Preparing for tax season

By Amy Pitter

This article was originally published by the Massachusetts Society of CPAs' digital magazine, SumNews.

We spoke with Alan Litwin, CPA, CGMA, managing director at KLR, Robert Miller, CPA, CFE, managing partner at Stone & Company, LLC, and MassCPAs Board Chair and William Rucci, CPA, CGMA, partner at Withum, to learn about their approach to the upcoming tax season, particularly in response to our constantly changing environment. 

SumNews: Will you be approaching this coming busy season any differently?

Litwin: We are preparing for a very different busy season. We have been primarily virtual for the last two years (since March 13, 2020) and now, we are entering what we think will be a true "new normal." We have adopted flexible work arrangements for many of our team members with hybrid, fully remote and fully in-office models. We also hired staff outside of the region who are not near any of our offices. We are confident we can deliver world-class client service and at the same time, honor the work environment that our team desires. There is still much work to be done to accomplish this transformation, particularly around communication and development, but fortunately, as we are all developing the firm's strategic plan and partner goals for 2022, this is foremost in our thoughts. By developing and preparing now, we have adequate time to implement our plans. 

Rucci: We will be approaching busy season a bit differently this year. Our overall goal continues to be providing world-class service to our clients while employing and supporting outstanding staff to meet this goal. We continue to provide flexibility with remote and office work arrangements and use our other offices across the country, to help our staff and better serve clients. We also will rely on our offices in India for support in audit, tax and accounting and continue to recruit experienced professionals from across the country for the industry niches we serve. Finally, we will continue to provide staff with the most up to date technology and support services to reduce stress for staff and enhance the client experience. 

Miller: We are taking several steps to do some things differently. I think it's fair to say we learned some hard lessons this past busy season. While there were some things that were clearly out of our control last busy season, including all the delays in legislation and guidance that practitioners needed to service their clients, there are other key areas that we can control, and those areas are where the opportunities to make things better lie. The areas we can control involve getting as much of a head start as possible with our tax clients. Engagement letters will go out earlier this year under a single coordinated effort, tax organizers will also go out sooner and we will be more proactive with follow-ups to encourage clients to get their information in early. We will also be implementing a more robust tax workflow process and certain additional tasks will now be automated. Leveraging work will be another key area in which we feel there are opportunities for improvement. On the assurance side, we are now taking a firmer stance to get commitments for our audit and assurance clients for start dates and holding them to those dates. We are also making a commitment to "just say no" to the flood of advisory work we keep getting when we are at our busiest with our recurring assurance and tax clients.

SumNews: How will you be supporting your teams this year?

Rucci: During the pandemic, our greatest concern was our staff's well-being. At Withum, our staff has always been the priority and we continue to provide a positive environment for staff to not only survive the pandemic, but to thrive. Some of ways we do this is by allowing flexible work arrangements and providing free meals when staff are in the office. Last tax season, our coaches held regularly scheduled, 15-minute check-in calls or in-person meetings with staff to make sure they are doing okay and to offer support where needed. These meetings will continue through busy season. This year we also introduced a Child Care Reimbursement Plan for staff needing financial support with childcare and offered staff free memberships to "Headspace," an online tool that provides meditation and relaxation exercises. Before the pandemic, Withum had a policy allowing staff to take sabbaticals for extended periods of time to manage challenging personal issues. Sabbaticals increased during the pandemic, and many took advantage of this benefit. This year we rolled out "stay" interviews, which will allow us to get a better sense of what more we can do to enhance the work experience for our staff. Finally, all partners are asked to cull clients, with a goal of removing difficult clients to reduce stress for the staff and firm.

Miller: For us, one of the most important lessons we have learned is that while compensation and healthy bonuses are important to some, one of the benefits that our team members value the most is flexibility. Staff all have their own unique personal situations, and to the extent that we can design a creative arrangement that meets each person's individual situation, we end up with a happier and more satisfied employee who works with a generally lower stress level. Good, responsible professionals will always deliver, but when they feel supported, we also end up with a happier team. We also have regular video team catch-ups covering a variety of day-to-day issues, allowing everyone to participate and feel engaged as we service our clients. 

Litwin: We provided laptops to all our employees for the 2020 busy season and given that many of our applications are cloud-based, our virtual environment allows all employees access from anywhere, at any time. We believe this technology is key to supporting our teams. We also continue to enhance our meetings and communications to address those team members who are working in the office, as well as those working remotely. Education has always been a priority for our colleagues, and in addition to KLR University and our support for advanced degrees, our annual Firm Summit allows our team to hear from dynamic speakers, engage in exciting group discussions and build relationships with colleagues across all departments. Our 2021 Firm Summit will center around "achieving great things together," a topic we are particularly excited about given the hybrid work environment. We continue to look at artificial intelligence for opportunities that will enable our employees to focus on complex problem solving and impactful engagements with our clients. 

SumNews: Are there any interesting innovations or technologies you will be using with each other or clients?

Miller:  We have taken an approach that assumes that parts of the COVID-19 world in which we have been operating will be here to stay, We are assessing and upgrading each application and our technology tools to ensure we have maximum flexibility. Our goal is to ensure we can seamlessly add and remove staff and partners from any given application and easily control levels of access based on each specific need. We have also been on a mission to train and educate those "hold-out" clients who still are not using our secure portal. That effort, admittedly, remains a work in process.

Litwin: We are constantly upgrading our software and applications to take advantage of the latest innovations and are deploying more artificial intelligence in our back office as well as in our audit and tax processes, We have also committed to being early adopters on the leading edge of deploying technology.

Rucci: At Withum, 2021-2022 is the "Year of Innovation." We hired a chief innovation officer, and all team members are asked to participate through seven pilot teams, as well as individually, for input to improve tax processing, industry benchmarking, audit project management, reimagining customer relationship management (CRM) and data management.