Ever find yourself just fiddling with a mechanical pencil, or rearranging supplies in your desk drawer, just for the sake of doing something else than working for a minute or two? While needless or purposeless activities can serve as a stress break, they do not add much to the value of your work, at least not directly.
Do you realize that when you bring incomplete or uncorrected bookkeeping records in to your CPA for the purpose of completing your annual tax return, you are forcing your CPA or their staff to work at less than their optimal level. In other words, just because you are able to take out the trash upon occasion, does that mean that it is good economic sense to be a garbage hauler when you have a business degree? Of course not. You and your family are best served by performing work in your area of specialization, because society puts a higher value on that work and rewards you appropriately.
Your CPA does not want to bill you for all the clerical work to complete and correct your bookkeeping records when he or she possesses the experience and skill to be completing complex accounting and tax analysis, and because of their advanced specialization, they do not require a lot of billable time to do so either. So this year, use your CPA properly. If your bookkeeping is not complete or is very disordered, hire a contract or freelance bookkeeper to complete your accounting books for the year, pay the bookkeeper their lower rate, and deliver complete and accurate accounting records to your CPA and request a lower fee due to the quality of accounting records you are supplying for the tax preparation service.
Any CPA who is thinking in profitability terms should be delighted to provide you with a relatively lower fee which is generally based on the time required to complete the tax return, including time to complete accounting records. If a CPA has been simply billing clients at regular CPA rates for all the work, bookkeeping as well as tax preparation, then that CPA is not properly meeting the needs of his clients, because those clients can get the bookkeeping work done cheaper, since CPA expertise is not required for regular bookkeeping. The final tax return quality is or should be identical whether the bookkeeping is completed by the CPA or another bookkeeper, as the CPA will still be able to quickly review the bookkeeping for errors and can make common year end adjustments quickly as well.
When CPA firm personnel are working primarily in their area of specialization, in this case, taxation, they are providing the greatest profitability work to their firm, which is not the case when they are forced to spend high rate hours correcting and completing client books for the annual tax return work. Bring in great records and everyone wins!
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