Review of TurboTax LIVE Full Service Business 2023 for Tax Professionals
For the preservation of our tax preparers and anonymity, we have utilized voice modulation technology during our phone calls with him.
All right, David. I'm so excited because today we are going to try filing our taxes with TurboTax Business.
You're excited, I'm like, we've been putting this off. It's today is what? June 3rd?
It's supposed to be done March 15th.
We are a little late. We'll see if we owe a penalty and maybe we can get that abated with the help of our TurboTax expert.
This journey started last year when TurboTax announced that they were going to start doing business tax returns, which was a huge change.
For years and years and years, TurboTax has only ever done individual taxes.
And now to get into the version of TurboTax, you could buy though, right? You could use.
It was like a desktop version, I think. But I mean, most people, they might do their individual taxes with TurboTax, but for business taxes, that's where you go to a CPA, you go to an EA, you go to a professional tax preparer.
And now into it is getting into the tax prep game for business, competing directly with CPAs and EA's for that business that we really want, which is those returns.
So we thought, let's figure out what this is like. Let's experience what it is like to file taxes as a business, as a client, and share it with our listeners so they can learn and see what it's like.
We're going for a ride. All we've done so far is I went to QuickBooks, I created our cash basis reports.
But other than that, we haven't started anything yet. This would be it. You're on for the ride.
We did reconcile. So we did reconcile and it should be a fairly easy return. I know everyone says that, but it's our first year in business.
It was just a few months of activity. We did reconcile the books. They're in QuickBooks, David. It's all clean, according to you.
And so, yeah, hopefully we'll be able to just knock this one out, right?
Yeah, there's some ad revenue. There's obviously software expenses, some contract labor and merchant fees, and that's kind of it.
And this is an LLC. It is a partnership. You and I are 50, 50 partners in this. It's called earmark media. It's our media production company.
So it's just services, right? It's cash in the bank and we've got some receivables, but we're going to file on a cash basis. So it's really just a PNL.
So this is the full service business website. Let a business tax expert do everything for you start to finish.
$1,500 state additional. I feel like that's maybe what I've paid for my returns before for my business returns, $1,500, $1,700 somewhere in there.
So here's how it's supposed to work. It's perfect for partnerships, S Corp's and multi-member LLCs.
We are going to securely upload our tax docs. Then we are going to get matched and meet with our own business tax expert.
Then we're going to enjoy unlimited expert access and we will review and confirm everything together before they file.
It's going to be backed by an expert approved guarantee. The tax return lifetime guarantee is 100% accurate calculations, maximum refund and audit support.
All guaranteed for the full seven year life of your tax return.
It's interesting that you're getting unlimited access to your prepare.
But obviously nobody's going to know. Okay, there might be somebody who abuses that.
But in general, it's okay to promise those types of things, right?
Right. Because not everybody's going to take advantage of that.
I guess I'll log in with my business address. I'm already logged in here.
Partner with the right business tax expert just by answering a few questions. Find my match control plus.
Just a little bit. There we go. Tell us about your business is the business in LLC. Yes. How's the business set up? We are a partnership.
Where did you do business? We did business in Arizona. What primary function does the business provide? Media production services?
Meet your tax prep assistant. A real human will tell you which docs you'll need and match you with your business tax expert.
Check availability. Schedule an appointment. I guess we can't do anything until we meet with somebody.
Let's find a date, David, when both you and I are available. Hang tight.
We're confirming a few details. Don't refresh this page. We'll call you on Friday, June 9th, 1pm, MST. That's it.
They're calling our cell. I thought this had a video type Zoom experience.
But I guess this is a handoff. This is probably more like a traditional Italian experience and not like a.
Turbo tax live experience. I don't know what this means. It says next steps. I guess I need to share docs.
Okay. See my doc checklist. I need to upload my driver's license or state issued ID.
My last year's tax return. My organizational documents and my financials.
So you want to try? Should we try uploading some of this stuff?
Do we need to upload both IDs for each partner?
I'm going to assume yes. We're going to need that for both of us. But it doesn't say that we need that.
Last year's tax return. We don't have one. It says we can skip this.
And then organizational documents. This would be our Articles of Organization, our operating agreement. We have that and the financials.
Okay. Let's try uploading some stuff. I guess I have to upload one at a time. So I'll do the Articles of Organization first.
Okay. So there's our corporate documents. Organizational documents.
All right. Let's do the financials. Add file. You said you put them.
Now it's asking specifically for financials. They're just saying financials.
They want a profit and loss or income statement and a balance sheet.
Well, I'm going to have to go to my other computer. So give me a second.
All right. I got my notification for the call. That's my text message notification from TurboTax.
Now, here's kind of the insanity of this whole thing. In a way, I'm in QuickBooks.
I run these reports. I download them on my computer. I upload them to the Google Drive for you to go in and download from your Google Drive to re-upload them to TurboTax, which is into it.
It should just have a question to use QuickBooks and then it should just connect and pull the reports itself out of QuickBooks. This is a silly dance we're doing.
Okay. So that's a mark. I would say against this full service product at the moment because I mean not every tax pro will do this.
