Back in the “olden days,” before most professionals learned to quit playing the silly game, it was an annual spring tradition for some idiot journalist somewhere to decide to “test” tax practitioners and publish the results under the guise of helpful consumer information. They’d deliver a pre-determined set of information to different tax preparers and then compare the resultant returns.
The information was always incomplete or questionable in some way and the “game” usually disallowed follow-up questions from the preparer. The published story was almost always flawed in the “tax analysis” area and trained professionals would wince at the simplistic explanations offered for truly complex situations. Eventually the idiot journalists (please forgive my obvious redundancy) ran out of victims and I have not seen the story in many years. Until today.
New twist -- now it’s being played with defenseless software vendors. Last week Tina Orem’s article, entitled “How Much Do You Owe Uncle Sam? Tax-Prep Sites May Disagree,” appeared online. Same premise, but now the victim is the software -- rather than the tax -- professional. Well, at least there’s progress!
The story is worth a quick read -- and firms may want to forward the link to any clients contemplating a DIY return this year. Just mention that the percentage of professionally prepared returns keeps rising year after year after year. And with these results I guess we know why!
