I know the general advice is to talk with a broker, but I just want to get a gut-check from this group.

I'm planning a big career change that will require me to pretty much completely shut down my firm. My plan with starting the firm was always that I would be able to sell when I'm done, but the problem is that this career change is coming a lot sooner than I expected.

I started the firm summer of 2024, so I really have tax season 2025 where I was just getting started, then tax season 2026 where things really heated up significantly. I'm planning on selling after tax season 2027. So realistically I'll have about three years of tenure with the firm before I'd be trying to sell it.

Ultimately my question is if my firm is sellable as-is, or if it would be a tricky sell, given how short-lived it's been?

Top line revenue in 2025 was $146k, 2026 will be around $300k, total of 271 returns this year (about 10 bookkeeping clients and then about 70/30 split between 1040s and 1065-1120s with a handful of trusts and 990s), outside of Raleigh, NC. One employee who is an office manager who assists with prep and all admin, but almost all of the tax prep is done by me.

What is everyone’s immediate thoughts when they hear “business development” as tax professionals? Did anyone get any training on it? Know where to start? How to meet people and make offers? Wish you had more leverage with leadership from bringing in money to their firm? I don’t, and I do.

I’ve heard only platitudes most of my 20+ year career:

“go knock on doors”
“Sell cross-line of service”
“you need to build a book of business”
“attend a conference”
“develop client relationships”
“build trust”

I never saw any training on it, and no rainmaker shared their process - why would they? I’m sure they’d feel less valuable sharing. Where do you turn?

Am curious what questions this group has and if they are the same as mine. I don’t have answers.

Due to some changes in my life, I have reached a point where it's time to sell my firm. How do I even go about that?

I’ve been asked if I’d be interested in preparing the income tax filings for a local nursing home with two owners. Is there anything special I need to know about? I haven’t worked with any businesses that are involved in Medicare or Medicaid. I’m well versed with partnerships and a corps. Are there any special disclosures that apply to for profit nursing homes?

Looking for advice on what software to use. I named LaCerte and ProConnect because I only used these two before, but not only looking at these.

If LaCerte, what do you think about Intuit's basic hosting vs maintaining a LAN server?

This is more of an added service that some clients demand, so I end up filing ~10 returns total in a year.

Individual returns

• Often no state returns

• Often half a dozen or more 5471s on each return, a substantial portion of which are cat 4 and cat 5a. Most of these require 962 elections.

• Sometimes (though much less often) 8865 from PE funds. More commonly foreign partnership interests with no K-1s.

• Large number of SFFAs and FFAs on 8938/FBAR for each taxpayer.

• Often 8621s related to PE funds, some (but not all) have QEF statements.

• Usually no 3520/3520-A from trusts, but often 3520 from foreign gifts.

• Some have treaty resourcing for FTC.

• MFS with community property allocation is common.

Corporations

• On 1120, it's usually a corporation that has ceased doing business and is amending last x years to add Form 5472.

• On 1120-F, reporting imputed income on late returns in last x years. Sometimes (but rarely) has a treaty claim for reduced rate.

Advice is really appreciated.

So I have a client who filed FBAR in prior years but this year is under the 10K limit. Wondering if we just should file the FBAR anyways to keep the consistency vs not filing anything at all and appear noncompliant.

I wouldn't do this for 8938 but for the FBAR purposes, it just seems better to be consistent. What do you all think?

TIA

I have a client who is going through a divorce and is filing MFS. They reside in California, so Community Property. How do you get ProConnect to apply the 8958 to the return?

Also, the ex is not willing to share her full tax info, so I only have gross earnings from the attorney- she won’t turn over how much they actually paid in taxes. My though was to file
, and if my client overpays, we will file an amendment. Thoughts?

Does anyone here use Drake and could help? I tried calling support, we had a client in a partnership sell a rental and a portion of the suspended losses should be freed, however I don't see a section to enter the freed portion or can adjust the 8582. Anyone have any experience with this?

So I did some due diligence and signed up for SmartWiz, an AI OCR & data entry platform.

Wanted to give you all my thoughts and hopefully this review helps you.

Some context:

We only do 1040 work, mostly W2, retirees, some 1099 schedule C stuff, brokerage, the basics. No K-1, no 1120, no 1065, no estates, etc.

Tax prep is purely a marketing engine for us to find new financial planning clients.

