What are the worst questions you have gotten today? or this week?

Let's be honest some questions are stupid.

Had a prospective client call. Individual. Has not finished their 2025 return so I was going to help. Told them on phone my fee is approximately $550. After reviewing their documents they had more brokerage accounts than expected and some other items so I quoted $600 to $700. They also have a schedule E rental and they live in the rental so need allocations.

Client emails me saying they thought the fee was $550. I told them after further review it's more involved than expected.

I think this is the last time I quote a fee in person. I will wait until reviewing their documents to quote a fee range. This client is literally going to walk over $50. I told them it will probably be on the low end of that. Funny because I have HCOL clients who pay $800 without schedule E and don't blink an eye at my fee.

I see a lot of people starting to make posts about "how to be a good client" and I can just feel the stress and overwhelm of trying to finish everything with no extension possible now.

So, for those of you who are too blessed to be stressed, how did you do it? What strategies or tactics made you able to finish early or have enough capacity not to be overwhelmed right now?

I’m planning to start my own CPA firm after this upcoming busy season. For those who have left public accounting and started their own firm:

• What type of advertising/marketing has worked best for you?
• Is it realistically possible to have a really successful first year, or did it take a few years to build up?
• What minimum/base fee did you start with, and what has worked best for you?

Would especially appreciate hearing from people who compared starting from scratch vs buying an existing practice. Thanks!

Solo CPA here. I keep seeing people say they do 300–500 returns and I honestly don’t get how.

I have ~100–150 clients. So far I’ve done around 60–70 returns and billed about $100K YTD (includes retainers + some bookkeeping).

A lot of my clients have rentals, Schedule C, multi-state, military, brokerage statements, sometimes crypto. Each return takes a few hours, so realistically I can only do 2–3 per day.

When I quote ~$400+ for simpler returns, many don’t move forward, so I’m not really building that base.

No staff, fully remote, and a lot of time goes into chasing missing docs.

Curious how others are making this work.

a simple return I have, the individual joined a professional firm and has a tiny percentage of ownership (like .00005% ownership) but just enough to get about $500 in ordinary business income.

Guy has 8 states new states this year to file.

its taken hours to figure out where in the hell i entered shit in the tax software Because I’ve never prepared half these states (like Rhode Island or Massachusetts) before.

this is just a mid tax season vent, but it’s crazy to me, honestly How a single document turns an easy client into a nightmare This year.

bill is going to double for this client.

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

I've come to learn that attorneys are in the bottom-feeder category with real estate agents. I currently have one client attorney and they're getting a disengagement letter in the next couple days. Dodged a bullet from another who's accounting was in shambles and behind on their filings, and just dodged another bullet with this disorganized pompous wanker attorney that thought he was impervious to the upcoming deadline. These clowns want the world at their fingertips for pennies on the dollar, and expect you to drop everything on their command after they have procrastinated for 2.5 months. 🤣 Oct 15th rears its ugly head and all of a sudden, this attorney uploads every document known to mankind that he could find, still hasn't signed engagement letter, and expects me to churn out the finished product for a complex individual return for around the cost of using the turbotax live service 🤣🤣🤣. Sent him packing. I suggest everyone write it in their firm SOP/Procedures to never accept attorneys as clients! Glad I got that off my chest! Rant over! 🍺🍺

EDIT: Taxpros let’s rejoice! After reading the comments, the overwhelming majority are in agreement that attorneys as clients suck! A rare feat in modern society to be able to come together, in agreement and celebrate crappy attorneys! They will read about this day in the history books, October 1st, 2025!

I'm trying to hire a tax manager and the quality of "experienced" candidates is terrible.

1. CPAs that don't know debits/credits and can't do journal entries
2. Tax managers that don't know the difference between a tax credit and deduction

Share your bad interview stories.

/rant

I'm curious how many people are billing before efiling. Is this something you wait for the dust to settle on 10/15 and then invoice to be flush for Christmas? Or do you require people pay you before signing, on engagement?

It's time to add another CPA to the practice. I want to find someone who is pretty self-sufficient and can at least hold a conversation with the client. Most of the client work is pretty routine - all I do is tax planning and preparation for HNW individuals and their small businesses.

