Make Your Accountant Your Best Friend

By: Richard A. Chapo

Accountants tend to come in two types. The first is a reactive accountant, one that waits for you to send in your financial information and then prepares your taxes. The second asks you to come in and fill in annoying questionnaires about your life and so on. You want to go with this second accountant.

To truly save money on your taxes, you want a proactive accountant. A proactive accountant recognizes that the best way to cut tax bills is to plan ahead. They do not want to see you in April when it is time to prepare last years taxes. Instead, they want to see you in January every year to have a lengthy discussion about your finances, changes you foresee in your life that year and your plans for the future. Once they have this information, they can give you definitive direction on steps to take to cut down on your taxes.

Despite what you may have heard, accountants are just as human as you and I. If you don’t make any effort to get your tax strategy sorted out, they probably will not either. If they give you advice and you don’t follow it, you have no one to blame but yourself. To get the biggest benefit you must avoid procrastination. They are going to save you thousands, if not tens of thousands, of dollars, so do your part.

So, how do you find a proactive accountant? You can look around the net or ask friends. You will never really know what you have, however, until you meet with one. When you do, you need to ask them what steps they will take to handle your taxes. If they make no mention of a review of your finances for the purpose of making recommendations, it is time to move to the next one.

To get the biggest benefit from your tax professional, you need two things. First, find a proactive one. Second, follow their directives immediately.


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