But I know plenty of tax pros who will say just give me access to your QuickBooks and I'll go in and pull the reports.
And I get it. You might be not using QuickBooks at all. But TurboTax, they even ask for using QuickBooks.
Like this is your opportunity to ask are using QuickBooks. Can we go grab the reports for you? Yes. And that would be a delightful experience.
Okay. So the last thing I have to do is upload my driver license.
Okay. I think that's everything, David. We've uploaded the driver's licenses, the QuickBooks reports, and the
organizational documents. Let's say I'm done for now. Now it's saying to set up a call. We already set up the call.
So I'm hoping that all of this stuff will still be here. But I think that's it for now. That's it for part one of this journey of filing our taxes with TurboTax business.
So that took us about 20 minutes to do that.
Now admittedly, we had most of what we needed already handy. So maybe that would have taken somebody a little longer, especially if they hadn't reconciled their books.
I feel that the instructions are a little vague. I almost feel like I'd upload nothing and have to wait for the phone call first.
And that might be what happens with most people as they get on the phone and they haven't uploaded anything in their tax experience to tell them what to do. That would be normal. But we are extraordinary individuals, David.
So how do you think the rest is going to go? Are we going to go into a TurboTax style interface? Or is this kind of a handoff and we're just going to get a PDF return back?
We'll find out. Stay tuned. See you in about a week. And we'll find out.
He's calling. Hello.
Hi, I'm your TurboTax expert. I'll be preparing your tax return. I'm an enrolled agent and I've been preparing taxes for over 10 years. How are you guys today?
Doing all right. How are you?
It will take you guys have already exploded your profit statement balance sheet and some other information. What type of business do you guys have?
It will take you guys have run podcasts or something to that effect.
We use podcasts from scratch for others. We produce podcasts of our own that we have an advertising model on and then we do some other podcast media related production services.
And it's as you guys this first year in business. Yeah, 2022 was the start of it. Do you have an LLC? So you guys are a partnership? Did you file a form 2553 with the iris to be treated as an escort or you guys operating just as a LLC partnership?
Just an LLC partnership. So what will basically happen is I'll prepare your tax return. It's going to be a 1065 much to help familiar you guys are with the process.
Because you guys are not in an escort. The brackets are not employees over the partnership. You guys are partners.
Therefore any profits that are generated by the partnership is going to be reported on your individual tax return.
The way that's done is I'll prepare the 1065 that's going to report all your income expenses for the partnership.
And it's going to generate either a profit or a loss that profit or loss is going to get divided based on you. You know how you guys have the partnership divided height.
Don't see a partnership agreement. Do you guys have a partnership agreement? No, we do not.
In order to prepare you guys's tax return, we do need a executed so signed and dated partnership agreement.
You should be able to find some templates online. If you are doing this to yourself, if not, I would recommend finding an attorney who can assist you with drafting a partnership agreement.
So we have them because you guys are partners to profit and loss whatever that may be gets reported to you on a K1.
So each partner in the partnership will receive a K1. It's not AW2, but it's similar to AW2 in a sense that it reports to your profit and loss from that partnership.
And then you use that K1 to report it on your personal tax return. You guys already filed your individual tax returns or did you file an extension?
We filed extensions.
Okay, perfect. So we have articles of organization. Is that not sufficient? You have to you have to get our partnership agreement. You want to do this without it?
That's correct. So we keep the partnership agreement for our records because it is because substantiating information for the tax return.
Your tax return will also go through a second review quality review team. So we will actually read your partnership agreement.
And you know, word for word doesn't matter how many pages there are, but we're going to go through the whole thing and we're going to make sure that we're preparing the tax return according to the partnership agreement.
So that's why we have to have it. We can't just rely on, you know, verbal communication.
I'm just kind of surprised that this wasn't in the original document request. We uploaded all our documents. We thought we were ready to file our return today.
And you're telling me now that we have to give you this operating agreement, which we would have prepared if we'd had notice.
Yes, that's right. I'm sorry that it wasn't in the list of documents. I'll make sure to bring that up during our next meeting.
A total taxable service for business is actually brand new this year. So there are a lot of things that we're changing and having on the fly.
Normally, you would be told not during your interviews. This is the process that's probably going to take about a week or so.
I'm going to have to review your balance sheet, your profit statement, make sure your balance sheet balances, make sure that the net income is reflected correctly on the balance sheet.
I'm going to need your bank statements, got your year and bank statements for all the bank accounts that you have listed on the balance sheet to make sure that the year and bank statements match what's on about.
She can make sure that we're fine with that.
So just make a checklist to her.
We need our operating agreement.
We now need bank statements for December 31st.
Anything else that we need?
So I'm going to send you a message.
The chat box is the only way for us to communicate back and forth.
Unless we schedule a call ahead of time during my schedule trip.
And which is I would have to call up to you first in that child.
I just sent you a list of documents that we need.
I don't believe I have your generator. So I need your general letter.
We need the year and bank statements.
And that it looks like you guys don't have any wages on your problem statement.
So I'm not assuming you didn't pay any employees.
So we don't need to see the W3 or the W2.
But you do have on there that you pay contractors.
