Believe it or not, your tax preparer is not trying to save you money. He/she may be your best friend, but they are not trying to save you money. Why? They have little incentive to do so, it’s not how they are rewarded and it’s certainly not their business model.
Think about it. Most people visit with their tax preparer maybe once or twice a year. This visit is usually around the end of the year or early in January or February. The purpose of this meeting is to discuss your PRIOR YEAR’S tax return. Does this make any sense? If the year is already done, how are they going to save you money? Shouldn’t they have visited with you to consider opportunities when there was still time to implement them?
This is the dirty little secret of the tax preparation industry. 99% of firms are not focused on saving you money. Rather, they are focused on preparing your return. At face value, there is nothing wrong with this. You pay them to do a tax return and that’s what they do. You provide them documents, they organize them into something the IRS will accept, you sign and the transaction is done.
Saving taxes requires planning much sooner than the end of the year. And this assumes that your tax advisor even knows/understands the tax laws. If you’re an independent contractor, your situation warrants hiring a professional–the savings will outweigh the costs every.. single.. time.
In fact, at IC Tax Advisors, we won’t bring you on as a client unless we can save you money. That is why our first consultation with you is to determine what opportunities you have. We will even tell you what you can do to reduce your taxes with no obligation. Believe us, this is not an area that you want to DIY (“do it yourself”).
We visit with our clients on a regular basis to ensure that they are taking advantage of every opportunity to reduce their taxes and headaches. Our clients are always relieved to find a firm that is focused on them, the independent contractor, because they were too small for their previous CPA to care (or even worse, they were doing it on their own). If you’re an independent contractor, you ARE our focus.
Give us a call to schedule a no obligation consultation. We can have a CPA review your taxes and we’ll let you know if we see opportunities. We’ll also let you know if there’s nothing we can do for you–it’s rare, but it happens.
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Tags: DIY taxes, freelance tax planning, freelancer tax savings, freelancers hate money, independent contractor taxes