Communicating effectively with clients and staff is important for any tax office – or any business for that matter! Communication ensures that everyone is on the same page. It ensures that your staff and your customers know what’s going on or what…
Displaying: Operating Your Tax Business
How to Determine Your Fees as a Tax Preparer
What are your fees? How do you charge and do you make your schedule of charges public? These are all questions you should be asking if you are a new tax business owner. Here are some things to think about. Charging by the…
Who Checks Your Returns?
The IRS is always advising taxpayers to double check their returns before filing. How about tax preparers? Contrary to popular belief, tax preparers aren’t robots. As we get down to the wire and pressure builds to get taxes filed before the deadline,…
13 Ways to Be More Efficient This Tax Season
Tax season goes down the same way every year: crickets in January, flocks in March and April. As much as we encourage clients to come in early for their tax preparation appointments, the reality is that the number of returns we prepare…
Are You Putting Your Marketing Dollars In The Right Places?
When I think about all of the avenues of advertising a business has to choose from, two quotes come to mind. “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half.” – John Wanamaker “A man…
4 Ways to Optimize Your Print Mailers This Tax Season
Thanks to email and the Internet, tax businesses in general do a lot less print mail than they used to. Even so, print mail is making a bit of a comeback and many tax firms still use it to drive business during tax season.…
How User Friendly Is Your Website?
Have you been poking around on The Income Tax School website lately? We unveiled a revamped website just before Thanksgiving to help guide our current and potential students to the information they need. Our new website is more user-friendly and we’re excited…
9 Onboarding Techniques That Increase Retention
It takes a lot of time and money to hire a new employee. It’s more than just paying their salary – it’s the labor and cost of recruiting, training, and onboarding them into the work environment. This is why employee retention is so…
One Way to Gain an Edge on National Tax Firms
“I know you’re a tax preparer, but I file [insert special tax situation], do you know how to prepare taxes for someone like me?” This question is bound to happen as a tax preparer. While you know that your tax training (hopefully)…
Giving Employees A Voice
We’ve talked about using client surveys to improve upon your processes and service each tax season but what about employee feedback? Good business owners take employee feedback into account when looking to improve, attract new talent, and grow. According to Daniel Hood…
How to Motivate and Retain Employees
Employee retention is essential to maintain customer relationships and minimize recruiting and training costs. The keys to employee satisfaction and retention are founded on strong leadership and sound management practices. By mastering these arts, you should have happy, loyal employees and customers,…
Executing Your Strategic Plan With A Balanced Scorecard
Do you have a strategic plan in place for the growth of your business? If so, good for you! (If not, you might want to check out this blog post). Strategic planning is crucial to growth no matter what industry you are…