What is the cost of a tax return in Kansas City?
What is the cost of a tax return in Kansas City?
I’m glad you asked. It’s an important question.
When I was growing up, I was fairly good in school – always an attentive student and a fast learner – but my teachers had one consistent criticism on my report cards: “He is smart and detailed, but he takes too long.” I did a fantastic job on art projects and writing assignments, up to a point, but then I would have to rush the last 30% of any task. This translated to a perpetual frustration: my finished product was never what it could have been if they had simply given me enough time to do it right. I eventually learned the rhythm, but it always meant I was forced to sacrifice Quality on the altar of Timeliness, and I always hated that. This way of training and measuring people might make sense if you are producing factory line workers, but it vastly undervalues craftsmanship, thoroughness, and creativity, which are all critical characteristics of a good CPA.
You might think of “creativity” as another word for “fiction” when it comes to accounting, but in reality a good CPA must be both a good teacher and a good storyteller, both of which require the ability to think about the true facts from a completely different point of view. This requires creativity, mental flexibility, and empathy, which a simple count of hours spent cannot adequately measure.
Okay, Jacob. But what does all that have to do with how much a tax return costs?
Plenty! Here’s why.
The traditional way CPA’s do business is the same as the system used by most attorneys: basically, they run a timer whenever they are working on your stuff.
Or talking to you. Or thinking about you.
You get the picture.
This system makes a certain amount of sense. If your work is more complicated, then it takes more time, and you will, in turn, pay more for them to do it. But there are some major downsides to this approach. The biggest ones that you, the client, see include:
The CPA often can’t really tell you how much your work will cost before it’s done. The CPA has to make a guess how long it will take without really knowing…and if something gets sideways in your tax prep process, then your bill goes up.
When you get a high bill, the work is already done, and now you have to negotiate from a position of feeling obligated to pay. Also, the wording of every standard engagement letter that you signed in the beginning obligates you to pay whatever it would cost, and now you feel cheated. Nobody wins when the client feels cheated.
This puts you in the ultimate position of paying for unforeseen inefficiencies in the process and creates a disincentive for the CPA to improve.
There are also some issues that you, the client, never see:
It makes everyone in the tax preparation process a slave to time budgets (those guesses from the first bullet point above) that may or may not be realistic.
The tax preparer gets obsessed with time spent on the process rather than just focusing on doing your work well. It completely divorces the worker from their product - and from the people they are helping.
It essentially turns your tax prep job into my fourth-grade art class, where the preparer just has to get it done.
Like fourth grade Jacob, tax preparers in this old system are forced to rush through a lot of their work, which makes their work less good than it could be and, often, makes them resent the whole system.
What makes our firm different from other accountants in Kansas City?
As you may have noticed on our homepage, one of our primary features is “Innovative Pricing Structure.”
It will sound simple to a lot of people, and it is: instead of charging rates per hour, we have a price list. The industry term for this is Value-based Pricing. This means that the value we provide to you is what you will pay for, regardless of how long we take to do it.
The benefit to you is you know exactly what you will pay for the services provided, ahead of time. No more wondering how many hours you’re being billed for, or how much the answer to a question will cost you. Simple. You can view our current price list here.
As you read that price list, here are some things to keep in mind.
Some of the items in our price list will not be optional.
Some of the items in our price list, however, are completely optional to you.
As you read the price list, you will, no doubt, have noticed that our prices are not small.
We are not competing on price—we are competing on service. If you are well served by your tax person, then you should keep using them. If you are content buying TurboTax Deluxe and doing it yourself, then we will not discourage you—our base package certainly costs more than TurboTax, but here are some things that you will miss if you take the TurboTax route:
Once you are our client, you will have a CPA. This means that if you get a notice from the IRS, your CPA will look into it. Sometimes the answer is that the IRS is right, and you do owe more money, but often they aren’t, and you don’t. There is no charge to find out what’s going on.
If you are ever considering a business idea or a transaction and need to bounce it off someone with some tax expertise, you can call your CPA. If we can’t talk at the moment, we’ll call you right back. This is your opportunity to influence your tax bill and your tax prep bill, and there is no charge to have an expert sounding board.
If you heard something about taxes on CNN or on Fox News, and you think maybe the sky is falling, you can call your CPA. *** There is no charge to gain some perspective and color about what often sound like very black-and-white doomsday predictions.
Your CPA is fluent not just in your language, but also in the languages of finance and tax (and they are conversational in contract law.) There is no charge to clarify concepts and words that are often difficult or impossible to parse using Google alone.
Also, there is no charge for our general awesomeness, excellent sense of humor, or winning charisma.
Our base package for tax services does cost more than you’ll pay TurboTax, but it also includes something that no level of TurboTax provides: an ongoing relationship with a trusted, experienced advisor who has your best interest in mind.
Our real value proposition is that if you choose us as your CPA, then you will have an expert who personally shepherds you through the process, makes sure that you correctly understand the story of your money, and makes sure you properly tell it on your tax forms. Which is a detailed way of saying, we’re in the business of delivering peace of mind, and that’s something that will help you sleep better at night.
Warm Regards,
Jacob