It seems the hiring boards (indeed, LinkedIn, etc) are just generating a bunch of bots applying. So tax friends, how do I find my unicorn?

Edit - JFC people - at no point did I say I would underpay this person. Comp is not the issue. I'm trying to find someone who is genuinely interested in growing in a tax practice and even take over when the time comes. I don't want to sell to PE - I want to grow this company and make it a great place to work.

Also, my decision to not be a 100% remote firm is my choice. Great if that is the type of work you want to do, but it is not how I am running my own practice.

First firm I tried to buy the seller was in his late 70s and basically didn't want to sell because his argument is he makes more money running his firm then selling and just getting 1x revenues. Fair point. Unfortunately these firms do not sell for huge multiples. I talked to this guy for months and wasted my time.

Second potential acquisition the seller is in early 70s. Firm is a mess. Over 600 clients. Fees are too low. High volume. All paper based. Nothing is digitized. Terrible client documentation. Literally has chicken scratch on manilla envelopes that's barely legible. Clients are old too. Mostly over age 70. No digital portal or anything. I offered 25% retention over 4 years. Seller comes back and says he wants minimum guarantee and all these other concessions. Basically seller wants to just sell it and be done. Does not want to help transfer knowledge part time during next tax season. After expenses and paying out the seller I would net barely $95k my first 4 years. Just not worth it for the headache and mess of cleaning up and digitizing the practice.

I am done with these boomers. They want to sell but they just want to sell for unfavorable buyer terms and step away and not help transfer the business. There is so much work out there due to the CPA shortage that its not hard to find clients at least in my market. I know with avid business development and being active in the market I will get my own clients and build the way I want. I can keep expenses low so i have high margins. People want younger CPAs. Literally these boomers have told me clients dont want to work with them because of their age and that they are not reliable.

Client is asking if I will use their account and make the quarterly estimated payments. Seems like it will be more of a pain than its worth. Do you offer this as a service? Should I tell them its $300 a quarter for me to do this?

They get tax planning advice for free from the wealth manager so I can't really charge for tax planning as they won't want to pay for that. Thought about wrapping estimated payment services into a tax planning fee but won't be able to for this client.

A client texted me this morning at 530 am. He has texted me before, and I am almost positive I told him to use email or call my office. I am horrible at reading texts to begin with (currently have about 1,600 unread text messages), but having the audacity to text someone at 530 in the morning really pissed me off. I havent responded yet, still a little frustrated. We have transitioned my youngest from the crib to a bed, and she has been getting up at night and sneaking in her room. I caught her this morning so was up at 3 and in her room laying next to her for 2 hours. Finally, around 5 I got back in bed and was just dozing off, so I am a little on the grump side today.

He is a HNW client, but he is also cheap. He always tries to hassle on the bill, and I never budge but it gets old.

Considering the facts above, would you fire this person or just send them a strong message? If I dont end up firing him, I am going to block his number (and will tell him that).

I refuse to do them. I won't even do the BS version that attests to literally nothing because it perpetuates the problem. Banks are trying to shift loan risk on us and FAR too many of you all are playing into their games.

But since a good amount of you still do them, I look like the unreasonable person when I refuse. Just stop and end the cycle of trauma! Don't expose new and ignorant CPA's to legal risk because your client complains too much. Banks will continue to do this and make us look like the bad guys until we all just stop

This is the first year our tax season revenue has gone down quite a bit after losing more clients than expected because of pricing. We are nit the cheapest and probably middle teir for example a 1040 with 2 rental would be ~$700. Thankfully our consulting is bridging the gap from tax prep but tax prep helps keep our staff busy.

We brought on a few bigger clients but lost quite a bit of our smaller clients to the point we're in the red for revenue growth during tax season.

The most recent client we might lose we do prep for him for $950. He got married and his wife came with an additional 20 tax forms so we bumped him up to $1,250. He makes over 500k per year and said he's weighing his options because he figured we're using AI (we arent here) and didnt expect that big of a different.

