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hello i am empress brosephine and am apparently extremely broke brained as taxes is enjoyable and I am really enjoying learning about them. that said, I would like to start practicing in my free time and wanted to know what tax software do actual professionals use? Thanks for the help. I think I might attempt to find a internship in this stuff too.
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Nov 23, 2020 17:23
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Empress Brosephine posted:hello i am empress brosephine and am apparently extremely broke brained as taxes is enjoyable and I am really enjoying learning about them. Tax SLAYER *sick guitar riff*
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Nov 23, 2020 17:27
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Empress Brosephine posted:hello i am empress brosephine and am apparently extremely broke brained as taxes is enjoyable and I am really enjoying learning about them. Ahahahahahaha you will regret this. We use GoSystem at work. Other popular softwares are ProSystem and CCH. As far as I know, the licenses are quite expensive, so not sure if you really want to get it for fun.
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Nov 23, 2020 18:20
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Yeah I was hoping there'd be like a student discount or trial. Oh well I'll still see what I cna do. I might volunteer for the Vita program :V Thanks all
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Nov 23, 2020 18:27
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I volunteered for VITA straight out of school while I looked for work and honestly, really enjoyed it. There are a few levels of tests you can pass to do differing types of tax return. Typically nothing is too complicated. You will be doing a lot of Earned Income Tax Credit calcs. But I found it really rewarding, so many people just don't have any sort of access to knowledge when it comes to tax stuff and it puts you in a position to help and teach people who can really need it. I'll always remember one woman who came in with 3 young children and when I finished her return, the EITC had got her something like $5,000 in cash back and she just started crying with relief. I also remember one guy who worked at Target or something and must have taken his payroll deductions as low as he could because he owed a few grand at the end of the year....He was less than happy with me.
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Nov 23, 2020 18:59
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When I did VITA we got a guy right out of prison who'd never paid taxes before but heard from a friend that he could get money. He'd worked a few odd jobs but had no withholding or kids. I kept trying to explain to him that a refund can only refund what you've paid, and you don't get credit for kids unless you... have kids. I tried to get him to look on the bright side by explaining how much easier it was to apply for medicaid and snap with a tax return (source: was on medicaid and snap). He was nice enough to me despite his confusion but apparently later he made some threatening phone calls to my professor. Other than that it was mostly old ladies.
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Nov 23, 2020 19:33
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Sounds kinda fun and a good way to get some experience, wonder how its going to work with CORONA
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Nov 24, 2020 01:25
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I use ProConnect. You pay per return, so it's actually free to poke around and make practice returns as long as you don't try to make a printable version or e-file something.
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Nov 24, 2020 03:06
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Empress Brosephine posted:hello i am empress brosephine and am apparently extremely broke brained as taxes is enjoyable and I am really enjoying learning about them. Have you considered doing literally anything else with your life? I mean, focusing on tax leads to one of two places; client work forever and ever or a corporate tax/treasury position. So option one you're basically working a customer service position until you die. Have you met customers? They suck. Option 2 you're at least not dealing with clients but now you're dealing with bullshit debt amortization schedules and arbitrary tax deadlines that nobody else in the finance department has any real respect for. If you're still convinced you want to be an excel monkey computer toucher then consider spending 3-5 miserable borderline alcoholic years in audit filling out checklists before settling into a financial reporting role where you really only work a 40+ hour week whenever a quarter/year close rolls around. Just don't let anyone trick you into taking an internal audit position or joining a start up and you're good. e: I forgot route 3 which is tax/law, an always in-demand combo that combines the long hours of tax with the crippling debt of a law degree. Good Citizen fucked around with this message at 06:27 on Nov 24, 2020 |
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Nov 24, 2020 06:25
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Wow I'm not so sure now
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Nov 24, 2020 06:49
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Good Citizen posted:Have you considered doing literally anything else with your life? I mean, focusing on tax leads to one of two places; client work forever and ever or a corporate tax/treasury position. So option one you're basically working a customer service position until you die. Have you met customers? They suck. Option 2 you're at least not dealing with clients but now you're dealing with bullshit debt amortization schedules and arbitrary tax deadlines that nobody else in the finance department has any real respect for. I’ll add that after experiencing several years of each of public accounting and corporate tax, I jumped to federal government and am overall very happy and recommend it to all of my tax friends (they don’t believe me and will never apply but alas). If it’s up to me I will never leave.
