5 Reasons To Never Use A “Stripmall” Tax Office Again.

As disclosure, we are a team of professionally designated and trained tax advisors, who are continually re-educating ourselves on new tax codes (which change practically every year). Every year, we are always saddened by the issues that get reported with using “stripmall” style tax preparers. From returns not transmitted to missing deductions.

Enrolled Agents and CPA (along with tax attorneys) are the only professionally licensed tax advisors. That being said, many of the individuals you sit across from at a “stripmall” style tax preparer are miminiumally trained, in fact most have just been trained that prior autumn and usually only make a low wage. With that statement alone this article should start to scare you.

Not all the offices are bad, in fact some even hire CPAs and EAs and do quality work. That being said they usually only work on the higher level returns and they still make mistakes. And as evidence of that, we recently had a business client that we were only charged with filing their business return, go to a national brand to have his personal return prepared. The preparer asked if our client owned a business, which he replied, “Yes!” The preparer simply continued on with the return. Which now means, we need to correct his personal return with the added business income, which created more and more expense for this client.

So with that, here we go…

1. They make mistakes, lots of them in fact.
   • Understand that most of the staff has just been trained for a short time the past autumn and is not best suited for the myriad of tax issues that come up.
     
2. They are usually very expensive.
   • Every year we align our pricing with the National Society of Accountants. In fact, we have a blog post right on our site about how we price. We have seen pricing from the national brands that is sometimes double ours. That’s like paying $15 for a fast food hamburger, why would you do that?  
     
3. A large number of returns have gone un-filed.
   • Meaning it never got transmitted to the IRS. Isn’t that the point?
4. Untrained and Inexperienced Staff.
   • As stated before, a large majority of their staff is temporary staff only hired for the tax season, (nearly 80%). They receive basic training and then put them in front of guided software package to ask the questions they ask. It’s basically an expensive version of self-prepare software.
5. The Lack of Advisory Services
   • Go ahead ask the preparer if they can help to plan for increased wages or what the tax implication are with cashing in a retirement plan. Let alone, if a business income belongs on a tax return.

We prepare and file returns in any state. We’ve seen many different situations and not only file your return, but will educate you on what happens on your return. We are Nakowicz Financial and CinchTax we’re here to help!