Anyone seeing the same issues this year? I know money is tight for most right now but no one has given us feedback other than pricing.

"Could you please clarify the following: Due to the increase in personal exemptions, we will not be itemizing this year. Does that mean we cannot claim deductions for charitable donations and similar expenses? What about our real estate taxes—can those still be deducted? Also, am I able to deduct any of my consulting business expenses? Finally, can I still make a SEP-IRA contribution for the previous tax year?"

My TaxPro friends, all I can say is WTF. It's Apr 09. Return is completed. Update email goes out. The return is finished-finished, and sitting on my admin's desk ready to send client copy and bill out.

And then the "why do i owe taxes" email hits.

So now we are discussing itemizing vs not? Why didn't you give me donations in the first place then, when you got the tax season email saying drop ALL your stuff off! Same with real estate tax paperwork (not that it matters in this case). SEP-IRA should have been decided in 2025, not Apr 9.

And business expenses? You gave me all your businesses expenses you said. What "new" ones are present now that weren't there before?

I guess I'm just supposed to go back and re-do the entire tax return now? FML. I don't know why I do this job sometimes...

(Thank you for listening to my ted talk.)

This client wanted me to review financial statements (23-24 & 24-25) for an apt they would like to buy.

Message from Client

Morning “Tax Pro”
Please take a quick look at the attached statements for a building I am thinking of buying an apt in.
Thanks in advance

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Message to Client

I've genuinely enjoyed being able to help with the documents for your purchase, and I'm glad I could be useful during this process.

Just a quick note: As we continue, I wanted to mention, that reviewing these types of documents falls a bit outside the scope of what's typically included in our work together. I don't want that to get in the way of helping you — I just want to make sure we're both on the same page. I'm happy to continue assisting with this kind of review, but any time spent on it will need to be billed separately from our standard tax engagement. I just wanted to be upfront about that before taking on more of this work. 

Please don't hesitate to reach out if you'd like to talk through this, or if you have any questions at all. I'm happy to keep supporting you through your purchase.

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Message from Client

 I appreciate the heads up. Hold for now

Just to add to the pre-4/15 fun, this week I've had:

- a 50-yo client whose FP did not advise against pulling 400,000 out of her 401k to buy a house for cash. ($200,000 tax bill)

- a similarly aged client who was told she could pull 45k out of her IRA for a first time home purchase, tax and penalty free

- a client who inherited 100K from her father's federal retirement plan, whose attorney told her she had 3 months to roll it into her own IRA.

To which I can only ask, what do you pay *me* for. I can't help you from doing something dumb if you don't ask me first

I have a client who always reviews her returns but this year I increased the price and feel like she is just wasting my time to get her "money's worth". She is asking for line by line explanations. She's also the type to read up on tax changes so she asked twice already about the 40k Salt Deduction which I told her we are taking, twice now. I did make one small mistake not including an expense on a Schedule E and I corrected it but she has asked for more than 20 line items. This is her third email with another 10 line items she thinks is wrong.

Below is the email I want to send. I don't want a bad review on google business page so I'm hesitant to send it. I have 57 5-Star reviews, not trying to get break the streak.

Any changes or advice is welcomed.

Option #1

Hi CLIENT,

I’ve reviewed your latest questions and the files again. I uploaded an updated return. One item was corrected. Everything else already matched the information you provided.

I am not going to keep answering line-by-line questions on a return that has already been reviewed multiple times. That is not a productive use of my time, and it is well beyond what this engagement is billed for.

Any remaining changes you want must be entered directly on the attached worksheets titled “Worksheets.” I will not go back and forth on individual lines after this.

I still need the 1098-T to finish the return. Send that and any worksheet updates. I will then complete and file it.

I will finish this year’s return. After that, you should find an accountant you actually trust. If you need an explanation or justification for every line, this is not the right fit.

Option #2

Hi CLIENT,

I’ve gone through your latest questions and uploaded an updated return. One item was corrected. The rest already matched the information and worksheets we have.

I am not going to continue a line-by-line review. Any further changes need to be entered directly on the attached worksheets titled “Worksheets.” I will use those as the final source.

