Tax Practice Survival Guide

NOTE: This course is included as part of a subscription to the Tax Bytes Practice Mentor monthly newsletter and training here at Canadian Tax Academy. If you subscribe to the newsletter, this course will be included free of charge as part of your subscription.

So you have taken the plunge and started your own tax practice. In the first course in this series (Building a Tax Practice) we studied strategies and tactics to attract the good clients that will help build your practice so that you can thrive. You now have them … now what? Welcome to the busy and challenging world of running a tax practice …

.. how do you get all that work done? How do you avoid surprise attacks and reassessments by the CRA? Is there anything you can do to be proactive and put out fires before they flame out of control? How about dealing with clients? … are you going to be able to get that mountain of tax returns done by the April 30^th deadline?

That is what the Tax Practice Survival Guide is all about. Tips, strategies andhacks on everything from best practices on workflow during tax season, to the tax issues and matters you should focus your attention on with all clients.

Here is what we’ll cover:

- 8 Personal Tax Season Survival tips – Implementing any of these tips can save you hours of time and stress. Implementing them all will likely provide you with an extra day’s worth of time to get those tax returns done on time.

- 6 Corporate Tax Practice Survival Tips – Corporate tax is a year round job, unlike personal tax season. These tips and hacks will help save you time, aggravation and headaches when dealing with corporate clients.

- 8 Corporate Tax Matters to Monitor – In this series we drill down to actual tax accounts and client tax issues frequently encountered by small business clients. Stay ahead of the CRA and keep your clients off the CRA radar map. Knowing what is frequently audited and examined by CRA helps drive your workflow and client tax planning

- How to review a client’s (new or existing) financial information and previous tax filings to determine how much risk is inherent in their file/business. These strategies will help you understand what you are getting into with potential new clients. Also included is a handy spreadsheet tool that will help you figure out how much extra to charge them due to the inherent risk.

- Administrative tips and advice on the little things you need to do to stay off the CRA’s radar map. Did you know that most audits are started as a result of simple administrative mis-steps by clients and practitioners?

- Dealing with difficult clients and situations is inevitable. Here I provide some advice on dealing with these clients and what to do if you are not comfortable filing a particular client’s tax return.

This course is a must have resource for new practitioners. I have even presented many of these ideas at various seminars for experienced CPA practitioners who found the tips and advice very useful. Believe me, if implementing just a few of the tips in this series saves you the aggravation of the wrath of CRA or a client on one file, it will be well worth it.