Our fee to complete your tax return is based on the time we expend and the level of experience necessary for preparation. Here are some steps you can take to minimize this fee:

Complete the Tax Organizer

Filling out the organizer before dropping off your tax information or coming in for a tax interview reduces the amount of time required to prepare your return. In particular, be sure to address the client information and questionnaire sections of the organizer as thoroughly and completely as you can. They’re meant to minimize the need for us to have to ask follow-up questions later and to help make sure we are aware of new situations that could impact your tax return. Tax law changes every year, so it is important to help us determine how, if at all, the new laws impact you, whether your tax situation has changed or not.

Provide All Tax Documents You Receive

While completing the amounts in your tax organizer is good, we frequently, and more commonly, need to input information not reflected in organizer fields. The IRS is matching more and more information to returns each year, so providing us with source documents will greatly help reduce the chance you will receive tax notice changes, and incur additional fees later.

Ensure All Information You Provide is Accurate

Outdated information and simple typos can cause significant delays in processing your tax return. Be sure to review any information you provide us for accuracy. In particular, using outdated banking information on your tax return can significantly delay any refunds you may be expecting. Failure to report accurate information may result in a tax notice, an amended return, or both – these require additional fees.

Provide All Information at One Time

Please do not forward bits and pieces of your tax information as the documents begin arriving. The additional time spent at our office addressing items received in a piecemeal fashion can cause inefficiencies that add up quickly. Instead, gather all, or at least the majority of all, documents and provide them to us at one time.

Ensure You Are Entitled To Claim All Reported Dependents

If a return has already been filed using a dependent’s Social Security Number, the return will be rejected once our office tries to file the return. This often comes as a surprise, and reprocessing the return adds a significant amount of time. Before you claim a dependent, be sure they have not already been claimed by another taxpayer (possibly the dependent themselves, a spouse, or otherwise). 

Limiting the Complexity of Your Return

Understand that if you have a brokerage account, and your financial advisor is buying and selling investments such as publicly-traded partnership interests or oil & gas activities in your portfolio, your tax return is more complex and time-intensive. This, along with delayed issuance of partnership tax forms (Schedules K-1), may result in the need for filing extensions of your return(s).

Return Any Signed E-file Authorization Forms Promptly Upon Completion of Your Return

Once your return is completed, we provide an e-file authorization Form for you to sign. The return can not be e-filed without having this signed and returned to us. In order to reduce the amount of time we spend with your return, we ask that these authorization forms be signed and returned as soon as possible.

Allow an Appropriate Amount of Time to Prepare the Return

Preparing a tax return is not a quick and simple process – there is much time and consideration involved. When we expedite a tax return, it takes a significant amount of resources, and our fees must increase accordingly.

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