Taxable Talk

As I look back at April 15th I can draw some conclusions. First, thank goodness the IRS relented on the property regulations. There is no way tax professionals would have been able to prepare all of the required Change in Accounting Methods.

Second, this was the year of the impossible to reach IRS. I saw a statistic today that only 38.5% of callers received customer service from the IRS phone lines. That was true for tax professionals, too: I could not get through via the Practitioner Priority Service during the last three weeks of Tax Season. My usual trick, calling at 6:55pm PDT (right before they close), did not work.

Third, I don’t know what our deadlines will be for next year (that is, 2015 returns filed in 2016) but they will be earlier. I don’t know if I’ll go to March 1st, but it will be earlier than March 24th. I suspect it will be March 15th. We did get to every return where paperwork reached us by our deadline (March 24th), but we felt very pressured this year.

Fourth, I’m not happy with certain aspects of our tax software. Unlike Robert Flach who thinks that tax software is flawed and shouldn’t be used, I look at it as a tool that helps me do my job. However, this year some parts of it hindered my job and that’s not acceptable. Every three years I evaluate new software and this year is that year. I’ll absolutely be looking at other products for next year.

This definitely wasn’t the worst Tax Season I’ve gone through, but it was far from the best. For taxpayers, this likely was one of the worst. Unfortunately, I don’t see any improvements on the horizon. The light I see is the oncoming train not the end of the tunnel.

Tags: 2015.Tax.Season

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 21st, 2015 at 8:57 pm and is filed under Taxable Talk. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.