Two weeks out

[Catherine]

I find it's more the complexity of the return than the size of the practice.  I do fewer than 200 returns per year.  Many of them, though, go to 75-100 pages with all the supporting schedules and worksheets.  I also deal with folks with offshore accounts - and in some cases foreign businesses.  It gets real hairy, real fast - and even when we think we've covered all bases in a drop-off interview that lasts two hours of going through minutiae, I end up stumbling across stuff we did not cover - and then the client has to go dig for more details while I pore over tax treaty nonsense.

 

My new assistant, though, is doing really well at handling everything I throw at him.  Next week he's getting the additional chore of doing Excel spreadsheets for me for charitable donations.  I have clients who bring hand-written lists marked "incomplete" along with printouts of emailed receipts plus paper end of year receipts, and it all has to be cross-checked to make sure nothing is duplicated but everything is included.  He gets the job!

[joanmcq]

I just had a new client come in that would be an EZ form except for 45K in medical.  I told her about a week because when my brain can't handle any more foreign currency conversions or multi state allocations, I pull out a few returns that I know I can get done.  Makes me feel better getting one off the desk.