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Client Guide
(Revised 1/08/08)
Dear Clients:
Thank you for your
business, patience and working toward a better system of efficiency using
QuickBooks. We appreciate it more than you could know. The importance of
QuickBooks is for your own benefit as well as processing your tax work as
efficiently as possible.
Enclosed is your 2007
income tax organizer and questionnaire. We do require clients to fill in the
organizer since it is synchronized with our tax preparation software. For
any of the yearly information that is already entered in your QuickBooks data
file, there is no need to waste time copying that information onto the
organizer.
The questionnaire is
extremely valuable for discovering tax saving opportunities. If you answer
any of the questions with a YES, please include an explanation so that we don’t
have to spend more time asking you about it.
Your previous year
information is reflected in the shaded column on the right. Please don’t
leave info for preprinted items where there were entries for last year blank.
Either cross it out if it no longer applies to you or write in a zero. If you
leave it blank, we will assume you overlooked it and we will have to spend time
asking you about it.
Please make sure you
sign the enclosed Engagement Letter, which we must have before we prepare your
returns.
My billing rate for
2008 will continue to be $225 per hour for my time, the same as it was for 2005,
2006 and 2007. Sherry’s rate will remain at $75 per hour for her
work entering data into Lacerte, assembling tax returns and other administrative
services.
We have always used the
most state of the art Lacerte tax preparation software. Due to a steep increase
in the processing fees charged by Lacerte, we will be adding those charges, at
their actual costs, to our invoices. It still works out to be much less
expensive than it would be to switch to a cheaper program that doesn’t do as
many task automatically as Lacerte does,
☼Mandatory
Prepayments☼
Please include a check
for the same amount as your preparation fee from last year when you send us your
tax papers along with your COMPLETED tax organizer for that year, which
you can normally find in the left side pocket of the previous year tax
return folder we sent you. If you haven’t received it, please call us or
email us for it. It is probably because we hadn’t received the organizer
program yet.
FAXING CHECKS FOR
PAYMENT: We are not currently set up to accept credit cards directly,
but we can accept checks by fax or email attachment. Make a legible photo-copy
of your completed check and fax it to us or send it via email. There is
no need to also mail the original check. Keep it for your records.
DELINQUENT PAYING
CLIENTS: We appreciate bills being paid as soon as they’re received.
Most CPA offices have you pay when you pick up your returns.
EXTENSIONS
– Please contact us in the first week of MARCH so we can get the
information to do your April 15 extension. Let us know how much you paid in to
IRS and the state and if you think you may owe any money. If you think you
may owe, April 15 is the time to send it in so you won’t have penalties or
interest.
April 15 comes too soon
for most people to do a thorough and accurate job tallying up their year-end
figures. It is much better to take your time to ensure all of the figures are
accurate than to try to slap together something in haste. It is a simple matter
to receive up to six months of additional time, until October 15, in which to
file your tax returns. There is also an additional benefit to filing your tax
return after April 15, besides less stress on yourself and your preparer. While
there is no absolute guarantee against having your tax return selected by IRS
for audit, it is a proven fact that returns filed later in the year have a
much lower chance of being selected than those filed by April 15.
Time Is Money
This is more than a cliché with me. While some professionals do charge
a contingency fee based on a percentage of a transaction (Realtors and some
attorneys), I haven’t found a better method of charging than the time we spend
on a client’s behalf. This includes such things as work on tax returns, time
on the phone consulting, time writing letters, emails and answering faxes.
We use an actual stop watch for the exact time spent and include a detailed
timesheet with each invoice. We don’t just guess at times out of thin air.
STOCK
TRANSACTIONS
For those people with large numbers of stock market transactions, we
need proper matching of the sale and purchase sides of each transaction.
Contact your stockbroker about providing you with your year-end statements in
the proper format to coincide with Schedule D. This simple step can
dramatically reduce the time we have to spend on your tax return, saving you
huge amounts of money in our fees. Another helpful alternative is to have the
annual stock activity in an Excel spreadsheet that will save Sherry a lot of
time with data entry, and thus a lower fee for you.
We look forward to
another year working with you.
Sincerely,
Kerry & Sherry Kerstetter
Last Updated:
Tuesday, May 06, 2008 10:27:55 AM
Ozarks Time by KMK
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