So we are going to be the 1096 and the 1099 miscellaneous that you or the 1099.
And you see that you guys filed for the contractors.
Can we just invite you to our quick books?
And just let you grab everything.
Unfortunately not at this time.
This is a, again, this is a hurdle that we're hoping to overcome by next taxism.
But as of right now, we are not able to pull documents back and forth from QuickBooks.
If you guys can hear the semi over the over the weekend,
I can still work by your Tafersher and listen on day when I come in the dinam.
We should really do this today.
Well, I appreciate all your help on this call.
Unfortunately, the instructions didn't allow us to be completely prepared as we would have liked.
So we will get to it.
What do you guys connected with the tax threat assistance or not that's time?
No.
So ordinarily, you're supposed to be connected to a tax threat assistance.
And that's where you basically speak to a tax threat assistance.
Where they kind of go over the documents that you need.
Before you get connected to your actual tax expert, you were routed to me directly.
So I'm basically just doing the welcome call and the job of the tax threat assistance with you now
to make sure that you've got all your documents.
So you're not in the wrong place or anything.
You just skipped through.
And it's not your fault.
I think you should a routing issue.
But you skipped through the part where you were supposed to speak to a tax threat assistance first.
And they were supposed to guide you on the documents that you need.
It's not a big deal or anything on me.
I'll be here next Monday.
So as long as you guys have your documents or you can provide your documents to me,
I should have your tax return finished by the end of the week.
I looked at the profit statement and the balance sheet.
And you as are actually in pretty good shape.
So you would be surprised how many clients struck the narrow balance sheet have, you know, negative amount on it.
Like an accounts payable with a negative amount, which you know, that's completely inaccurate.
Or, you know, the year-end bank statements don't match what's on the balance sheet.
So then they have to basically go through and do more bookkeeping because all the transactions haven't been written to help.
So when you're right this case, it just seems like I'm, you know, waiting for the operating limit,
which it sounds like you guys know what you're doing.
I'm going to also share my schedule with you.
So that way you know when I'm available.
Okay.
One little quick disclosure.
I want to give you guys just so you're fully aware.
I do have a baby coming next Friday.
I will be going on leave.
As long as you guys provide me your information by Monday, I don't see any reason why I shouldn't have this tax return done.
With that being said, if for some reason you guys don't get me everything I need and I'm not equals to prepare your tax return on time,
I'm going to do a one transfer to one of my colleagues that I see every single day.
I'll prove them in exactly the, you know, to what's going on through tax returns.
And worst get a scenario.
Another tax expert will file your tax return for you.
But again, as long as you guys have all your docs team by Monday, I don't see a reason I shouldn't have the dumb proof for you next week before I go on leave.
Got it.
Well, thanks for the heads up and congratulations.
Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Thank you.
It was a pleasure thing to know you guys.
If you need to get a call with me, please send me a message through the chat box.
One other question.
Actually before you're done.
We're late filing a return.
Right.
This is due March 15th, I think.
That is correct.
You are late because you guys found an extension for the partnership.
No, we did not.
Unfortunately, it's too late to file an extension at this point.
What's going to happen is you're going to receive a $200 penalty for each partner for each month that the tax return was way because it's your first year in business.
The penalty order is going to come to the partnership to the address that's on file for the partnership.
How it's going to be an assessment.
There's going to be a number on the highest letter because it's your first time.
You're going to be able to call the artist and house for a first time penalty statement.
And most of the time they granted it doesn't require any extra effort.
You're usually able to do it right over the phone with the artist agent.
So long it is the first time that you're filing late.
And is that something that you or TurboTax helps with?
Unfortunately, no.
We're not able to discuss the tax return with anyone outside of you.
And the iris will not discuss your tax return with anyone unless they have power but journey.
At this time with TurboTax, we do not offer tax resolution.
So we would not be able to get a power but journey from you in order to correspond with the iris on your behalf.
So long as your partnership is an otherwise good standing and you don't have any other penalties or feed off standing with the iris, they will typically grant the first time penalty statement.
All right.
Thank you.
Hi guys.
You're welcome. I'll talk to you on Monday.
All right. Bye.
I'm Joe Tufat for Sir Howard, Greater Suridale. I'll talk to you too.
Tell us that you need an operating agreement and we'll have one for you.
Or a great statement.
Could we take time to upload all these things and we could have just had our reduction order for today's phone call?
Yeah, we thought we were ready. We thought we were going to file and we were going to be done. You know, what the heck?
And apparently it sounds like from interactions with who is our tax repair. There should have been another onboarding call maybe.
Yeah.
There was supposed to be an assistant who got on with us and told us everything we needed and that didn't happen.
And then the other part that caught me off guard, I guess, is like two things I thought were really strange.
We can't invite him to our quick books.
And then the other thing, he's an EA, but he can't represent us to the IRS.
He said they don't do tax resolution. It's not that he can't. He can. It's just it's not part of the package.
Well, yeah, he can't because of the way to protect live assisted is structured per se.
Same thing with connecting the quick books. This is this is a policy.
So we're spending what's going to cost us 1700 bucks?
1500, I think.
So if I was using is an EA outside of this for 15 or bucks representation.
