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In a highly competitive business landscape, even we accountants face the challenge of setting ourselves apart from our peers. The accounting profession has changed significantly in recent years, with technological advancements, changing regulations, and shifting client expectations. To thrive in this environment, as accountants, we must possess strong technical skills and differentiate ourselves by offering unique value to our clients. The hardest part of establishing our unique value is objectively looking at our accounting journey and pinpointing our most significant achievements.

The Estate of Thomas H. Fry v. Commissioner is an opinion that anybody who deals with S corporations needs to know about. You may have read about it as a taxpayer win and it is. Another reading is that it is a cautionary tale to not do what Thomas H. Fry and his team did with his S corporations, Crown Disposal Inc (CD) and CR Maintenance Services Inc (CRM). Think of the win part of this opinion as a life jacket that might come in handy if you run your ship into the rocks. Better you should pay attention to the rocks and avoid them.

Are you seeking innovative strategies to elevate your client reporting processes? Wondering how to transition from traditional methods to more engaging and personalized interactions? The emergence of generative AI has instigated a profound transformation in the domain of client communication for tax planners, shifting from the conventional Email, PDF, Telephone, In-person (EPTI) reporting techniques to a more advanced PAVER framework. Read on to find out more!

The laws of tax planning that I developed over my writing career that will be expounded in the upcoming Reilly’s Laws of Tax Planning, published by Think Outside the Tax Box, lean a little on the conservative side, as tax planners use the term – conservative versus aggressive, not conservative versus liberal. This results, in large part, from their primary source being court decisions.
The 18th law stands out from the others in this regard. “Honest objective trumps realistic expectation” encourages practitioners to be somewhat more aggressive in claiming losses from activities that seem a little dubious . I still hold that view, even though there have been no encouraging developments in 2023. Here is a roundup on the action last year through December 2, 2023.