FAQ

EAs are federally-authorized tax practitioners who can:

• Represent taxpayers before the IRS on matters ranging from tax issues, audits and appeals.
• Since the EA specialize in tax law, we provide tax advice
• Prepare and File tax returns for individuals, partnerships, corporations, estates, trusts, and other entities with tax-reporting requirements

To become an EA, candidates must pass a three-part test, apply to the IRS, and pass a background check.

• Complete 72 hours of continuing education every three years.
• Comply with ethical standards established by the Department of Treasury.

CPAs are state-licensed accounting professionals who may be:

• Auditors
• Accountants
• Business advisors
• Corporate accountants and executives
• Tax consultants
• Forensic accountants
• Financial planners

To become a CPA, candidates must pass a four-part exam and comply with education and experience requirements. The exam is the same no matter which state it’s taken in, but every state has its own education and experience requirements. Most require at least a bachelor’s degree and at least two years of public accounting experience.

• Each state also has its own rules for maintaining the license, but most require at least 40 hours of continuing education per year, with four of those hours covering ethics.
• Each state’s board of accountancy, CPA society, and other regulatory agencies have ethical rules and regulations that CPAs must abide by.

We are very careful with your information. All our desktop computers are hard-wired and do not run with wi-fi. At night all the computers are shut down.  Upon startup all the softwares require passwords and two-factor authentication.  All paper information is locked up when no one is in the office. Since we are a small office, we do not use laptops to deal with client information. I can access our client list on my VPN protected phone, but it is password-secure and I only keep contact information on my phone. Tax return info is not done on my phone. We also use an encrypted portal system for all clients.

We file 99% of our returns electronically. The only exceptions are if we are working with an individual that hasn’t filed in several years (Non-Filer). Based on the number of years to be filed, we can decide about mailing them in or e-filing. Every year we deal with multiple cases of non-filers and there are pros and cons to both methods of e-filing and mailing. We will go over this with you if this happens to be your situation

We do all kinds of returns. Personal, partnerships, Sole proprietors, S-Corps, C-Corps, LLC’s and estates/trusts. We also help a lot of people who have not filed taxes in several years (non-Filers). I also like helping taxpayers set up with installment agreements and helping them with tax issues with the IRS and MA DOR. My newest work that I have gotten into is teaching classes about the IRS and tax related info for business owners and landlords.

Well, I have spent several years developing pricing and am now proud to offer fixed fee pricing as well as the traditional pricing model. The traditional pricing is by forms and complexity, which is how most tax firm’s price. If you don’t like the anxiety of not knowing what the bill will be, you can pick from our fixed fee structure instead of the traditional pricing method

You get choice. After several years of development, we now offer three different pricing plans. One is the traditional pricing by form and complexity, but the other two are fixed fee plans with a lot of extra benefits added in. Ask us for more info on these plans.

During tax season, we meet with clients in the evening, even at 9PM and on Saturday if necessary. There has been an occasional 6AM meeting as well. Sunday we are closed except during tax season which is our time to catch up with the work week. You will need to schedule an appointment to ensure that we are available.

We have a secure portal that is encrypted.  You upload your documents, or scan them & upload, using the app.  The same portal app allows us to securely communicate with you by chat; if you have questions or we need additional documents it is easy and fast to send a message.  Your completed tax forms are uploaded to the portal so that you may download them for your permanent records.

Unfortunately, we are not a 100% paperless office, but we are close. We go through about 2 cases of paper a year and we average about 5 paper tax returns mailed out to my elderly clients. All other clients get PDF copies of their returns in their encrypted portal. This year we did much better since we have moved into a new project management system that is in the cloud and prevented us from doing extra printing of emails and documents.