Would that be kind of included?
Which would go.
I mean, my guess is that most CPAs or EAs or taxpayers in general wouldn't charge extra to do this.
First time penalty abatement thing.
I mean, maybe they would, but I feel like my gut is saying they probably would just say,
Okay, I'll we'll do that for you.
Well, in theory, they get a special line to call into and it'd be faster than us calling it.
Right.
So so two strikes against turbo attacks business already.
Strike one is they didn't have a list of all the documents we needed.
So we weren't ready.
And number two is they're not going to help us resolve this very minor.
Late filing abatement thing.
And then resolving it for us would be a real wow experience.
I'm trying to put myself like, okay, it's our first return or our first business.
Especially for your first business, right?
Yeah.
I mean, we're all about customer experience, David, right?
So those were two negative customer experiences that we just had.
So some of the simple things like the need in the bank statements in the 1099s and the 1096.
So I mean, I could have done all those when we could have uploaded those last week.
Yeah.
The bank statements we have, the 1099s we did.
The only thing we don't have is the operating agreement.
And that's just because we're lazy.
But I haven't been asked.
I've never been asked by my tax repair for an operating agreement.
That's not something that I expected.
I wonder if that's just a CYA kind of thing.
That's that.
Well, I think it's more, I think it's maybe new your customer.
Historically, people have exploited turbo attacks to commit lots of fraud.
Here's the big accounts for social security numbers, things like that.
And maybe this is a, this is really a, I know your customer situation.
Could be.
They want to, they don't want to be fine.
That's the last probability to attack live needs, right?
Oh, by the way, they filed a bunch of fraudulent returns because people uploaded a bunch of fake
docs, some of the responses were a little scripted per se.
And they felt like calling it a tech support agent where they can only say certain things.
So I was thinking though, we should use CHI GPT and we could have that right or operating agreement.
And this gives me an opportunity to try it to really test out this prompt creator prompt that I've been using.
And that pop creator prompt in theory, the way I understand it, it should ask his questions like,
well, who are the partners?
Right.
It should get in that situation.
Yeah, hopefully, right?
Okay.
What should the prompt be about?
I need to create a simple partnership agreement for my LLC.
I have one partner.
There are two partners with 50% each.
The partners are like Oliver and David Leary.
The entity is earmarked media LLC.
Let's see what happens.
All right.
So we just, do we just want to say like, like, let's go for it?
All right.
Let's just, let's just execute the prompt.
I love how it has its own legal disclaimer.
It puts in first.
Should we try submitting this to TurboTax?
No, that's why it's home tension.
Like it gives, what do we need?
So you need to see that it's 50%.
They need to see that we have your declared as the tax person.
I love number five.
It's awesome.
All decisions shall be made by the partners.
All unresolvable disagreements will be resolved by a simple coin toss with significant issues
being resolved by using CHI GPT to decide the best course of action.
You know, this is like, I mean, I'm kind of impressed.
It's close enough.
Should we submit it and see what happens?
Yeah, I think it's good to go.
And then you'll put it in DocuScience, I can sign it.
Yeah, I'll put it into a, I'll put it into a Google Doc.
I mean, it's better than having nothing, but...
Well, my, I want to see what happens just to many like this without us checking it.
Let's see if they say anything.
Yeah.
All right.
All right.
Well, you take a look at the 1099 stuff.
I'll 1099 in this.
And I'll do this.
And you finish up this and we get them uploaded up.
If we can get all that to him tonight, then maybe we'll have another interaction.
Maybe in the chat.
Well, it might just be via the chat.
Yeah, he might just say we're good to go.
Yeah.
And it would be great if he could do our taxes.
But now we have a real deadline, too, because if you noticed on our call with him,
if you guys were paying attention on our call, he's last day is going to be Friday
because he's going to have a baby.
Yeah.
So we really have a different deadline now, because I don't want to start over with another...
Like, that's the problem, right?
You don't want to start over with another prepare.
That's right.
The experience we just had with him, of him telling us what documents we still need
and all these reasons, why?
Yeah.
That could have just been chat GPT.
I'm really thinking about it.
Yeah, it could have looked at what we'd submitted.
And then it could have said, okay, there's no operating agreement here.
There's no bank statements here.
And it could have sent us that information and explained why.
Yeah, there's nothing...
Because I think it was given us a lot of canned answers,
which could have just been done through a chat GPT tape tool.
Yeah, exactly.
Yeah.
Yeah.
The organizer is going away.
It's just going to be this dance.
And that's actually better, because then he doesn't have to come in until it's time to do the return.
Yeah.
Once everything's there.
I got a call from...
We're almost there.
He needs our social security numbers.
And then the other thing he wanted to know is if we had any startup costs.
Basically, I just told him, like, we did our own legal stuff.
We did our own accounting stuff.
We didn't have startup costs in that respect.
Okay.
But he needs me to write...
That's a great question.
I'm glad he asked that.
He needs me to write a letter to that effect.
And I found out that the reason that he wants all of this is because after our return is prepped,
it's going to go to a quality control team that will then review everything he's done
and look at all the documents to make sure it matches.
