Tax Planning Advice: Create an Efficient Process for Clients—Andrew Rice

Simply asking questions and looking at information which the taxpayers overlooked or didn't know was deductible can result in a tax refund for many clients. It's that time of year, so I'd like to recommend a basic tax-saving strategy, which will serve your clients well this year and for years to come:

Create a Process: With everything we do–whether it's our job, fixing dinner, mowing the lawn, paying our bills or getting ready for work–we each have some general process that becomes repeatable. So encourage your clients to establish an easy, repeatable process that will help them prepare throughout the year, all those tax receipts and documents they will need for tax filing season.

Make the Process Efficient: Not only will a process help save your clients money come tax time, but the more efficient the process is determines how much it will save them. The old method of throwing documents in a shoe box and dropping it off at the accountant's office is surely not a process and completely inefficient. So have your clients create a process efficient enough that there's no need to search high and low for all the tax documents come January and February, and eliminate the final "give-up strategy" which defaults to "file the basics and pay the rest."

Of course, it's always your clients' money and they're welcome to give the government more than they deserve each year, but I suggest you help them "never settle for less" by recommending they have a process, and make it efficient, organize their documents and hire a qualified expert.