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Taxes

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Greg Kyte
Jason Blumer
Jon Lokhorst
Melinda Guillemette
Scott Kregel

03/14/2018

During busy season you need to work less. Do it by getting paid more.

Get ready to have your busy season ruined.

“Research that attempts to quantify the relationship between hours worked and productivity found that employee output falls sharply after a 50-hour work-week, and falls off a cliff after 55 hours—so much so that someone who puts in 70 hours produces nothing more with those extra 15 hours, according to a study published last year by John Pencavel of Stanford University.”

After reading that, the feeling you’re experiencing is called the Semmelweis reflex. It’s the involuntary, reflexive tendency to reject new information because it screws up the way you do stuff. And now you’re probably thinking that you’re not prone to the Semmelweis reflex; that’s called bias blind spot, where you’re like, “Yeah, I totally get it that other people are prone to Semmelweis reflex, but I’m pretty sure it doesn’t affect me. I’m a CPA.” Read more

Category:: CPA firm, Pricing, Strategy, Taxes
Comments:: 2

01/08/2018

What You Can Do If Tax Reform is Effing with Your Value Pricing

So you value priced your customers. You thought you nailed it. You had value conversations to determine which results you provide that your customers will gladly pay for. You gave fixed price options. You burned your time sheets. You sold access to your intellectual capital.

And then tax reform came along with nine days left in 2017 and everybody has questions. EVERYBODY. You have questions. Colleagues are calling and emailing you to see if you know stuff, but you don’t, so you’re calling and emailing colleagues who are bigger nerds than you to see if they know. And even when you do find an answer, it comes with a disclaimer like “from what we can tell at this point” or “I’m not sure, but it appears as though” or “this is a total shot in the dark, I really have no f***ing clue.” Read more

Category:: CPA firm, Pricing, Taxes
Comments:: 0

09/12/2016

H&R Block: The H Stands for “Inaccurate” (Deep Undercover Part 3)

H&R Block is not cheap, their customer experience isn’t great, and their ackquoorisee is as good as my spelling. But be honest. Is your firm better? How do you know? More importantly, do your clients know?

Price is easy. After writing my post on their pricing, I talked to one CPA who said he’s charging half of what H&R Block does. Half! He’s a CPA! Fortunately he can solve his pricing problem by taking his clients’ documents to H&R Block, have them prepare the return (he’s under no obligation to file with H&R Block), get their pricing, fix the return, charge $50 more than H&R Block, and tell his clients exactly how H&R Block was going to screw them. Brilliant! And it only breaks one confidentiality rule!¹

Category:: Taxes
Comments:: 1

09/11/2016

Deep Undercover at H&R Block Part 2 – Customer Experience

Two years ago, I let Liberty Tax eff up my taxes. This year I allowed H&R Block to do it. In last month’s post, I wrote about H&R Block’s weird-ass pricing. Next month, I’ll tell you all about how hard their accuracy sucked. This post, however, is my story about the H&R Block customer experience.

But this is only my experience. H&R Block files millions of returns every year. So you can’t generalize based solely on one experience. But I will anyways because it’s fun to generalize based solely on one experience.

Category:: Customer Experience, Taxes
Comments:: 2

09/10/2016

Deep Undercover at H&R Block Part 1: The Mystery of the H&R Block Pricing Schedule

Two years ago, I had Liberty Tax do my taxes. Bad Experience. Bad Pricing. They lost my children. Great dance opportunity.
This year I did it again, but this time I went to H&R Block to see how The Block would do. Over the span of my next three blog posts, I’ll to go in detail about H&R Block’s pricing, their customer experience, and their accuracy.¹

Greg HR Block

This post is the one about pricing. But first, I need to tell you how I got here. Read more

Category:: Business, Customer Experience, Other Thoughts, Taxes
Comments:: 8

03/10/2014

Deep Undercover at Liberty Tax

I had Liberty Tax Service do my 2013 taxes. Don’t judge me.

I went because of Walt Disney. I heard he was inspired to create Disneyland because he was grossed out when he took his kids to some nasty carnivals. So I thought about what would gross me out in the accounting profession, and decided to go to Liberty Tax Service – the carneys of the accounting profession – for inspiration.

I arrived at Liberty Tax at 11:00 a.m. on Presidents’ Day. The open-concept office was austere: two small fake trees, white walls, fluorescent lights. The “waiting room” area had some toys for kids to both play with and contract hepatitis from. I assumed it was a temporary office. I was later told that it’s year-round. Read more

Category:: Customer Experience, Pricing, Taxes
Comments:: 7