Tax Practice - Risk Management

CPD VERIFIABLE HOURS - 8.0 HOURS

All future updates are included in this one time fee - The course is updated annually at no additional charge to students.

Anyone who has been in public practice or at the helm of a tax preparation or bookkeeping business that does some tax work will soon come to realize that there is a lot more to running a profitable practice than just marking off debits and credits in accounting software or entering T-slips into a tax software program.

Once you’ve started a practice, you soon come to the realization that there are a multitude of risk areas to navigate. What might seem to be very small details can lead to very big headaches including adverse consequences and relationship breakdown with our clients. Ramifications can range from losing a valuable client to legal action initiated by them for our mistakes or omissions (even if they are inadvertent).

This course was developed for the new or sole practitioner in mind. It was curated from years of practice and other professional documents and resources to provide advice, guidance and tips to help you manage your tax practice more effectively and profitably.

In most cases, it is not what you know that you need to worry about … it’s what you don’t know. Or, in other words, the devil is in the details. Don’t be caught in the position where you find things out the hard way. This course will give you the tools you need to be proactive in the management of your practice rather than being in the difficult situations where you are constantly putting out fires. Don’t put your practice at risk by not knowing these risk areas covered in this course.

This course also serves as an administrative guide in helping you deal with common situations and processes when running a tax practice. Our goal as practitioners is to provide top-notch client service and run a profitable business at the same time. Implementing the tips and best practices in this course will save you countless of hours of wasted time that could have been avoided by simply following some simple processes or putting various firm policies in place.

The following is an outline of the modules and topics that will be covered in this course.

Personal & Corporate Tax Practice Administration - – Understanding how the e-filing process works in detail including how to hand Pre-Assessment and Post-Assessment reviews effectively. Maintaining proper forms as dictated by the CRA. Dealing with adjustments, re-filing of tax returns and amended returns. Understanding the implications of various deadlines and payment dates.

Responsibilities to Clients & Tax Service – Ensuring that clients understand the work that you are going to be doing for them. Understanding what the client is responsible for through proper communications and engagement letters. Knowing the difference between interpretations and advice and protecting yourself in areas where you are asked to provide advice.

How to do Tax Research – Navigating and interpreting the often perplexing and what may seem to ben a incomprehensible landscape is a skill that you will need to build and perfect. This module will provide you with a 4 step methodology along with the best sources of information to help you build confidence in the advice and interpretations you provide clients

How to Analyze Risk on a Client File - Also included in this course is a very valuable spreadsheet tool that I have developed to help guide you through the process of trying to determine how risky a new client is. Trust me, you don’t want to take on just any client without knowing full well what you are getting yourself into. If you do, you will have many sleepless nights and working for less than minimum wage after adding up all the hours you’ve worked on a file and the client is not expecting to pay you for.

This tool looks at all the risk factors and areas in personal and corporate tax that will add to your workload. It is a client risk scoring system that will give you some insight into how much work you may be in for and will also help you to determine what you should be billing clients as a result.

Dealing with the Canada Revenue Agency – How to deal with auditor effectively and manage the audit or review process from beginning to end. Tips and hacks will be provided on how to handle auditors on a client file to put them on their toes and making sure you are in command during the audit, not them. Writing to the CRA in a manner what will ensure what you say cannot come back to haunt you later. Also included is a module on appealing to the Tax Court of Canada and the details on going through that process to help resolve client matters. Unfortunately, in today’s aggressive CRA assessing landscape, this is becoming more and more common.

For a detailed breakdown of all the lecture video tutorials, scroll down to the curriculum on this page and be sure to expand the list to see all the tutorials listed.