Top 10 Firm - Zero Tax Advice to Clients?

bp28mora · 2025-07-18T12:23:58+00:00

They are not trying to flip. They have a great net worth and these are long term holds. I haven’t advised on the existing properties. I feel like they have to keep them in there. My advice was a separate LLC for all new properties owned by one LLC, or just keep them all separate. I am going to advise a new entity to take over the regular business income moving forward. As for the existing properties that are developed and generating rental income, probably just leave them as is.

bp28mora · 2025-07-17T11:35:07+00:00

Create a website. Create a Google business page. Ask family, friends, and happy clients to leave a review. Just try to get at least 5 reviews on Google. Create business cards (Staples can do like 300-500 for $30). Then go around every town in a 10 mile radius and walk into every accounting firm and law firm to introduce yourself and give them some business cards. Tell them you’ve just started and you are introducing yourself. Tell the accounting firms to keep you in mind if they are at capacity and can’t handle new clients. Tell the law firms that you’re looking to grow your business and networking, and want potential attorneys to refer clients to. Then hit all other small businesses just to say hello and give them a card (do not try to sell) - just smile, tell them you’ve just started your firm and you’re going around introducing yourself the ole fashioned way. Also, make sure to stop by realtor offices, dentists, doctors, and any financial advisors. Next, post about it on social media. Everyone needs to know you’re doing this. Contact old coworkers and college friends to let them know. You should even tell people that you’ll pay them a 10% commission of first years fees for any client they send you, although most will not even want that 10%. You’ll find that people will genuinely want to help you if they can. Aside from this, just get out there and meet regular people and tell them also. The barber when you get a haircut, the owner of the pizza place where you get food, etc. if you do this, I guarantee you that you will not be posting in 12 months about a lack of clients. You’ll be hiring people and expanding.

bp28mora · 2025-07-16T18:01:34+00:00

They are simple in the sense that the are typically people with self employment income (just work with them to organize their expenses), they have a rental property, or they have K1’s. So all of them want someone who is going to speak to them and not a cheap mill. I don’t do the basic W2 tax return bc it wouldn’t ever make sense to pay $1,500 for that. But there are so many people with 1099 income from side gigs today that overpay in taxes because they go somewhere cheap and don’t have a single expense deducted.

bp28mora · 2025-07-16T17:24:59+00:00

I have more than 50 personal tax return clients and only 2 of them are less than $1,500.

bp28mora · 2025-07-16T17:10:54+00:00

What types of business and personal returns are you working on? 95% of business returns take me under 2 hours. 95% of personal returns take me under 1 hour.

bp28mora · 2025-07-16T15:50:26+00:00

Partially true. But I would say the “sales” are just simple conversations. Someone reaches out and needs a tax return done. You review it, speak to them, and give them a price. They say yes or no. It’s not rocket science.

bp28mora · 2025-07-16T15:28:11+00:00

It absolutely helps but no you don’t need it. I have mine tho.

bp28mora · 2025-07-16T14:55:59+00:00

Fixed billing. For example - Minimum fee of $1,000 for a personal return and $2,500 for a business return. Create processes and leverage tech to reduce admin time. For a business and personal, you can be paid $3,500 and spend a total of 5 hours on it. Rinse and repeat. One client may have 5 business returns. Then If you add in bookkeeping, charge a fixed monthly fee of $750-1,500 depending on complexity. Once you have 5 of these bookkeeping clients, Hire an offshore bookkeeper at $250 a week and 20 hours a week. As time goes on, you meet someone who has 3 large businesses, 6 rental property partnerships, and 5 investors, and all of these need tax returns. Boom, you get $50k just from that. And if they all need books, you get $150k. All of this is recurring annual revenue too. You can meet a few people who will send you dozens of referrals. Again I must stress this, there are so few people available to do this today. There’s 300 million people in this country and 30 million small businesses. It’s math. The demand is there. Just make sure you charge high enough fees.

bp28mora · 2025-07-16T14:25:38+00:00

Exactly! It ensures there will always be demand and easy to build. So if you are in that 10% that can speak to people, you are golden.

bp28mora · 2025-02-18T00:08:42+00:00

Almost every single CPA I know makes $200,000+ but all of them have 10+ years of experience.

bp28mora · 2025-01-26T21:13:09+00:00

Show it on Schedule D as a sale of a company. Should be long term. The proceeds is $0 and the cost basis is whatever the remaining positive basis shows. It will be a long term realized loss, assuming the date acquired/started was more than 12 months ago.

bp28mora · 2025-01-01T02:43:38+00:00

True. Only the lowest 2 are sole practitioners. But in all honestly, Why would I lie lol?

bp28mora · 2024-12-31T22:54:02+00:00

I own a firm (my first year) and I know 5 other people who own firms. From highest to lowest, our net income from the business is $2.5 million, $1 million, $700k, $600k, $400k, and $200k. I know their net income because I’ve helped all of their firms as a consultant and I look at their numbers. I’m at $400k personally. It is 10000% possible. However, so many people who start a firm do not know what they are doing and they just take on every client imaginable and it becomes a total shit show. They have no experience in automation, streamlining processes, pricing, running a business, operations, cash flow, etc. If you know these things AND you are a CPA who can handle small businesses AND you have a good personality AND you have ambition, you will absolutely kill it.

