Why The Tax Advisor Often Fails the Real Estate Investor

Yes.  My assertion is that the tax industry is failing to provide the necessary services to the real estate professional.  Let’s take a look at some of the key differences between what a real estate professional wants and what the tax professional provides.

The real estate professional is interested in building and operating their business.  He wants to pay the least amount of taxes legally allowable and build his assets to realize his dreams.  Most tax professionals have a business model designed to prepare as many returns as possible.  Their system gathers your information, inputs the data into their process and produces the return.  Many do not review the return with you. The more of these tax returns they can do, the more money they make.   Providing you with guidance and direction is often the last thing on their agenda.  Any advice is verbal rather than written.  Why?  Written advice requires accountability. 

Quality control is another lacking feature of many tax professionals.  Yes.  You provide your information to one person and trust that they know everything.   You trust they will be perfect in preparing your return.  No one is looking for mistakes or double-checking data input to make sure it is correct.  Many tax preparers have no one looking for potential mistakes and missed opportunities.  Mistakes can happen to anyone and that is why quality control is important.

A commitment to continuity of work is lacking.  You rely on a professional who will be there.  Yet, many tax professionals are either solo practitioners, or without reliable back-up.  They did not build a team to support their clients.  They didn’t develop processes and systems to deliver their services.  As a result, they may not be available when needed.   Too often I meet prospects who tell me that they were working with someone who just upped or moved, suffered a medical condition, or died.  They are unable to obtain their records and they have significant issues as a result.  You should look for someone who is building a team to provide to you the continuity you may need.

At Stone CPA and Advisors, we provide a team of CPAs and enrolled agents (certified as tax professionals by the IRS) to provide you with quality accounting and tax services.  But that is not all, we have investment advisors and estate planners to assist you with all your financial questions.  Our tax advice is based on empirically documented work with a written detailed tax plan.   Our tax returns are reviewed multiple times to look for mistakes and missed opportunities.  We schedule times to review your returns with you.  

Our process begins with a Discovery Session to look for mistakes and missed opportunities.  Our detailed written tax plan provides documented evidenced advice which you may use.  We have a multi-level quality control process including our review with you.  Most important, we plan to meet with you to answer questions and provide guidance on an ongoing basis. 

Join us for our Weekly Community Q&A – every Thursday beginning 10 a.m. MTN time.  We discuss tax, bookkeeping, and investing issues designed to answer your questions and provide you with more information.  To attend our free question and answer conversation, please register at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/community-qa-tickets-103962789502?aff=ebdsoporgprofile or call 970-668-0772.  We look forward to hearing about your success and answering your questions.