The Chief is a tax preparer. He just started his business a few years ago, with about 6 or 8 clients. This year he picked up several more, with 4 of them calling him just this week. (Nothing like waiting until the last minute, eh?) Tonight he took 15 minutes to grab a bite of dinner after the first client left, and before his next 2 appointments. His clients are stacking up like planes over LaGuardia! He's glad to have the additional income, of course, but it would certainly help him if people would call him in February or March instead of waiting until April. Bringing all their paperwork when they meet with him would be useful too.
Allow me to brag a little. If you want a conscientious tax preparer, the Chief is your man. He has spent hours and hours poring over each return, making sure he didn't miss any potential deductions or penalty-inducing errors (it's surprising what some people's accountants have missed or mis-entered). He makes sure he knows the tax code citation or court case to support every deduction, just to be sure. He pays for a subscription to a tax advisory service and has used it an average of once or twice on every account, clarifying issues open to interpretation or confirming that he was handling something correctly. He's found cases where an amended return earned the clients several hundred dollars in refunds. He has literally lost sleep because he was ruminating on a particularly complicated tax issue for a client, or woken at 4 a.m. with an idea that could help them. You want meticulous, painstaking, thorough, and scrupulously honest? The Chief is the one to call. If you incur penalties as a result of an error he made, he'll pay the penalty. He even throws in free tax planning advice. I worry that he's wearing himself to a frazzle ("They had to wait until ONE WEEK before the filing deadline to call you?!?") but I'm very proud of how well he does this.
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