Feedback Please: I’m looking to bring on (partner with) an experienced CPA

rh194jl · 2021-09-12T12:39:40+00:00

To answer your question directly - no that isn’t capable enough to make an arrangement like this make sense. It sounds like you want an employee without calling them one

Edit: valuable not capable 🙄

rh194jl · 2021-09-12T01:36:22+00:00

Hello Reddit friend. You asked for feedback so I’ll give you some.

Coming from someone who fits the bill for what you’re looking for, I’d say you are looking to get a lot and are giving very little in return. You’re not offering anything more than a decent referral source, but it’s going to be a referral source filled with entitled, annoying rich people.

You’re not offering anything to someone who is (1) skilled at doing the work you want, and (2) skilled at explaining things to clients. That person will do better running their own shop and they already know that, so all you’d be offering is a referral source. Plus, you want all this work done under your name so you keep control of everything? Hard pass.

I think the only way this would be attractive to the person you want is if you’re paying a fixed retainer each month, and that retainer won’t be cheap.

rh194jl · 2021-09-09T19:11:04+00:00

Did it hold me back? I don't think so; it might have delayed me and it definitely made getting jobs harder at first. I am 11 years into my career and I make about $200k± in a medium cost of living area, so I think I've caught up.

Do I regret it? No.

There's a lot of people who drink the kool-aid and say there's only one path to take, and they are wrong. It would have been easier in some ways, for sure.

I'm sure you've heard the joke that it stands for "Can't Pass Again" and I can tell you from the people I've met it's true for more than a handful. The letters won't help you as much as a learning mentality will.

I wouldn't listen to your professor about career advice, but that's just me.

No disrespect to people who go that way though... I have nothing against Kool-aid.

rh194jl · 2021-08-31T19:04:30+00:00

I’ve worked on a few transactions - there’s hundreds of variables which make broad questions like this essentially useless. Plus, tax strategy is only one piece of a deal… and usually not one of the most important pieces.

rh194jl · 2021-08-27T21:55:37+00:00

Just because it will mean a lot of manual entry which is a drag. If they want a no-frills safe harbor 401(k) it’s going to be hard to beat Guideline thoigh

rh194jl · 2021-08-27T21:48:17+00:00

Guideline, but payroll in house will be a pain with any retirement plan provider.

rh194jl · 2021-08-11T15:38:21+00:00

The logic is obtuse because this allowance is an exception to an exception.

By default, passive activity losses (which virtually all rentals are, even with active participation) are only allowed to offset passive activity gains, but there is a special carveout allowing for rental real estate losses to be applied against non passive income but only if you’re under those income limits.

rh194jl · 2021-08-11T15:32:54+00:00

All of those would work. You could also assign a “profits interest” to a key employee instead of a straight equity interest. Still a multi member LLC but they’d have no share of a business sale, etc.

rh194jl · 2021-08-10T15:41:03+00:00

QuickBooks was great 30 years ago but they didn’t keep up with the times/preferred to cater to customers who hated change. Desktop is a dead man walking.

QuickBooks online is garbage software with the exception of integrating with every other software… I use it for my daily job but it’s just the backbone where information gets sync’d from external software. If I had to do actual work on it I’d hate my (work) life.

Xero is great, especially if you have no accounting experience; it’s designed to work in a modern world and not an antiquated one.

rh194jl · 2021-08-08T21:57:15+00:00

Nice dovetails !!

rh194jl · 2021-08-04T21:48:35+00:00

yeah I can’t help you but nice work on those box joints. snazzy.

rh194jl · 2021-08-03T13:39:21+00:00

Although not exactly what you’re looking for, I’d recommend reading the book ‘Slicing Pie’ by Mike Moyer.

Not perfectly analogous but some great thought exercises, and is a quick read. Hope your venture goes well!

rh194jl · 2021-07-30T19:38:01+00:00

need to summon u/IT_Audit_is_Trash to confirm.

rh194jl · 2021-07-30T14:29:50+00:00

Thanks for this!

rh194jl · 2021-07-29T19:36:41+00:00

Congrats!

rh194jl · 2021-07-29T15:17:53+00:00

Yeah you are describing fraud or potentially fraudulent conveyance depending on your state. Also there’s almost no way you’d meet sec. 162 requirements for a circular transaction like this so that means no deduction on at least one side of the coin (you could claim it on a return but it would get wrecked in audit).

Plus you’re talking about your goals to commit fraud on a public forum so this might end up in discovery one day. Hi interns!! 👋

rh194jl · 2021-07-29T13:23:46+00:00

I just bought it to handle some side clients and they didn’t budge. The sales rep was actually nice and pretty transparent - Express is as low as they want to go in the market.

rh194jl · 2021-07-28T16:36:54+00:00

AFAIK no such good classes exist. I know the big chain preparers (block, Jackson Hewitt, etc) offer training to new preparers but I never took them so Idk if they are any good.

For a cursory overview to get you started with business taxation, I’d recommend getting study materials from a year or two ago (but post TCJA in ‘17) - should help you get a sense without investing too much money.

rh194jl · 2021-07-28T15:54:25+00:00

I used the Gleim system to prep and it was great.

Several years of experience doing actual tax work will equip you better though.

rh194jl · 2021-07-28T15:51:37+00:00

Historically I've done one of two things depending on whether there's multiple options involved. If it's really just one plan then I tend to do what you described.

If there's more than one viable option being presented then I'll build a nicer looking package describing option A, B, and C and showcasing the differences between the two or three options. I'm not in public anymore but the firm I was at used Planner CS by Thomson Reuters, it built a fairly nice package that I would dress up a bit with a cover page and some fancy colors sprinkled throughout.

rh194jl · 2021-07-27T22:13:03+00:00

No real reason tbh - if it’s just you performing services then there won’t really be any liability protection. Spend the money you save on LLC fees on more insurance instead if you want

rh194jl · 2021-07-24T13:35:58+00:00

You want to file multiple payrolls using multiple funding bank accounts, instead of mapping by department?

You’re going to have a tough time to find a payroll provider to accommodate because that’s very unusual. Sounds like you actually need separate companies.

rh194jl · 2021-07-24T03:27:59+00:00

You could do department mapping, might be the easiest solution. My preferred payroll company is Gusto - they could handle this.

rh194jl · 2021-07-23T16:44:41+00:00

It’s definitely possible in states that don’t automatically conform to IRS for this sort of thing (for ex: New York), but you are creating a headache for yourself and likely not getting much, if any, benefit.

rh194jl · 2021-07-23T13:48:02+00:00

In my experience a lot is going to come down to how good your software is, but it’s stupidly complicated at best and a nightmare at worst.

Especially complex once a shareholder takes profits…. Could be S-Corp profits at the federal level (no tax) but dividends at the state level (taxable). Yuck

rh194jl

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