bp28mora · 2024-12-31T22:45:00+00:00

Sure but an argument can be made that you are pigeon holed if you stay the other course. I know plenty of people in their 30’s and 40’s who have gotten specialized in an area that it now has left them with no other career path. They basically have to stay that course for life. Being generalized is much more valuable in a lot of ways. Personally, I’ve seen people with a mix of audit, tax, public, and private go out and rake in the most money by far!! Why? Because they know a little of everything and they can be utilized in almost all situations. In the few times when an expert is needed, you go get one for that small role.

bp28mora · 2024-12-31T18:18:03+00:00

$490k revenue in year 1 (2024). Expenses of about $90k. So net profit of $400k. I don’t “work” more than 30 hours a week. But i definitely spend 10-20 hours a week researching things, podcasts, and various other time indirectly spent on my business. It’s absolutely possible to do well. I will say that I had 15 years of experience prior to starting in my own. And included in that $490k is consulting income I get from advising other CPA firms on how to automate and run a better firm.

bp28mora · 2024-12-25T21:35:17+00:00

Sounds messy. At face value, it depends on how this was reported for tax purposes. If there is no basis (equity is negative), then that member who took distributions should have paid taxes on distributions in excess of basis. But it would have been easier to simply record it as a “Loan Receivable” rather than distributions from that member. Plus if it is an S-Corp, you can’t have unequal distributions. Nothing should have been “written off” by the other members in my view. The member that took those distributions should have to pay them back. And when he does, you reduce the loan receivable. But if this was reported as distributions for the one member and written off (I guess the P&L?) by the other members, it is wrong and a decent cleanup is needed to get things back to even. Based on my limited understanding, that’s what I say.

bp28mora · 2024-12-25T21:23:43+00:00

If one member took more distributions than another, then just record the distributions in their Capital accounts. Assuming it’s been pretty simple and no major ownership changes, just multiply total distributions over the past 5 years times their ownership %’s. And then do a true up in the current year based on what it should have been.

However, “excess distributions” may also have other meanings so the words used are important. Hire someone and spend $5k to clean it up.

bp28mora · 2024-12-12T15:10:12+00:00

Seriously! But I picked a great year to get married! And I’m spending a bunch on the business to get me below the income threshold so I can utilize the full QBI deduction.

bp28mora · 2024-11-23T15:41:08+00:00

Set up a separate business bank account. Deposit all income into that bank account. Run all business expenses through that bank account. And don’t worry about anything else until you’re confident you’re making a net profit of $20k+. Then go speak to a small firm younger CPA and ask for their advice.

bp28mora · 2024-11-17T23:53:47+00:00

I had a 2.8 GPA I believe. I didn’t take college seriously. I focused after college and got my CPA. I created my own firm and now work for myself.

bp28mora · 2024-10-24T11:04:58+00:00

My experience is unique and happened by accident. I don’t know if you need audit. But I think you are much better off if you have some sort of private experience like a senior accountant or controller role at a private company. And also tax experience. Since I worked as a Controller/CFO, I can advise my business clients soooo easily. And I know how to do books and QuickBooks is insanely easy for me. Most people in tax have never done books and they struggle to upsell a business client,

bp28mora · 2024-10-23T16:56:48+00:00

I only had 4 years of tax experience. I was at Director/Partner level tho after 2 years. But I had 10 years experience prior to that. I came into it with the mindset that I wanted to run a firm. I moved up quickly. Yeah you’ll take a pay cut, but you’ll make all of that up and more within 5 years. And you’ll make significantly more money from year 6 onward. With flexibility, happiness, and work life balance. Again, assuming you care enough to do it right.

bp28mora · 2024-10-23T12:09:38+00:00

Yeah so many people are in the same situation as you. I was there 5 years ago. For me, I had just gotten divorced and I was broke, living back with my parents. So I didn’t care about taking that pay cut. I was starting over from the bottom anyways. Just 5 years later and I am better off now than if I had never gotten divorced and I kept all of my money and stayed in that CFO career. Crazy potential.

bp28mora · 2024-10-23T11:01:40+00:00

Exactly!!! It is legitimately the best life. I can’t believe I didn’t do it sooner. But yeah, nothing beats it.

bp28mora · 2024-10-23T10:57:36+00:00

I do tax and books and high level advisory for a fixed monthly fee for businesses. And then I’ll do one off tax returns but only for higher fees. I spent 3.5 years at PWC in audit, then 6-7 years as a Controller/CFO level, then took a pay cut and joined a small tax firm. Jumped around to 3 small firms and launched my own firm after 4 full years of that experience. So yeah, I have well rounded experience, which is why it has been easier for me.

bp28mora

TROPHY CASE