He needs that in there too, because they're going to flag it as not having startup costs
if he doesn't have that letter.
So if I get him that letter and all that information,
you can prep it today or finish it today, quality control will review it tomorrow,
which is Wednesday.
And then on Thursday, we can have the meeting with him to review it and hopefully file it.
But then I guess there's an e-signing...
They do a docu-signing.
I think we're almost there.
He called you.
Did he like chat with you first?
Can we talk on the phone?
Or was it...
He just called you blindly?
How'd that work?
No, he just called me and then it came up as a QuickBooks number.
So I may have had it...
It came up as QuickBooks support.
So I guess I've had it saved in my phone forever, probably.
I think all the incoming calls or the outbound calls come from that number.
So I was happy that it called to make sure that we could still stay on track
because obviously he's going on leave, so he wants to get this wrapped up.
We're showing that we're responses to...
He's being more responsive as well, right?
He said, hey, we'll upload those today.
We uploaded them immediately that same day.
Right?
We should on it.
And we're getting rewarded with...
And being responsive, hopefully.
I'll keep you posted.
Beautiful.
We're expecting a call very shortly from our TurboTax expert.
In between the last time we recorded and this call,
I got a message from...
Who said, hello, Blake, I hope you're well.
Are you able to upload your reconciliation statements for your two bank accounts, please?
So another case of something that could have been asked for originally.
Oh, because I uploaded the bank statements.
And now he wants the reconciliation reports from QuickBooks.
So I uploaded those.
And then he said, you have one unclear transaction totaling $10 in the account
ending in $17.39.
Could you reconcile it and re-upload the report?
And I am not doing that for $10.
So I'm going to ask him when we get on the call
if we can just adjust that in 2023 instead of re-reconciling.
Yeah, $10.
I suspect it's a emergency service fee for an ACH deposit through QuickBooks.
Something like that, yeah.
So assuming that $10 doesn't derail our tax return, we should be good to go.
And this is where I think if you have,
when I've had an account and do things before,
they'll just journal on through that out.
And I didn't ask me about it.
How have you felt about this whole process so far, David?
It hasn't been very painful, but I also feel like it's about as simple as it's going to get.
Right?
You think, now imagine doing this on a personal return with lots of complications,
rental houses, and you sold stock, you do this.
I don't know how you do this process like that.
Yeah.
But I think art, for what we had, it was fairly simple.
And it's still had a lot of hoop jumping, though.
One thing about this document portal is like they don't have folders.
So if you have a lot of documents to upload, you really got to have a naming convention.
It can get complicated.
AI should be figuring out these documents, renaming them.
I think it up there.
Well, I noticed that they have been renamed.
I don't know who's doing that, but they have been renamed.
Oh, they have.
Mm-hmm.
Interesting.
And I think the bigger experience is why are we doing phone calls, like no Zoom call,
or even that tool into it has for these calls?
Well, I think in the assisted product, it is inside.
Because I've done TurboTax assisted for my personal return.
And the call was inside of the app.
Inside the app.
They don't have that capability yet for the full service.
Oh, here we go.
Hello.
This is from TurboTax.
Hi.
Hi.
I'm going to give you a quick update because our meeting today at noon was conditional upon your tap term being a project through quality review team.
And at the moment, they were having an issue with missing bank reconciliation report.
So I've got that uploaded.
And then you know, the $10 is not a big deal.
I agree with you.
So I'm just pushing for them to let this go.
You know, it's $10 to being in this amount.
We don't have to worry about it.
So I'm going to hear back from to our key.
But at this point, the tax trend is not in service final because they have not gone through review because they were missing those reconciliation report.
So if you wouldn't mind giving me a couple of more hours to get this taking care of and see if we can get the square to wait.
And the meantime, is there any way if it will then show you get that $10.
Reckons out.
So if they are pushing to have that.
How do the amounts match?
You'd be able to call them.
It's $10.
It doesn't matter.
Let's just push it through.
We can make the adjustment in 2023.
It's immaterial.
Oh, I'm going to do the best I can to get this to go through.
So I'm working on it right now.
Yeah, also, we didn't know that we needed to upload those reconciliation reports.
You're right.
Yeah, this isn't you think that they're doing.
It wasn't a part of the documents that you were supposed to put originally.
So this isn't you think that they want to see now.
So it cut and cut me off hard as well.
Hopefully that's okay for the charity team.
That's the one.
It reconciled.
Unfortunately, there's nothing I can do about it.
I'm not able to follow touch the trend until it's proved.
All right.
Well, $10.
So you're hoping it's not an issue.
If we if we change the bank rack.
Right.
If we like delete that $10 transaction or whatever.
We're going to have to re upload all the reports.
We're going to export everything again.
So it ties out.
Like I said, it would.
Potentially.
I actually said it in send down.
That's right.
Yeah, you're right.
Potentially you'd have to re upload your proper statement.
Balance sheet.
The whole mind.
Yeah.
So like I said, I'm hoping the bill just, you know, but this slide.
Since it's only $10.
It's not a big deal.
And I haven't heard back from them.
They review multiple tax returns.
So I haven't heard back from my reviewer.
But I will let you know it's no they do.
