How To Make Tax Deadlines Suck Less

By Amber Salgado

There's no way around it: tax deadlines suck.

Things go wrong at the last second (we had power outages all last week). You get hit with the flu, your clients don't listen - Murphy's Law is in full effect every deadline, I swear. 

But, there are things your firm can do to make the deadlines a little less sucky. 
Here's What We Do:

• Change our due date for clients - Just because the IRS sets a deadline doesn't mean you can't make yours several weeks earlier. Give your clients a date to have missing information by and give your clients a date to get their e-file forms returned to you. Neither of those dates should be the IRS deadline.
• Have payment information included in your engagement letter - terms to draft upon receipt of e-file forms. You shouldn't have to chase people down to get paid. (and you should NEVER file a return without payment).
• Use a system with identity verification technology to get e-file forms signed electronically instead of having to wait for last minute folks to print, sign, and scan back.

These things aren't fool-proof, but they do cut down about 80% of the tax deadline BS that makes you want to rip your hair out.

Once we figure out how to make clients obey our deadlines each and every time, we'll let you know (hint - we're working on it, so stay tuned).

Until then...tune into the Owners & Operations Podcast to hear more tips on how to make things suck less.