Tax Preparation, Planning & Strategy

Although good tax accountants can help you save money on taxes and penalties, taxes themselves are unavoidable. You should not expect that you will not have to pay taxes even if you hire an accountant, we cannot change the tax laws themselves.

Please understand that CPA firms are very busy with hundreds of tax returns that take time to prepare accurately, and that it benefits the client to wait the needed time so we can fully examine your financial reports and hopefully provide you a better outcome.

We are not the same as TurboTax, H&R Block, we provide our clients a high end product, with high-end, experienced and reputable accountants, not a low-end tax preparer. We complete many tax returns during the Summer or Fall months and may need to file extensions on our clients’ behalf to accommodate all of our clients’ work.

Business taxes are complicated and having the competency to file them honestly, accurately and systematically requires years of education, training, and experience.  Not to mention the skillsets needed to know how to optimize the system for the best tax liability outcome. Also, we have extensive preparation and review processes in place after each phase of data entry to identify and fix errors before we submit tax returns, all of which take additional time to complete.

Additionally, tax law is challenging because the federal, state, and local tax authorities can all have different rules.  Those rules are updated and amended periodically, and thus we need to keep track of the changes so we can make recommendations that make sense for your situation.

While we love talking and getting to know each and every one of our clients, each member of our CPA firm is in high demand and incredibly busy during tax season. We aim to provide consistent communication within 1-3 business days for our clients, which is far above the industry standard.

We provide initial estimates of our costs on the initial information you provided at our first meeting and submission of your data. But until we conduct detailed review and drill down of your business’ circumstances and niches, there is no way to know what tax forms will be necessary for a client and the final tax invoice may be more than originally estimated.

But until we actually prepare your tax return, there is no way to know exactly what tax forms will be necessary for a client and the final tax invoice may be more than originally estimated.

The costs of preparation of additional forms may be extra charges but it will keep your company in legal compliance with the tax law, avoid penalties, interest and tax negligence with the IRS. We are legally required to adhere to the tax law while preparing tax returns which may result in additional forms and costs of tax preparation.

Tax preparers may have only had a few days of training, whereas CPAs have to have 150 hours of college education, including at least 30 credit hours in Accounting. Additionally, CPA is required to pass a test that is often compared to the difficulty and complexity to an Attorney’s BAR exam.  A CPA must also have acquired on-the-job extensive accounting experience. With Innovative Accounting, one of our CPAs reviews your tax return after it is prepared.

For a simple tax return, for example those with only a W-2 income statement, this may be true and professional tax preparation may not be necessary. However, for clients with small businesses, rental properties, and any other more complex tax situations, it is highly unlikely the average person would be able to complete a tax return accurately and with the best possible outcome if they are not a professional accountant and/or CPA working within the industry.

It is our role and responsibility to prepare the tax return and provide our clients reasonable instructions on the tasks they need to complete.  However, this does not negate the client’s responsibility to sign, mail, pay, and otherwise complete the tasks required to property fulfill their tax obligations.

Our name is Innovative Accounting because we rely on innovative solutions and technology to efficiently and securely prepare your financials and tax preparation. Our preparation of tax returns requires much more than a one-hour appointment, and as we are a fully virtual company, we do not offer in-person appointments or physical drop-offs of documents. Therefore, we require all clients to upload documents and provide their information via secure portals and questionnaires.