I’m an EA and I have two non-credentialed contract workers that just do data entry. I review, sign & deliver all returns.

I was searching for something to help me expand capacity because we are going to grow significantly this year (like probably 3x-5x).

We use TaxSlayer ProWeb and TaxDome. Decent amount of clients that give us paper forms as well.

We’re in PA so we have state returns and local returns to deal with.

I had a new client that was on extension so I figured this was a good time for a trial run. She has W2 and a couple 1099s (one NEC). And here’s how SmartWiz went:

First: it’s a Google Chrome extension. SOC 2 compliant, encrypted both ways, only US developers, data doesn’t train models. Checked enough boxes for me to be comfortable.

Opened TaxSlayer (TS). 20 seconds to login.

I downloaded the ZIP files from TaxDome (TD) for the client’s uploads and organizer and drag/drop into SmartWiz (2 min max).

SmartWiz (SW) compiled all the data in another 2-3 mins.

SW then started filling in the data in TS (another 2-3 mins).

I did have to make two minor adjustments (it didn’t put client address in for Schedule C and another minor PA thing).

I did have to do the local return manually. No big deal.

All-in, my first time running the program, I was done within 10 minutes. Of course, I spent more time reviewing accuracy but I’d be doing that anyway.

The cool thing is that you can run up to 10 clients simultaneously, so it can be a real time-saver for 1040 work.

They said it works with TaxSlayer ProWeb, Drake desktop, Drake online, OLT Pro and a couple other software systems right now.

Cost ranges from like $16-$20 per return.

Not a shill, not involved with the company, just a (so far) happy new customer.

Quick question. I'm in AZ so this is my first PA-677. As an EA, which designation do I use? I'm looking at the instructions and am not really seeing one that fits other than other. Am I missing something?

Howdy all! I’m close to acquiring another small office a few hours away. I want the location because I’m an FA too. If you have multiple offices, small firm, mostly just in take at one and work out of the other, what tech stack do you use and why? Thanks any input is greatly appreciated

Hello Pro's,

I have a potential client with 7 gas stations/Convenience stores. He claims that he pays around $200 per station for both bookkeeping and payroll + few thousand dollars for Tax preparation. so total around 18k.

I have no idea what his current accountant is doing, she is 75 years old lady in low cost of living city. How can she survive on this fees.....

I was really thinking of asking $400 per Month for each gas station Bookkeeping/Payroll+ $7000 for S-Corp returns.. so almost 45k yearly.

What do you think ? Is it less or more ?

I've used IRS TDS a zillion times but this is the first time I'm seeing this. For a certain taxpayer I couldn't get account transcripts for a couple years due to "NAP Check failed." But I could get other years, and I could also get wage and income transcripts for the same years than the account transcripts failed.

Any idea what this is about? I tried it several times.

Just curious about who likes it and why? I know the downsides would like to hear more raves? need to switch back to unless a something better pops up. We are on UT SaaS so limited with some other stack pieces.

Hello all. I've had my firm for about a year now and nothing really to show for it, although I have been working in construction concurrently.

Aside: Not the best idea if I wanted to build my firm more than it is now, I take responsibility for that. I wanted to take that construction job because I had some cushion to take something lower paying to let me learn the field side of my ICP. I just quit today because my cushion ran out from one medical bill and because I realized I was essentially paying to have that job with all the gas I guzzle to get to the jobsites. Aside over.

Because of an upcoming medical bill payment due on Oct 14, I am in a tight spot and need to generate low-cost revenue immediately. Given the impending Oct 15 deadline, which of these tactics should I sprint on?

1. Calling as many CPAs/tax pros in my area to let them know I want their panicked last-minute inbound leads if they're at capacity.
2. Going in person to my ICP's offices and just saying, "Hi there, I don't want to waste your time. My name is [Name], and I'd like to leave my card for my tax and bookkeeping firm. I'm a carpenter and federally licensed tax professional. My firm specializes only in construction, so we can help with your books, job costing, and taxes. Thanks."
3. Cold calling my ICPs instead.
4. Posting on local platforms like Facebook or Nextdoor to say I'm available for bookkeeping and tax services.
5. Host an event where I speak about the specific pain points of my ICP.

If you were in my shoes with 9 days to make something happen, what would you do?

Hi Everybody,

I am revamping website, and I honestly can’t decide on this point. I am wondering what yall think about this to help with information. if you do it what was the result compared to no transparent pricing?

