Tax Season Survival Guide -- 2006

From the January 2006 Issue

Every January, The CPA Technology Advisor provides a special Tax Season Survival
Guide, offering useful tips on preparing for the upcoming tax preparation season,
as well as additional features and tax-specific resources. This year’s Guide
covers a variety of subjects, from a feature about tax and financial planning,
to integrating payroll services into your practice. Additionally, our Executive
Editor introduces the 2006 team of editorial staff and contributors. You are
likely to recognize many of them, as they are all well-known and respected professionals,
many of them are also practicing CPAs. Each of the members of this Dream Team
offer a few tips for tax season, and are dedicated to improving the professional
lives of America’s practicing accountants.

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Meet America’s Tax & Accounting Technology Dream Team: Public accounting is a very special profession.
I’m sure you each vividly remember your first day on the job, fresh
out of school and … dumb as a box of rocks. Of course, you didn’t
know the last part. You (foolishly) assumed that your education had readied
you for the actual PRACTICE of public accounting.; Read Full
Review

Dispelling the Myths of Financial Planning: Many advisors shy away from offering financial
planning for reasons that do not hold up to the forgotten truths of today’s
financial service industry. Reality tells us otherwise: Incorporating
planning services will not only provide additional revenue and longer-standing
customers, but will be required in order for all representatives to remain
competitive.; Read Full
Review

An Introductory Marketing Guide to Building a Payroll Business: You may have actively avoided payroll preparation
entirely, or you may be preparing only your firm’s payroll. Or you
may have one or two payroll clients. And you’ve been hearing others
talk about their payroll practices. You may have even seen for yourself:
Payroll can be profitable.; Read Full
Review

Vendor Community Building: The professional service trades have a long history
of relationship networking and have often utilized the power of community
to get new clients, to meet more prospects and to generally market their
services, but there is more to be accomplished.; Read Full
Review

Review of Tax Research Applications: It may be an over simplification to say that all
clients are different, but this is one of the reasons that tax preparation
can be challenging.; Read Full
Review

Treasury Unveils New Electronic Tax Campaign: The Electronic Federal Tax Payment System (EFTPS)
saw a record year in 2005 in terms of enrollment and use. But many taxpayers
and tax preparers have yet to realize the benefits of using this free
service to pay all their federal tax payments.; Read Full
Review

IRS Redesigns Website: The Internal Revenue Service recently redesigned its web site at www.irs.gov, so professionals who routinely use it as a resource during tax season should get re-acquainted with the site prior to the tax season rush.; Read Full
Review

NASBA Explains New Web-Based CPE Tracking Tool: At the September Florida CPA Society Show in Fort
Lauderdale last month, I stopped in at the booth for the National Association
of State Boards of Accountancy (NASBA) which is promoting the soon-to-be-released
web-based CPE tracking tool.; Read Full
Review

On the Lighter Side: New words for the modern workplace vocabulary.; Read Full
Review

Technology