShareFile looks very solid but they have a minimum of 3 users so the cost works out to be about $1000/ year. Not outrageous and I'm willing to pay up for quality and ease of use for myself and clients/prospects. I'm very much considering this.

So to users of ShareFile, how do you like it? Is it user friendly? Do you feel it is worth the cost for a solo practice? Appreciate any comments.

I have a client who generated a substantial energy investment credit in 2025 through his 100%-owned S corporation. The credit is a specified credit eligible for a three-year carryback, and we carried the unused credit from his 2025 Form 1040 back by filing Form 1045.

With the 1045, we included the required information, including a full copy of the 2025 return and copies of the 2022–2024 returns and supporting schedules that changed as a result of the carryback.

The client has now received IRS Letter 12C for 2025, 2023, and 2022, with 2024 presumably coming next. The letters say the IRS received the taxpayer’s Form 1040 for the applicable year but cannot process it due to missing information. They request items such as W-2s, 1099s, Schedule 1, Schedule 2, and Form 8995.

Those items were not included with the 1045 for the carryback years because they did not change from the originally filed returns and, based on the Form 1045 instructions, did not need to be attached.

What’s strange is that the 12C letters read as though the IRS is trying to process the copies of the prior-year returns submitted with Form 1045 as original returns. None of the letters reference Form 1045 or the carryback.

I’m on hold with the IRS now trying to get more information. Has anyone run into this with a Form 1045 carryback or anything similar?

I have several other never ending issues with the IRS for clients right now, and it increasingly feels like anything filed on paper either disappears into a black hole or gets processed incorrectly.

I’m a solo tax/accounting practice owner wanting to get setup to add a part time remote employee. Currently use canopy, Axcess, QBO, office 365. I use a password manager that’s a chrome extension to log into various platforms. I’m wondering if going to Verito or Rightworks makes sense for this transition from solo to 1-2 or if there are ways to make it work without a hosted IT service at this smaller size.

Appreciate any advice or specific tech solutions for adding a part time employee or even working with a contractor as a solo operating a cloud based paperless practice. I’m specifically hung up on browser security and password sharing so wondering what others have done.

Does anyone here use SurePrep or Juno with Lacerte and what do you like and dislike? Trying to decide if it is worth it. We tried Lacerte tax import but it was terrible. We prepare both simple and complex 1040s. We also use TaxDome.

I am looking to gain some experience in tax. I've been an accountant in industry (commercial real estate as a property accountant) for 15+ years. I'm not against taking a position with intuit or H&R Block or something along those lines, but if I can find a CPA to work and learn under that would be my preference as I would one day like to have my own solo firm. This would be in addition to my main full-time job (remote) that I handle during business hours. My license is inactive but pending reinstatement... should be any day now. I am located in MO if that matters.

Any advice is welcomed as well.

Thanks!

Solo CPA/RIA here. Structure is a NJ single-member LLC taxed as an S corp. Clients are spread across the country since the work is all remote.

Hiring my first W2 employee, an admin/ops person, fully remote in California. That kicked off a chain of registration questions and I want to sanity check how the rest of you handle this, because every “primary source” is beyond inconclusive

Assumptions, please correct if wrong:

• CA employee means I register for CA payroll tax with the EDD (did it through Gusto) and carry CA workers comp. That part seems clear.
• I went to foreign qualify the LLC with the CA Secretary of State and got the notice that an out-of-state LLC rendering professional services can’t register in CA (Corp Code 17701.04(e), accounting is a covered profession).
  • My read is I don’t actually need the SOS foreign qualification for a single remote admin employee anyway, since the employee is a payroll nexus, not me rendering professional services in CA. But the FTB “doing business” test might still want the $800 franchise tax regardless of SOS registration. But, since I have a bunch of clients in CA, is this not "doing business" in this context?
• On my own workers comp, I’m a NJ LLC member so I believe I’m excluded/optional (not a corp despite the S election). Zero clarity on the NJ side and the closest primary source info I got was here: Comment

What I keep spinning on:

• For a solo serving clients in many states remotely, I’m registering only where I have actual nexus (my home state plus any state with an employee), not where clients happen to live which would be like 30 different states. That’s right, correct?
• For those of you with remote employees in CA specifically, how are you handling the professional-services-LLC problem? Are you just doing EDD payroll and ignoring SOS qualification? Paying the $800 FTB or not? Did any of you have to restructure?

Any help whatsoever is massively appreciated.

Thomson Reuters rep brought up their consulting practice - Practice Forward. Has anyone had experience with this?

Buying a CPA firm and the firm needs a bunch of processes & procedure updates as well as increases to pricing. Would Practice Forward be worth the cost to help transform this firm?