I also want to get this, you know, followed and done with today.
My last day here before I go on family tomorrow.
So if I don't I'm not able to follow this touch return today.
Then you're going to have to be resigned to another tax expert.
It was going to have to review the tax return with you.
And I really don't want that to happen because we've already known
so far in this process.
So yeah, yeah, neither do I.
Okay.
So it's noon right now.
Can I give you an update in two hours?
I'll either message you or I'll give you a call to see what the
decision is.
You know, there's nothing more that I would up to do than just get this
tax return done.
I mean, it's the first year tax return fairly straightforward.
But you guys don't have well, you know, a ton of things going on.
So it should be a no brainer, basically, my opinion.
Is it possible for him to send us a draft version of this for us to review
even before he's finished just so that it saves us more time?
No, not until it's been approved.
Once it's been approved, then I can upload the draft copy.
So you're able to review it.
But we're able to upload the draft copy until it's approved as complete.
Okay.
All right.
Well, we will look forward to your call or your update.
I'll give you a call to no matter what.
Just a bit.
You see what's going on.
Thanks.
You're welcome.
Five week.
I find it odd that you can't get a draft until it's approved.
Like you see, and the way it feels like the approved, that's like this big
of review process, which means basically it's going to be done.
And you're going to read.
We're going to get a draft of the final one.
And that points not really draft.
Well, it's a draft until they file it, I guess.
Hopefully we can get this done today before.
Here goes on leave.
He's going to call it or today.
I was going to try to adjust my workout schedule around his call.
But there's no earlier classes.
I got to say, as we are nearing the finish line, my expectation was that into it
would do a better job in terms of document collection.
And that sort of thing.
I didn't think it would take this much back and forth to get everything we needed
over to the team to do the tax return.
So that's a bit disappointing.
So would you say this feels like a normal accounting firm experience?
I mean, I wouldn't say this is great, but I wouldn't say it's bad.
I would just say it's sort of maybe in the middle somewhere.
But we haven't had a ton of different accounting firm experiences, you and I.
So we don't really know.
I'm curious what our viewers will think.
I mean, I've now done four, five different firm experiences
to get either business or personal taxes done.
How does this feel to you?
It's a little bit of more work than I would have liked.
So I did use back in the day tax planner pro.
Basically, you connect that app to your QuickBooks Online.
And if your QuickBooks Online was clean, I just got to return to sign.
He did the whole business return without actually talking to me.
Wow.
That sounds nice, actually.
The problem is, as a business model, it was really hard to work because
very rarely is somebody like you or me have a very clean QuickBooks data file.
Right.
So that was the struggle.
Right.
And this goes to like if you're going to offer a service like that, you have to own the bookkeeping.
If you want efficient taxes, you have to own the bookkeeping.
But it was it was amazing.
And we'll cost me three and 50 bucks.
Yeah.
Connect the QuickBooks data.
He pulls what he needs out of QuickBooks.
You don't have to invite them doing that like invite my accountant game or any of that.
You just through the API.
So you read the QuickBooks data he needs.
It moves on.
Mm-hmm.
Which I didn't upload anything.
Maybe a photo ID.
That was it.
I don't even know if I did that.
Even.
So.
Well, we'll be back.
Hopefully with the final portion of this episode today.
How are you doing?
Hey, Blake, I'm doing well.
I just want to give you a quick call that you know that I've got your tax return back.
It's ready to be filed and reviewed.
So I'm just going to go and upload the draft copy for you guys.
See if you wanted some time to get David on the phone.
I'm going to try to dial him in.
Please leave your message for him.
David Leary.
I could not get through to David.
So it'll just be you and me.
Okay.
No problem.
Are you signed in to your triple tax account?
And are you able to see the document that I just uploaded Wavel 2022 1065 review copy?
All right.
I'm logged in.
I'm going to the Documents tab.
And I see review copy.
There we go.
It should open up for you in a set track window.
It's a PDF.
The very first page that you see is an 80 10.
The nine.
This is the EBA authorization form.
The second page is the 1065.
So that is the actual partnership for children.
It's the first page of the tax return.
You guys are using the cash accounting method.
There are two partners total.
So you're you're measuring the issuing to K one.
That's the item on line.
I write on the information.
Your right is gross income for the year was.
You can see that you have other deductions on mine 20.
There it is.
A statement it passed further on in the class return.
That statement just basically outlines what those expenses were for.
You had some advertising expenses.
I will get them contract labor and some other things.
Small schools office supplies.
So all that will give us the doubt.
When we subtract 50 to be from 40 or left with.
$687.
The phone pages are just the basic information for the partnership.
Most of the stuff will not pertain to you as you're aware.
When we go further down, we've got your schedule K.
That's going to be on page five of the PDF.
And that's going to just basically show the items from the schedule K.
They're getting stood up onto the K one.
So everything that you see here is going to get divided by half to percent.
And you as our teacher receive your own day one,
which will file with your personal tax return.
So the next step now is for you to go through the checkout process.
When you go through the checkout process,
it's going to ask you to pay for the software.
And that is going to ask you to review and sign the tax return.
There's a does not allow us to do that digitally.
So you will have to print out that actual form.
