covering our assets

The IRS is out to get us this year: “Us” being paid tax preparers, and “IRS” being IRS and also several consumer protection groups. It’s a good thing, really; they’re cracking down on fraud and the refund anticipation loan that I’ve never been easy with. It’s hard to chase down every individual who might be committing fraud; it’s much easier to target a storefront preparation business with a strangely huge number of clients who received their W-2’s awfully early in the season, or who have a different number of children every year, or who can’t seem to decide from year to year if they’re married or not. We can name the storefronts like that in our town.

The end result for the rest of us, honest and upstanding professional tax preparers that we are, is greatly increased liability…and therefore a new set of signatures we need from every client, a whole lot more CYA, a secret set of notes we can store with every return to document every possibly questionable decision we make. And relatively less-grudging support from the boss if we turn down a client.

During continuing education in December, somebody grumbled, “Oh great, now Katherine’s going to be even more of a bitch.” And yes. Yes, I am.

Most of our clients during the first big rush are painfully honest people hurrying in to claim their earned income credit and thankful for the help in maximizing their refund. We’re happy to see them and we’re happy to help them and their friends and their friends’ friends, even if we don’t have time to pee for a couple of days there.

The ones with that little hesitation, the glance sideways, the sudden change of story…it’s okay with me if they take their business to one of those other places. I’m sure they’ll all deserve what they end up with.

back to normal

Back to normal, or at least that-which-passes-for-normal. At any rate, it’s good to be home and doing my regular job where nobody lies. Where I can wear slippers and eat stinky food and hum little tunes and take a blog break.

It was a successful tax preparer gig for me; I felt confident and competent, finally, after six years of this. The only thing that came in that was beyond me were a couple of sales of rental properties, and we temps are not expected to do those anyway. Even the boss, an Enrolled Agent, groans when they come in. Especially during our monstrous peak week when we’re trying to move people along as quickly as possible.

I didn’t make any truly embarrassing mistakes (that have been caught). It’s bad enough to have to call a client and tell her you made a mistake and she’s getting an additional $400 in refund, but you can imagine the reception we get if the mistake goes in the other direction. I don’t remember having any like that but I live in dread of it every tax season.

The one transaction that’s still gnawing at me has nothing to do with tax issues. I prepared a return for a young mother who had a toddler, just under two, who had a screaming and crying fit almost as soon as they sat down. Not the typical ramping-up-to-a-tantrum course, but a rapidly full-blown, completely noninteractive meltdown. The cleaning lady down the hall heard this and brought in a handful of candy that the mother spread out in front of him. After that we had relative peace. The child sat and took each one, popped it in his mouth, chewed it a bit and took it out, spread them out and eyed the colors and generally left a growing pool of sticky on the table there. Not a problem; we can clean a table. What bothered me was the mom-and-child interaction. She treated him more or less like anybody would, tried to talk to him and distract him, but he wasn’t buying. He wasn’t reacting to what she said, and he wasn’t making any verbal sounds that I can recall.

I think he was either profoundly deaf or autistic. For both these conditions, particularly deafness, early intervention is critical. And she had no special coping strategy, so it may be she doesn’t know.

I didn’t get it all thought out until later. You can’t exactly say to your client, excuse me, ma’am, is your child quite normal? I know how I would have felt as a young mother if somebody had butted in like that. And I didn’t really have my head together at that point. I was mostly just happy the screaming had stopped and trying to finish the return before it started again.

So I’m still bothered. I don’t know what I should have done.

taxing

101 tax returns in 9 days. That’s enough. Tomorrow I get my life back.