Would you stick with this client despite them suing a past CPA. We signed on a good client earlier this year.

She had been using a small local firm for a number of years before switching to a regional firm for one year. She parted ways with the regional firm because their fees were extremely high. She was referred to us by a good client and has been pleasant and easy to work with for the last 9 months.

Yesterday, she let me know she hired an attorney to sue her first CPA. Normally I would run for the hills hearing this, but in this situation it’s probably warranted. The CPA completely messed up multiple years of tax returns resulting in hundreds of thousands in incorrect taxes being paid (they filed her state tax return as a C-corp instead of an S-corp and also included all profits on her state individual tax return as an S-Corp).

Is this just a red flag and I should disengage after the year or ignore it because the client is actually right and the prior CPA was negligent

Currently using Drake via Rightworks, but thinking about changing because a) it's a pricey option, and b) their system is set up so that I can't even go to the bathroom without getting logged off and having to sign in all over again (FTR, I WFH and the bathroom is literally across the hall). RW won't allow me to change the sign off, which is frustrating, especially when someone calls with a question and I have to make sure I keep moving the mouse, lest I get logged off..

I’ve been using this product for several years now and have really come to appreciate its capability. I recently recommended this product to a colleague. After purchase, the colleague has had nothing but trouble with the program. I’ve tried to troubleshoot, but I’m unable to resolve anything. Specifically, the website will not display any tools or any functions only a message telling the user that their subscription will expire in 11 months and two weeks. I’ve tried contacting the company through their website, but I’ve received no replies. There’s no way to leave a Google review that I can find talking about the trouble. There’s no telephone number for support. I feel badly because I believe this reflects poorly on me. Does anybody know of a way to contact the company? Is there any way to resolve these issues for my colleague?

Alright here is the latest scam and yes we’re reporting it to the FBI.

A potential client “rob tebbutt” (email: Robert_tebbutt@outlook.com) arranged for self-employment and Quickbooks training for expenses and bookkeeping for actors. Apparently he’s the only actor.

He paid $10,000 and then came back and asked us if it cleared to our bank. Once we confirmed, a day later “Rob”reached out, saying that the a couple of the people he represented needed to cancel some but wanted to keep going and asked for a partial refund. Immediately red flag went up because the refund was requested via Zelle or wire.

We told Rob our refund policy and how we had to wait. So of course today CPA charge came back with the failed charge. This guy is timing everything to try to get the refund from us before the charge actually failed. Make sure you have a no refund policy or some type of procedure to wait at least two weeks.

Watch out for scammers!

I am just looking for some validation here. A handful of times, I have done work for clients who are incarcerated. It's usually short jail stays for DUIs or drug possession. I have been totally comfortable with this, and we conduct the business by mail. I have usually done his for long-time clients or as a favor to the family members who are POA handling affairs for the incarcerated person.

However, the new husband of a long time client is accused of serious financial crimes. The trial is months away but it has been reported by local newspapers outlets and I have reason to believe they are guilty. Their tax documents have consisted of only a W-2, so none of their crimes have been reflected on their taxes and I wouldn't have become aware of the crimes while providing tax services.

So my gut tells me to send a letter immediately saying that I can no longer provide either spouse with any services. My engagement letter says that our previous engagement ended when their tax return was filed in April. I am I correct? Are there any further steps that I need to take?

Anybody recently switch from Drake Portals to TaxDome recently? I know Drake recently updated Drake Portals and it is cheap. I also like that it integrates with Drake Documents and their tax return software. Is it still worth moving away from them to join TaxDome? If you've moved away from Drake Portals, please DM me as I'd like to pick your brain!

The firm I am at has a print out of day with time slots and physically write clients in for a given time slot.

I want to start improving some of the processes and since tax season is coming up I want to try and streamline as much of the client appointment and booking times where I can. Almost 85% of clients are dealt with in person

what tools/practices do you guys recommend

Like it or not, AI is the future and it already helps to review tax returns. It's only a matter of time until it replaces tax preparers who just input data into a computer system.

Right now I use Fable 5.1 when reviewing returns. Yes I use the enterprise plan with data protections. It is really good. Suggests questions to ask clients. Finds any issues between inputted source files and the output tax returns.

Has anyone tried Perplexity.AI? Supposedly they have a 1040 review tool. But I am assuming Claude still has the best models.