News, practice tips, and industry updates for CPAs, enrolled agents, attorneys, and everyone else working in tax professionally.
It’s T minus 13 days until Tax Day and tax pros everywhere are scrambling to get returns prepared on time. It’s easy to get carried away since everyone is in a hurry. But slow down and think… Here are the top eleven things your tax pro doesn’t want to hear from you this month: 11….
Many years ago, a crack unit of specialists from Big Four audit firms and boutique consultancy firms – were working on the mean streets of Broadway to South Street on the East River in Lower Manhattan. These men promptly escaped from the financial district to the nation’s capital. Today, they are wanted by the government….
“Because I said so.” As a parent, I’ve grown to love the power of those words. But as a professional? Not so much. At work, I like to have rules. And I like to think we have those rules for a reason. I don’t like it when rules don’t make sense, appear arbitrary, or aren’t…
I hate standardized tests. My daughter, a straight-A student at her elementary school, was freaking out over taking the PSSAs, the state-issued assessment tests in Pennsylvania, this week. She was a bundle of nervous energy, talking through a litany of “what if?” questions, all of which appeared to revolve around some kind of worst-case scenario….
Taxpayer asks: Before I got married, I used TurboTax to do my taxes. Now, my wife wants me to go somewhere to get our taxes done. I called around and got a few quotes. Some of them were as low as $150 and one guy wanted $500. How do I know who is the best…
Spam is infuriating. Porn and solicitations are bad enough but it’s even more infuriating when it targets good people and their livelihoods. The newest spam in my box is an email claiming to be from the AICPA. The AICPA (American Institute of Certified Public Accountants) is a real organization with some pretty cool folks. To…
With tax season ramping up, tax scams are on the rise. Scams aren’t limited to in person scams; online scammers are in on the action, too. The latest tax-related scams to make the rounds might have landed in your inbox as early as last month but they’re still going strong; I received three just this…
You can probably guess that I tend to recommend finding a competent, reliable tax professional to help you out come tax time. I’m not too proud to say that I don’t do my own taxes anymore, not because I enjoy paying someone else to do them but because I want to stay married. Let’s face…
I had a great time on Friday with our “Ask the taxgirl LIVE” segment. I know there wasn’t a lot of notice about it and yes, I heard about it (thanks for your emails and messages). This was my first time live blogging on Forbes and we had some technical pieces to work out. That…
So I’m going to let you in on a little secret: I don’t prepare my own tax returns. Completely true. It is how I stay married. You see, I used to prepare my own returns for my business and for my household. And I did just fine for a bit. But then I had three…