2024 Letter For Individuals
Happy New Year to all! With the new year comes a new tax season. We have been reviewing our workflows from last year and working on improving them.
We also have some staff changes. Sydney left our employment last spring. Lucy is working hard on her master’s degree in accounting and has been promoted to staff accountant. We have recently hired Bijay Timilsina as an administrative assistant. While we prefer to receive documents via TaxDome, he will be receiving paper documents, scanning them and ensuring they are in the pipeline for processing in order of receipt. We also have two remote employees, Courtney Ishler, a 2022 Patrick Henry graduate and current ECU student who will be maintaining our website and Facebook page, and Theresa Capule, my daughter, who handles technological administrative tasks.
Engagement letters and organizers are being uploaded to TaxDome this weekend. We will be mailing them out to clients who prefer paper next week. There are a few items that I want to highlight:
Unfortunately, I had to spend an undue amount of time last year trying to collect my fees for service. For that reason, I have implemented a retainer process this year. The retainer amount will be listed in your engagement letter and will need to be paid when you sign the engagement letter to move your account to the processing step. We hope this will make things smoother – it will reduce my time trying to collect and stop the people who don’t intend to pay for my services from using my valuable time. The retainer is an estimate based on your prior year tax return. You may be billed additional fees when the tax preparation is completed or you may be refunded fees if changes in your circumstances reduced the work required to complete your return.
There are various actions on your part that move your tax returns through the process. The first is the signing of the engagement letter (by both spouses if applicable). This is what tells us that you have engaged us to prepare your tax return. It also allows us to file an extension on your behalf should that become necessary. Without that signed document, we cannot prepare your returns.
Completion of the organizer is essential. We have worked hard to make the questions contingent on your responses to other questions so you only have to answer relevant questions, but we do need this information completed.
We have added more notifications in TaxDome to keep you up-to-date on the status of your return. Please check there for the status. If you don’t see any movement after a week, do feel free to call our office.
While we do make every effort to have your taxes completed within three weeks of receiving your complete documentation, there may be situations in which it will be longer. One specific situation is the consideration of other tax deadlines. S-corporations and partnerships have a March 15th deadline for filing. Therefore, we will give those priority in February to ensure the filing deadline is met.
Please ensure you have all your documents uploaded before marking the organizer as complete. It is better to wait until mid-February (or mid-March if you have investments) to ensure there are no last-minute documents. Amended returns can be filed up to three years after the fact, so amendments that are not due to errors on our part are always placed at the end of the queue to ensure timely filing of returns for other clients.
Our preference is that you send any questions through the message function in TaxDome as that provides a good history and is accessible to all staff. tax@marycapulecpa.com is also accessible to all staff and is the preferred email address for questions if you do not use TaxDome. Many administrative questions can be answered by Lucy, Bijay or Theresa and free my time up for technical accounting/tax questions.
Please use the scheduling function on my website www.marycapule.cpa if you wish to meet with me. That is tied to my calendar and shows available times so you can schedule a time convenient for you. I do have some night and weekend hours available for your convenience.
While many of you have embraced the ease and convenience of TaxDome, we do understand that some of you prefer not to use it. If you wish to have us send you the engagement letter and organizer by mail, please let us know. The secure drop box at my front door is always available to receive your hardcopy documents. For security reasons, we will not accept any documents sent via email.
Thank you and we look forward to working with you this year.
Sincerely,