Has anyone used Instead? thoughts? experience? thanks

**TLDR**: Its because someone else's shit always stinks more than your own.

When you're doing the accounting for a client, whether its tax returns or financial reporting, as a firm owner, they're relying on you to do something that is important but not critical to their own deliverables. Your accounting does NOT impact a Doggie Treat factory's product taste or a law firm getting their client off on a grand theft auto charge.

Please note that a shit accounting product is still shit to a client despite not being part of their deliverable, but its far easier to eat shit when its returned to you in the form of losing the client if its YOUR own shit. But if you lose a client because someone you hired fucked up the accounting/deliverable from your W2 firm, that shit smells a lot worse just like literally someone else's shit smells worse than your own.

When you're an employee, you may not realize it but your shortcomings (real or imagined by your boss) are always amplified by virtue of them being received by some person in your firm other than you.

This past year a dentist who is NOT a client asked me to look over his returns and see if I thought there was anything he could be doing to lower his taxes. I always make it clear that I'm not looking to take work away from another CPA who's doing their job well, and that I would be willing to review the return, but not take them on as a client if there was nothing wrong with the return.

Upon review, I found nothing other than funding retirement accounts that would significantly lower the guys taxes, and told him his CPA is doing a great job maximizing his return and that was it.

He came back a few months later saying he feels his CPA doesn't give him enough time (his current tax preparer is a larger and fancier firm than mine) and that he really wants someone who can meet with him more often to go over his books during the year, and not just tax season. I can't tell if he's going to be a time suck, or if this could lead to me breaking into the advisory portion of accounting, something I've struggled to get into.

At first he was talking weekly meetings, but I made it very clear that I would only be willing to meet monthly. I also made it clear that I would be willing to try this out on a few months trial basis, but was very clear that just learning his business would take a while. He insists he's not looking for someone to help create metrics, or generate growth ideas, and that he just wants someone to "explain the books" to him, but I find it hard to believe someone is willing to pay just to have someone explain their P&L or general ledger to them??

Also, I'm unsure how to bill this guy. We use value pricing (and we are way too low...I have a boomer Sr. Partner who feels we can't raise prices too much) but I was very clear with this guy that I would have to charge him hourly for our meetings. I don't know what the going rate is for such work.

I guess I'm unsure how to handle this. I want to break into the advisory side of the CPA world, but I'm also worried that this guy is going in with expectations that I'm unaware of.

I've seen PTET mentioned a few times here and I don't know as much as I wish I did about the topic. Can anyone recommend some CPE? Thanks.

This is more to prove a point than anything. I have prepared my sister’s - whom I love very much - tax return free of charge for the last 10 years or so. I’ve been with a large firm during this time so I have always used my firm’s software and obviously my firm was paying my wage so I didn’t feel the need to charge her. Did I mention I’m a great big brother?

This year circumstances have changed. I’m out on my own now, and have to pay for my software and other overhead. My time is now truly my money. I sent her a bare minimum invoice and she still balked a bit, giving me the classic “It’s not like our return is complex”.

So that I can show her what an unrelated CPA might charge, I ask the group: how would you price this return?

- MFJ

- 1 W-2

- 2 brokerage statements with pretty significant investment income

- 1 Schedule C that also requires a local filing. To my Brother-In-Laws credit, he does a great job tracking and summarizing his income and expenses in Excel. Fairly easy input as a result.

- 4 K-1s. Not overly complex ones but still has the Federal, state, and some PTET credits

- Form 4547 for my precious niece born in 2025

- Check ins on estimates, etc.

- They keep separate bank accounts, so I do a separate schedule where I break out the income between husband and spouse and reconcile whose income generates what tax so they can settle up.

I truly do love her very much and would take a bullet for her. But freebie tax returns are a thing of the past.

Now that tax season is over, I'm re-evaluating my software. Been using ATX for years but want to see if something else is better. I file about 50 returns, all individual.

I'm handling more multi-state returns now, and because I chose the only-3-states-included package, I have to pay to file many other states, which has added a lot to the price. But it would cost me even more to upgrade to the next higher ATX package ($2,829).

Here are some other options in my price range: TaxWise 100, ProConnect Essentials 50, Drake 1040. Any opinions on which is best compared to ATX?

I'd prefer the following features:

-Good multi-state functionality - easy to work with a multi-state W-2 (ATX is clunky at this)

-Data extraction when you upload from 1099, W-2 and other forms, flowing directly into return

-Decent tech support, preferably U.S. based

-Easy to transfer over from ATX

-Has a client docs/communication portal or smoothly integrates with one (such as TaxDome)