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Nov 24, 2020 08:16
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Professional acounting positives: crowbar your way into the middle class, no questions asked. Negatives: Zero job satisfaction as you immerse yourself in endless technocratic bullshit that no one else appreciates or understands, and achieve absolutely nothing with your brief time on earth.
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Nov 24, 2020 14:12
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Empress Brosephine posted:Wow I'm not so sure now Clients can suck but if you’re not a complete misanthrope you will probably grow to like many of your regular ones. It’s a treat every year to spend no more than an hour catching up with some of my clients seeing how they’re business has grown, if they’ve got married or had a kid. As someone who’s not great at small talk it ends up being the perfect amount of interaction. Then you have the clients who want to spend 3 hours on the phone going through their return line by line and you wish they were struck dead or at least mute.
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Nov 24, 2020 14:31
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I work in marketing already so I'm used to the ient interaction so that part doesn't scare me atleast. Thanks everyone for the words 
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Nov 24, 2020 14:39
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Strategic Tea posted:Professional acounting positives: crowbar your way into the middle class, no questions asked. Wow that’s a pretty narrow view of things. It’s actually extremely important that investors know the deferred tax impact of amortization and foreign tax credAHAHAHAHAHAAHA oh god you’re right. Mush Mushi fucked around with this message at 17:08 on Nov 24, 2020 |
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Nov 24, 2020 17:03
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Strategic Tea posted:Professional acounting positives: crowbar your way into the middle class, no questions asked.
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Nov 24, 2020 18:56
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Still sounds better than marketing.
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Nov 24, 2020 19:00
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Mandalay posted:Still sounds better than marketing. Agreed. Marketing culture is actively terrible while accounting culture is benignly nihilistic
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Nov 24, 2020 19:29
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marketing is cool for the ladies and parties but thats about it tbh. a lot of cutthroat people who don't care about you at all. i know accounting is the exact opposite of that which i kinda like tbh
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Nov 24, 2020 19:45
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Empress Brosephine posted:a lot of cutthroat people who don't care about you at all. i know accounting is the exact opposite of that which i kinda like tbh If you ever plan on working for a big public accounting firm, I have some bad news for you Good Citizen posted:Have you considered doing literally anything else with your life? I mean, focusing on tax leads to one of two places; client work forever and ever or a corporate tax/treasury position. So option one you're basically working a customer service position until you die. Have you met customers? They suck. Clients can suck but the thing about having clients is that having enough clients makes you unkillable. If you get to the point where you actually have clients that have a relationship with you, you have a ton of leverage over your bosses or you get to be your own boss. There's risks involved and clients can be a pain in the rear end, but if you manage to build a solid base of client relationships then you are far more firmly in control of your own destiny than most corporate employees. (Do it long enough and well enough and you even get the opportunity to start pricing out or outright firing the clients that are the biggest pain in the rear end.)
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Nov 24, 2020 23:03
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Good Citizen posted:Agreed. Marketing culture is actively terrible while accounting culture is benignly nihilistic We just tell the truth* *reasonable truth only, all lies are probably below performance materiality
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Nov 24, 2020 23:56
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What’s great about tax is if you do your job right, no one will notice, and if you do it wrong (enough), you could go to prison.
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Nov 25, 2020 03:40
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Strategic Tea posted:Negatives: Zero job satisfaction as you immerse yourself in endless technocratic bullshit that no one else appreciates or understands, and achieve absolutely nothing with your brief time on earth. This is how literally everyone deskbound worker feels about their job. It ain't special to accounting. Lmao at people looking for their job to fulfill them. There are people who make a living doing things they find meaningful, but if you were that person you wouldn't be considering an accounting career, would you?
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Nov 25, 2020 04:52
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I like working in public accounting. Work is engaging, difficult, and you get the right balance of client interaction. I’ve had waaaay worse jobs than this.
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Nov 25, 2020 05:54
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Anyone still feeling tremendous burnout? Like Deadline is 40 whatever days ago and I just want to sleep 100 hours a day? I started this thread because I was career changing from law, decadeish later I gotta change again. Is there a "drug dealer" thread yet? Maybe I could start doing that.
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Nov 25, 2020 18:08
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Hurt Whitey Maybe posted:What’s great about tax is if you do your job right, no one will notice, and if you do it wrong (enough), you could go to prison.
