To recap, in Part 1 of this series I dealt with IRS failures in the 2022 Tax Season; in Part 2, I covered what the IRS should do to fix the mess. In Part 3, I wrote about what our firm got wrong. It’s now time to look at the opportunities (or change-points) to resolve our issues.
1. We’re upgrading our hardware and software. Our computer server is being replaced in a little over one week (which should allow us to access files faster). We’re switching to a unified back-end software before year-end; this should eliminate (I hope) or greatly reduce our internal systemic issues and increase our work-flow efficiency and speed.
2. We’re moving to a new office in December. We’re moving across the courtyard to a larger office that’s far better suited for our needs. We’ll have room for expansion. While I’ll miss having the only 17-sided office in the country (yes, it’s a heptadecagon!), the new office will work better for our staff.
3. We’re moving up our submission deadlines. We need to be able to better deal with the workload, and we simply couldn’t get everything done correctly and provide the proper level of service with our old deadlines. This does mean many of our clients may need to file extensions; however, while inflation is adding costs for all of us, the 24-hour day remains just 24 hours long. (The details will be in the Engagement Letters we send to our clients in December.)
4. We’re changing our work hours for the health and efficiency of our staff. We’re decreasing the hours we’re working during Tax Season. Everyone needs time to recharge, and working seven days a week isn’t healthy. We will be starting our increased Tax Season hours earlier, but our staff deserves time off every week–and they will be getting it this year.
5. We’re raising our rates for the 2023 Tax Season. There are two major components of this. First, as I’ve detailed in the past, inflation is impacting every input. From the paper we use to the software we rely on, everything has gone up between 10% to 488% from last year. Like every business, we must pass that on to our clients. Second, we believe we’ve been charging too little and we need to adjust our rates (while providing a far better level of service than we did in the 2022 Tax Season). (The details will be sent when we distribute our Engagement Letters.)
6. We’re not planning on net growth of clients for the 2023 Tax Season. When Price goes up, Demand goes down; that’s one of the outputs of the Law of Supply and Demand. We do expect to lose some clients because of our price increase, and we accept that. Additionally, we’re going to cap the number of clients based on the number of returns we can realistically complete with the level of service we want to provide. It’s quite likely that we will not be accepting new clients sometime early in 2023, so if you’re interested in using us, now is the time to let us know.
7. We’re attempting to hire another tax professional (or trainee). Even though the economy is in a recession, the job market remains extremely tough. We’d like to hire another tax professional, and we’re looking to do so. Our trainee from 2022 will be on board as a tax professional for the 2023 Tax Season, so that should help. Still, demand remains strong (and likely will continue to be strong as long as the Tax Code remains as convoluted as it is today).
Will these fix our issues from the 2022 Tax Season? At minimum, they should greatly reduce the issues we faced. However, no one can predict the future. I can promise that we’re not going to have a repeat of the issues we had during 2022, and we are building more resiliency into our systems.
Tags: 2022.Tax.Season, 2023.Tax.Season