So just sign and date it and please upload it back to me.
I urge you to please get it done before the end of the day.
The reason why is once you sign,
I also have to counter sign the tax return.
Once I counter sign it, then I have to file it.
And once it's evolved, it's going to be pending for about a day or so.
So if you can sign at the very least today,
that way I can hit file at that point.
You know, there shouldn't be any issues.
And you should just get a full text full of message from another expert letting you know
that everything has been approved and you're good to go.
Okay, I will right after this call,
I will do all that the signing.
Awesome. Thank you very much, Blake.
I appreciate it. Okay.
So I just forwarded over to you to be able to review and sign.
It may take a couple of minutes for to refresh on your end.
You might have to actually quit the refresh button as well.
And then it should give you an option to proceed to check out.
So let me know if that's happening.
It's working.
It's working. Okay, perfect.
There will also be a short survey movie.
It's only five questions on it takes less than 30 seconds.
If you wouldn't mind going through the survey and answering the question.
The survey specifically based on your satisfaction with my service.
There's also a comment section where you can leave any comments or concerns might have.
So if you have any feedback, whether it's other or negative, please take the time to read it.
So that way, you know, you'll have a smoother and faster.
Did you have any questions or concerns?
I just want to say thank you for all your effort in getting this done before you left.
We really appreciate it.
Yeah, you guys are both very welcome.
Tell David I said hello and I look forward to working with you guys.
I sure to come back.
All right, sounds good.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Have a great day.
Thank you for being a true tax life customer.
Bye.
So we paid for the return and now we are going to try to eFile.
Okay, confirm my identity.
All right, I'm signing my return.
10 out of 10.
Okay, I need to download Arizona and then I have to sign that.
I'll be right back.
All right, I have printed the Arizona eFile signature authorization form.
I am now signing it.
I've uploaded the Arizona filing form.
So now we're just waiting for turbo tax to file and hopefully we're done.
So I've got good news, David.
I see that on the street.
Our federal return for 2022 was accepted as was our Arizona partnership return.
So three weeks, I think we did on Friday.
Two weeks later, we had our meeting and then we've done this Friday.
I'm pretty happy without this went overall.
I wish you could have been on the calls with me yesterday when we were finalizing this thing.
$10 thing, we got over that hurdle.
That got taken care of quality control.
Didn't hold up our return because of a $10 unreconciled item or reconciling item.
What I really liked about the experience yesterday was that our agent
who was going to go on paternity leave on Friday.
On Thursday worked really hard to push through the return and called me multiple times,
worked through issues and got it filed.
Got it eFiled so that he didn't have to hand it off to somebody else and leave us.
And the initiative, I was really impressed with that for a service that is presented like a product like this.
The personal attention and commitment to get it done was there.
And it made me think that this is why people work with a particular tax preparer.
Ultimately, the tech is much less important than knowing that somebody is there for you
that they're not going to leave you hanging.
And so, if you asked me, David, would I do this again?
I would say, yeah, actually, I would do this again.
Yeah, it wasn't super painful.
It'd been nice if we had all the requirements up front and as people rewind this video
and watch these other parts, it was like this.
Oh, you need some more.
You need some more.
You need some more because you and I could have been capable of getting it all on day one.
But you're right.
Like, having the uploading wasn't a big deal, right?
Uploading the docs.
I mean, the portal worked.
I was even able to upload docs on my phone through a web browser, which I had to do,
because I messed up.
And when we upload, because you were actually doing the uploads,
because I've had this experience with other taxed product, taxed portals,
where if I upload a doc, I get to say what kind of doc it is,
put it in a special folder, bucket, or what form it goes to,
like, you just uploaded to one spot.
Yeah.
You just uploaded.
You don't have to name it.
You just uploaded it and only thinking.
So I was able to upload the corrected document or the correct document.
And I just put it in there and then messaged my preparer and he said,
okay, I got it.
We're good.
And he filed.
And so now we're looking at this final form.
So by the way, I was able to do the whole checkout experience.
So I put in credit card number for our company and I paid for it.
And you can't go past anything until you pay, which, you know,
good lesson for accountants is collect for you.
Don't file the return.
Don't even deliver a draft until you get paid.
And now we have this nice screen here that shows our status.
And we can download the return.
We can amend.
I guess there's an option here to amend.
I wonder how that works.
The men can find the tax dollars and we have to read everything.
I can view the e-file details.
We've got all the tracking here.
I can download or print the return.
I can download the .tax file.
I guess that's if you're using their desktop version.
That must be like.
We could open up with the TurboTax product and view that way.
I guess so.
Or hand it off for another accountant, right?
Yeah.
It's nice actually that you're not like locked in.
Well, and I got an email afterward about their audit defense product, which is part of this.
One of the benefits of using a service like TurboTax is that you get audit defense.
So in the event that we are audited, a TurboTax qualified tax professional
will represent us and defend us through the entire audit process.
If we receive a notice from the IRS or a state taxing agency,
we have a phone number to call.
We should not contact the IRS or state unless instructed by a tax audit team member.
Maybe we should use our back channel connections, the IRS to get us audited.