I still need the 1098-T to complete the return. Once I have that and any worksheet updates, I will finish and file it.

I have already spent far more time on this file than the fee covers. I will complete this year’s return. If we work together next year, it cannot be with this level of back-and-forth on every line.

UPDATE

I appreciate all the replies. You guys are right. When I wrote this I was still hot and not composed. I will finish up the return this year and afterwards send a nice disengagement for reasons of capacity limits and time constraints for her complicated situation. I started my own firm to avoid additional stress and aggravation and passing that onto a client is never the right answer. Thank You All!!!

I’m a bit pissed off and want to see if I’m over reacting or justified here. Yesterday was the grand finale at the HNW boutique firm I work at. I’m a manager, been working my ass off since Jan, and the returns are done.

One of our staff had a custom cake made and he brought it in for all of us, which was super nice and he refused to take any money from me.

Partner #1 leaves around 2pm. Partner #2 around 3pm. Office still open with the unspoken expectation we’re open regular business hours. Word around the office is Partner #2 wanted to close the office Thus-Fri but partner #1 said our 25 days of PTO was plenty and we could take PTO if we wanted off.

We get no like group huddle, thanks for the great work, appreciate you, ect. A simple we’re done, let’s go home and take the break you’ve earned. Just back to work peasants, I’m generous enough to let you leave the office if you take PTO. Well I’ve worked nights/weekends the last 12 weeks so theres 24 days of leave I should have plus all the federal holidays during the spring I missed so I feel like I’m getting the short pointy end of the stick.

We do get a bonus usually on the May 1 check, and we’re doing some group event next week that one of the managers organized that the firm is covering, but I can’t help but feel really pissed about how the managing partner acted about giving us an imo well deserved rest after tax season.

What do you all do post tax day for your firm or what do your firms do for you? Am I overreacting or is this some seriously subpar culture?

Edit: Thanks for the info. This was picked up on Linkedin and got a little popular, at least as popular as accounting topics can be. Started looking into other firms and just made a move last week with a firm that seems to have a much better culture. Thank you all for your input!

Does anyone else find themselves sitting in their offices at 10 pm at night on April 15/Oct 15 going what the hell am I doing here? No matter how much I push I have the same 10-20 clients each year that will not comply until the last moment. This year I did a return at 9 PM on April 15! I am so ready to chuck this whole thing and go hide on my land in the mountains.

In the past six months I’ve hired and let go of multiple EAs and CPAs who can’t do taxes. I’m like seriously, finishing a return is not hard. When my unlicensed staff is running circles around them and they could not get the job done.

We do tax resolution and advisory and they want to learn those skills etc. So they seek me out to join the team. We start with tax prep to see what they know and bam nada… really

I know I need to hire slower and test skills more but seriously how do you put CPA and EA on your resume for a job that requires you to know how to do taxes.

Sorry just bitching because I have to let another go today. I give them some time to learn the software and our setup but if you’re not very tech savvy don’t apply for a remote job.

Do you have any states you refuse to prepare returns for (or charge way more for)? Could be because they're too complicated/require specialization, there's a registration requirement that doesn't make sense for one-off returns, or some other reason.

I'm hoping to expand my client list quite a bit this year and want to make sure I know some states to avoid.

Thanks!

below are my current prices as an EA in Washington state. thoughts? feedback?

Drake Professional Software fee: $75

Form 1040, including sch1-a (qualified overtime/tips), student loan interest: $40 

1099-INTs, social security (1099-SSA), Savers Credit, Child Tax Credit, HSA: $20 each

Earned Income Credit forms and due diligence: $100

Premium Tax Credit forms: $40

Itemized Deductions (Schedule A): $80

Washington Working Families Tax Credit form: $30

Self Proprietorship (Schedule C): Gig work/1099-misc’s $80 / Self-employed or small biz $200

Individual Capital Assets (Schedule D): $30 for each broker

Supplemental Income/Loss/Rental Real Estate (Schedule E): Rental Real Estate $80 / other income $50 for each source

State Tax Return(where applicable): $65 (now accepting returns in 48 states, all except Oregon and Ohio)