You Won’t Find Me on the Side of Late Filers

I hope that this will be the last tax season I have to live through. It was by far the worst, mostly because of the same clients who—every year—wait until the last minute to get their information to us. I would probably lose a lot of these people by attaching late charges of 100% for all information submitted after, say, March 25. But my boss doesn’t want to get rid of these deadbeats, so the last few days are always a horror.

Perhaps it’s getting time for me to retire. Part of the problem is that the firm’s president thinks I’m an accountant. I’m not: I’m just a very good specialist on accounting software—not on tax law per se. I don’t get to go to the continuing education classes, and I am totally ignorant on how to prepare returns for trusts, corporations, foundations, partnerships, and estates. And yet I am consulted as if I knew about tax law for all those entities.