So we can pass this part of the TurboTax service as well.
I don't know if I'm not committed to this experiment, David.
All in all, David, I didn't ask you this.
You know, I said I would do this again.
I would use them again.
Would you?
Or would you rather work with a independent tax professional or a firm?
I think if I stack this up like versus other experience I've had,
it's maybe similar, equal if not better.
I don't think it was worse.
Like this is a competitive offering because I think the stereotype online
is well, you're just going to have shitty prepares with TurboTax live.
Good luck with your return.
I don't think our EA was not capable.
Anyway, I never got that vibe at all.
Anyway, we had a very simple return.
Even he, I believe, said that.
So we didn't really get to test all of the capabilities.
I would say yes, it was worth it.
I think it was the extra effort.
Like the personal effort that really made me happy with this.
I think more wow would have been the connection to QuickBooks.
Yeah, we should have been able to.
I did all this work that he could have just gone to QuickBooks and done.
Yeah.
And pulled the data, right?
Printing reports, which he's probably scanning to import into
TurboTax Pro Connect, right?
Mapping it in.
Yeah.
And I think that, if you take that work off our plate for the same price,
that's pretty amazing.
Now, so you can offer a service like this as a tax pro right now,
if you're independent or if you're a firm.
I mean, this should be the minimum, I think, is you should have a place
where your clients can easily send you documents securely
on their computer or on their mobile phone because it worked on both.
You should have a way for them to chat with you securely
on their desktop or mobile phone.
Actually, on that note, the one thing I didn't like was that
whenever my tax pro sent me a message, all I got was an email saying
that there's a message waiting for you.
Click here to view it.
So then I had to go log in.
That was annoying and I kept getting logged out.
So I kept having to log in.
I wish there was a better way to do that securely
without me having to constantly log in to see the message.
You know, if there was like an actual mobile app, then you could have
like the notification where I don't have to do that.
Could tax pros exploit this?
I mean, I guess we're an exploit simply the right word,
but I could have a store in Amazon,
not own any physical product.
Amazon dropship everything.
It lives in Amazon's warehouses.
I only pay for the goods I sell.
I'm kind of building on their platform,
but I don't really have a real store.
I'm just taking advantage of Amazon stuff.
Could somebody use this as part of their service?
Where once I get all the docs,
I could just upload them here, have the return done.
Could you use this under the covers,
behind the scenes and your clients would never know?
There are services like that.
I was talking with Will Lopez.
He sold his firm, but he used to do that.
For the end, he would just basically outsource everything
through an app.
I think it was called like tax file or something.
I don't remember.
But he would basically just do what you're talking about.
And they partnered with account
and you could just basically put everything into that portal
and be the client's point of contact.
And then they'd do the return and everything.
Either way, whether or not you're doing it yourself
or whether or not you're outsourcing it,
this is the experience, the minimum experience
that I would say you need to offer as a firm.
Online portal, mobile chat,
and ability to pay with a credit card.
An ability for me to log in and see all my returns
and download them at any time and see the status.
Or at least get status updates of the filing.
So I know exactly what's happening.
Now, did you have to do any like,
e-signing with him to give him to file it or any of that dance?
Yeah, so the federal return I was able to e-sign with DocuSign.
Okay.
And the only reason we couldn't do all of it e-sign
was Arizona's loss.
Require a wet signature.
Congratulations.
We got our first ever partnership return done.
I would say this is a pretty good result for into it.
You know, I'm giving them four out of five stars here.
This is their first year doing it, I think.
It's very new.
So they've got a lot of room for improvement
and if you're a tax payer who's watching this
and you're a little fearful, I mean, yeah,
you should be a little fearful.
Like, this is the experience people are going to come to expect.
But as we have seen in this video,
there's a lot of room for improvement
and we can offer even more personalized experiences
and we can do the same thing.
A lot of it's communication.
Yeah.
That was the vast majority of our frustration along the way.
Yeah.
Black communication.
I've been telling that before.
Now we just can phone well.
Now, oh, now you need this.
Why don't you say that last time we just talked the other day.
I'd say, yeah, it's definitely four star, not five star.
This room for improvement, right?
But I think, so it's going to be one then.
What did you think was going to happen?
Do you think this was going to be a nightmare?
I didn't think it would be a nightmare
because I know into it would have quality control in place
to ensure that they don't have incredible liability
from putting out a bunch of incorrect tax returns.
I guess based on my turbo tax experience,
I was expecting high quality.
I got that.
I think I got what I expected.
For the money.
For the money, yeah.
The assisted is half the price, which is like to pay $800 or so
for a business return and do it assisted would be great.
I can't wait until we get to try that.
Hopefully we can try that next year.
Because that was one surprise to me.
It's like, we really didn't do anything on this.
Yeah, we didn't touch the forms, right?
We didn't know work.
Yeah, we didn't do any like filling out forms
or like doing anything or anything.
Yeah.
I think it was a good value for the money.
Well, I think the other value is because we didn't do it.
It actually got done.
That's true.
And we had somebody helping push us to do it.
Exactly.
Yeah, that helped a lot actually to get it done.
Looking forward to doing this again with you next year, David.
Beautiful.