News & Updates

In order to ensure the timely filing of 2022 income tax returns, we required the signing of our Engagement Letter, the completion of our Income Tax Questionnaire-Checklist, and we needed to obtain ALL of your tax information PRIOR to commencing the preparation of your returns.

This process was defined below, was included in each of our automated e-mail responses, and was included as part of our voicemail messaging system.  Failure to follow this process put the filing of income tax returns for those who did not follow the process AND the filing of income tax returns for those who did follow the process at risk.

As an Accounting and Consulting firm, we provide a variety of services to a wide range of clients.  The scope of our services includes, but is not limited to Income Tax Preparation Services.

Over the past several years, the Accounting industry has been overwhelmed with Income Tax Preparation Services.  Many firms (including ours) have been filing income tax returns every month since January 2020, the year that COVID dramatically impacted the Federal and State tax codes.

We are currently conducting a review of our client list, which includes evaluating those who require monthly services versus quarterly services versus annual services.

We've updated our Engagement Letter together with our Terms and Conditions for 2023. 

All Clients must sign our new Engagement Letter, acknowledging that they have read and agree to our Terms and Conditions prior to commencing any of our services. 

In 2022, we implemented a Personal Income Tax Questionnaire/Checklist through the use of Google Forms to assist our Clients with gathering the information necessary to begin preparing their income tax returns.

This tool reduced the number of tax forms that would otherwise have been overlooked and it created a mechanism to gather tax information that is not generally included on a traditional form (e.g., real estate taxes, donations, child/dependent care expenses).  

For 2023, the completion of our Personal income Tax Questionnaire/Checklist is a mandatory step in our tax preparation process; we will not begin the preparation of your income tax returns until the Questionnaire/Checklist has been completed.

Similar to the Personal Income Tax Questionnaire/Checklist, we also created other Google forms for our business clients, including…

• Rental Income & Expenses – For Clients that rent real estate properties who have not maintained formal books and records.
• Business Income & Expenses – For Clients that sell products and/or perform services (i.e., not real estate rentals) who have not maintained formal books and records, including independent contractors (i.e., receive Form 1099-NEC, Form 1099-MISC).
• Home Office Deduction – For Clients that exclusively and regularly use part of their home or a separate structure on their property as their primary place of business.

Taxpayers are responsible providing tax preparers with all of the information necessary to report gains or losses on the sale of crypto/virtual currency.  

Unfortunately, many exchanges/wallets do not keep track of the required information on behalf of taxpayers.

If we need to incur time to assist our Clients with the gathering and/or deciphering of crypto/virtual currency information, we will bill you at our hourly rate for our Consulting Services - in addition to billing for our Income Tax Preparation Services.

With the significant increase in the complexity of the tax codes, the limited time available to file tax returns and lack of experienced Accounting professionals (industry-wide), we discontinued the use of our online scheduling tool for income tax appointments.

We will coordinate ONE day and time to speak with you about your income tax returns (upon request) after your returns have been prepared and prior to filing.

A formal appointment is NOT required to drop off your tax information.  You may drop off your tax information, consistent with prior years, at our new office between 9am and 5pm from Monday through Friday.  Feel free to contact our office to coordinate a day and time with our Office Manager so that we are available to receive your tax information. 

Note:   If you require a consultation prior to commencing the preparation your income tax returns as a prerequisite, you may request a 30-min or 60-min appointment that will be charged at our hourly rate in advance of the meeting - at the time of scheduling, while time permits.

Traditionally, we only accepted credit/debit cards on an exception basis.

We will accept credit/debit cards for our Income Tax Preparation Services, subject to a 5% processing fee, upon request.

In light of COVID, we made a decision to continue to maintain our 2019 rate schedule from 2020 through 2022 - despite the increase in complexity of the tax codes and time required to prepare income tax returns.

Please be advised that our Income Tax Preparation Service fees will be increasing an average rate of 25% this year.

The IRS and State tax authorities have increased the number of Notices sent to taxpayers.

Our *Income Tax Preparation Services* do not include *Taxpayer/Audit Support*.  Time incurred by our Firm to address Notices on your behalf will be billed at our hourly rate.

 After “Tax Season” 2022, we moved from a home office to Office Evolution, a Corporate suite within 1 Blue Hill Plaza, located in the Lobby Level across from the Security desk (as depicted in the picture of the buildings).  

For those who are not familiar with Blue Hill Plaza, we are in the skyscraper located across from the Pearl River Hilton (as depicted in the orange waiting room) – 1.3 miles from where my home office was located. 

  We hired an Office Manager, Patty Bodnar, who started in January so that we can increase efficiency and combat several factors that have impacted our industry in our office.

We wanted to take a moment to apologize for the additional time it has taken for us to respond to messages and perform our services.

In speaking with several of our Clients on this topic, it was recommended that we share some of our insights into the challenges faced by our industry, which has impacted our ability to provide services efficiently and effectively. 

Although it is widely documented, these issues do not appear to get the attention of the mainstream media in the form of headlines.  Please read our Article on "The Great Resignation" of the Accounting Industry for additional information.