It has been a busy couple of months for the team at The Income Tax School! We’ve been on the road to exhibit and attend IRS Tax Forums across the country! From Chicago to New Orleans, to Maryland, Orlando, and San Diego our team has been to all of the IRS Tax Forums to spread the word about The Income Tax School and stay up-to-date on the tax industry news. Here’s our IRS Forum recap.
We visited with our “Road Family”
We had the opportunity to visit with our “Road Family,” who are people with other exhibitors who we see every year. We also met with people who we partner with from Intuit and other fellow exhibitors, and had some conversations with friends from CTEC and the IRS.
Our main contact at CTEC, Tabby Bolkish, visited with us in the ITS booth and introduced a new associate with her company who will be working with the IRS Approved CE provider program.
We made new connections
The Exhibit Hall was occasionally crowded with people but all of the exhibitors were eager to share new products and industry innovations with the attendees. Bank products, software, educational products, office and practice management tools, franchises, and professional associations were well represented in the hall. Many of the exhibitors offered hospitality suites or demo rooms where practitioners were able to observe live applications of the featured products.
We received interest from several fellow vendors in establishing a partnership with The Income Tax School to provide education for their customers at special partnership discounts. We love partnering with other companies! (Drop us a line if you have a partnership request).
We were also honored to meet one of our students in person! She stopped by our booth to let us know that we were the reason she became a Tax Preparer. She was a bookkeeper who took our course with the ITEP Program through Intuit and really enjoyed it.
We took notes on what to update in our course curriculum
We will be pilot testing some new course updates in the coming months, and are working on adjusting our curriculum based on changes in the coming season. Look for updates on that soon!
We paid attention to the buzz!
The Forum offered practitioners the opportunity to earn up to 19 hours of CPE. Sessions seemed well attended and covered a wide range of subjects with due diligence and identity theft issues being at the forefront. The IRS offered case resolution sessions where practitioners were given the opportunity to present their difficult to close cases to IRS representatives for assistance.
A two-hour workshop on Exempt Organizations was popular and presented three times during the forum. This extended format offered attendees a more in-depth discussion of this topic and could possibly be appropriate for other discussions at future forums. Focus groups were offered at each session as well.
Sessions presented by Association representatives were once again very popular. These sessions were especially helpful because they were taught from the perspective of “hands-on” practitioners who discussed situations and problems that arise in real-life tax practices.
We enjoyed each other’s company
Here in San Diego Alyssa found a fantastic local authentic Italian restaurant; the best Italian food ever…rated #1, and very affordable. The owner spent time visiting with us at our table. He has a very interesting story of his journey from Italy to Australia and then coming to the U.S with $1,000; starting his restaurant and becoming a US Citizen. He also had a great sense of humor. If we get back to San Diego, we will definitely go back to his restaurant.
Alyssa was very brave to take a “Red Eye” flight home by herself to save money for the company and be able to come back to the office on Friday to help out our Customer Service Team. Thanks, Alyssa!
Did you attend any of the IRS Forums this year? What were your biggest takeaways?