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Nov 26, 2020 15:00
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I feel burnt out af but im xurrently studying FAR so thats working as intended i think
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Nov 26, 2020 15:02
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Does anyone have any recommendations for CPE? I just got my CPA this year and realized that I've got to get a few hours in before the end of the year.
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Dec 1, 2020 15:33
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If all you need is a few hours and you don't care about the subject, the big firms tend to offer free webcasts for CPE throughout the year. Several of the Big 4 do a general accounting and financial reporting update webcast once a quarter, and some of those are coming up in the next couple of weeks. If you keep up with them throughout the year it's a nice way to get some CPE hours for free. https://www2.deloitte.com/us/en/pages/dbriefs-webcasts/topics/upcoming-webcasts.html https://www.pwc.com/us/en/cfodirect/multimedia/webcasts/pwc-current-accounting-and-reporting-developments-webcast.html https://frv.kpmg.us/cpe.html https://www.ey.com/en_us/webcasts
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Dec 1, 2020 16:43
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As a former Gleim Publications CPE writer, just gotta plug them. They very specifically had us make the multiple choice questions very easy, rewriting wrong answers to be even more wrong if too many people picked them.
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Dec 2, 2020 00:32
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Does anyone have a good boilerplate for firing clients they could share? I need that ish like yesterdayHurt Whitey Maybe posted:They very specifically had us make the multiple choice questions very easy, rewriting wrong answers to be even more wrong if too many people picked them. This is fantastic
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Dec 2, 2020 23:00
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Send them a letter saying you're tripling your rates due to the complexities caused by COVID. They'll fire themselves or maybe they'll be lucrative enough to deal with. I haven't actually done this but I've thought about it.
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Dec 2, 2020 23:27
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Even at 3x this one isn't worth it, we turn down 2-3 clients a day I'd rather have a client I like, and this one is on the low side for billing anyway. That is a super fun idea tho
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Dec 2, 2020 23:57
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I assume it would go 'we have to decline for commercial reasons as we cannot turn a profit after dealing with your lack of documentation/impenetrable spreadsheets/accounting system that makes no sense/literal fraud'
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Dec 3, 2020 12:19
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[Client], We hope this message finds you well. As the new year begins and we take inventory of our client load, we have concluded that it is in the best interest of all parties that we decline to continue providing further services to you and to [business client owns] following January 15, 2021 (note: bc we have to file their last payroll for 2020). We feel that you would be better served in seeking a firm that more aligns with your needs an expectations, as we don't feel that our firm is best positioned to provide you with the services and working relationship that you're seeking. We will be happy to provide you with the full cache of files and documents that you'll need to provide to your new accountant, in order to ensure a smooth transition. The current billing period for 2020 includes payroll filings and deposits through the end of the year, due by January 15th, so we will plan to provide you with the necessary files to provide your new accountant on or before that date. ...and this is where I get stuck, the part of me that cares about customer service wants to write "IF YOU HAVE ANY QUESTIONS LET US KNOW WED BE GLAD TO DISCUSS" but straight up i don't want to answer these people's loving questions and they're going to have a LOT of them and they're going to be asking them as if their hair is on fire and it's all my fault, but it seems like i sort of have to give them an opportunity to ask me twelve time why i'm firing them so they can watch me struggle to not tell them they're awful clients Regards, [us, the firm]
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Dec 3, 2020 14:55
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black.lion posted:[Client], Fixed that for ya
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Dec 3, 2020 14:57
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untzthatshit posted:Fixed that for ya Lol slick I like it Turns out my boss talked to the client and turned them from entitled to contrite somehow, so the plan is to now increase their billing by a factor of like 3 or 4 as Epi astutely suggested and if they want to stick and be nice they'll mb be worth it at that point. I take FAR in 5 weeks and I've only got 20 hours of studying done so far someone motivate me to care again
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Dec 3, 2020 21:26
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If you do a tonne of work now, just imagine how good it will feel in 4 weeks during the leadup when you're pretty confident you've got it in the bag. ahahahahaha
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Dec 3, 2020 22:41
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black.lion posted:Lol slick I like it I have my next actuarial exam next Thursday, luckily I’m using paid study hours from now till then, gl hit those books
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Dec 4, 2020 00:42
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black.lion posted:I take FAR in 5 weeks and I've only got 20 hours of studying done so far someone motivate me to care again if you don’t pass it the first time you have to do it all over again which seems like it would blowwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww
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Dec 4, 2020 02:45
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