Our clients' CPA didn't file their business return...

Last night as I was trying to keep myself busy and not stressing about everything going on in the world... I was chatting with a team member of mine (Maddie) and let me tell you... we were a little hot.

The tax accounting space is failing us. Yes, there are amazing CPAs out there, but they are few and far in between. This year has really opened my eyes on what is going on.

Let's back up a bit. A few months ago we signed a new client and we are getting them cleaned up and ready for tax season. One major part of our process is requesting tax returns to tie out the books to the return to ensure accuracy and to protect any discrepancies in case of audit.

Come to find out as we were reviewing the 2023 return, our client's CPA never filed the Schedule C (the business part of the return) after there were two previous years of filing showing that there was an active business. After further communication with the filing CPA, they just said that there was nothing to file when the business was definitely fully open and operating and plenty to report. Just saying... it shouldn't be your bookkeeper's job to discover errors on tax returns. However, we still look and do our due diligence!

This isn't uncommon unfortunately, and just in the last few months we've ran into things like this multiple times along with:

• CPA's ghosting us and our clients

• Inaccurate reporting of income leading to overpaying in taxes

• Previous bookkeepers not doing their job properly (aka reconciling accounts, tying out balance sheets, not sending any reports)

And simply just financial professionals in general not following through with what they said they would do and simply failing to communicate and ask the necessary questions they need to do to properly do their job.

Here's what you need to know:

This might be "normal" but it's NOT okay! You need to have a financial team that looks out for you when you don't know what questions to ask and what to look for. You need to be able to feel completely taken care of and be able to have understanding on what is going on in your finances.

Find yourself a good bookkeeper, find yourself a good CPA and if you aren't sure where to start just reach out to us and we’ll send some recommendations. And stay tuned, because I may or may not have some ideas that will be coming in 2025 that will help bridge the gap between you as the business owner and your old CPA that you don't even understand.