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New tax reduction strategies carefully explained and exhaustively researched every two weeks. Receive breaking news updates on tax law changes. Members only monthly AMA with TOTTB.tax.
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Should Your Practice Use a Client Portal?
You may know me as the “crypto guy” here at Think Outside the Tax Box. It might seem like that’s all I ever write about. But this time, I’m sneaking an article in while my editor is on vacation. Because I want to talk about using a client portal and why all tax professionals should be using one in their firms. Some firms may have dipped their toe into the digital waters out of necessity as a by-product of the pandemic. Others may have started the process long before Covid existed. According to a completely unscientific poll I ran on Twitter, 70 percent of firms are still processing returns at least partially on paper. This can mean either receiving paper documents from a client or delivering a hard copy of the completed return to the client. As the numbers from a Twitter survey are clearly biased toward firms already comfortable with digital technology, we can safely assume more accurate numbers are significantly higher. Since TOTTB refuses to provide me with a budget to run a full, comprehensive study, we’ll just have to run with my perfunctory data as well as published data from a poll Canopy conducted in 2021. Canopy surveyed more than a thousand small businesses and found that 63 percent admitted that their accountant did not offer any portal. More surprising, depending on whom you ask, is that more than two-thirds of respondents said they would be interested in switching to an accountant that allows them to use photos of their documents for easy sharing. While I’m not here to debate the issues of opening a gajillion .jpg files and how that might negatively affect my practice, the impact of using technology can improve your efficiencies, communications, and improve your workflow. To learn how, continue reading.
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CURRENT EDITION
Renewable Energy Tax Credits: An Opportunity to Sustainably Optimize Taxes
Investment Tax Credits (“ITCs”) and Production Tax Credits (“PTCs”, and together with ITCs, “RETCs”) have existed for decades and reflect the U.S. government’s commitment to incentivizing clean energy solutions in industry and commerce. The availability of RETCs was most recently extended by the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 (“IRA”), which fundamentally transformed policy in this space by tying such credits’ expiration to the U.S. reaching certain targets for greenhouse gas reductions. While the recent change in Executive Branch leadership casts doubt over the longevity of RETCs, a full repeal seems unlikely given the scope and scale of domestic projects which utilize and benefit from such credits. This article discusses how RETCs may benefit both buyers and sellers in an increasingly uncertain environment.
DeFi-nitely Confusing: Final Regulations for Digital Asset DeFi Brokers
Well, at least the treasury department is true to form. They have ruined yet another international trip for me, which is the third time if you’re keeping track at home. This time it was a weekend trip to Toronto, which coming from upstate New York is technically “international,” yet somehow substantially closer to home than New York City. Late afternoon on the Friday before New Year’s Eve, the Treasury released another 115 pages of Digital Asset Regulations, along with a 13 page notice for good measure. As we’ve discussed previously on TOTTB, the last set of regs punted on a number of more complex crypto issues. This most recent release is all about one of those issues, Decentralized Finance, better known as “DeFi.”
Pig Butchering Can Slaughter Your Clients’ Finances
People use the online space to look for love, make business and financial decisions. And all of these decisions can have serious tax implications. That is why as trusted financial and tax advisors, it is important for us to be aware so we can help protect our clients. In 2024, the Federal Trade Commission released a report showing consumers reported losing $4.6 billion in investment scams. That’s only the amount reported, so our clients are at risk if they are online making financial decisions. Today, let’s look at a newer player in the online investment scam arena: pig butchering. If you’re like me, you’re probably thinking “what in the world does this have to do with taxes?” Unfortunately, everything. It leads to taxpayers receiving tax bills for money they withdrew but lost as victims of theft.
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Think Outside the Tax Box provides tax reduction strategies along with practical
implementation advice in order to reduce your clients’ federal tax bill with ease.
