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I've seen some people in the comments section acts a few times hey Sean how do I find the right tax accountant for me and oftentimes as I'm onboarding new clients they would tell me that hey I'm using the tax guide that my friend recommended or hey I'm using the one that my family has always used but they never really thought about is this the best accountant for me and I find that interesting because as a tax accountant and a tax strategist myself I can tell you very very quickly if a tax professional was good or if they're great at what they do because sometimes it takes one to know one right for example I used to think that any Doctor Who went to school and earned a doctorate degree must be qualified enough to talk to me about my health and it took another doctor to tell me that hey there are some good doctors out there and then there's some bad doctors out there and you can tell by the type of medicine they practice and the tools they use and so on and so today what I want to do in this video is help you identify what makes a great tax accountant so I'm going to go over the difference between a tax preparer and a tax strategist what questions you should consider asking before you work with any accountant and what to expect in terms of pricing so if all that sounds good to you then all Iraq is that you hit the like button for the YouTube algorithm that way other small business owners like you can find this video alright as always I'm gonna have time stamps down in the description below so feel free to skip ahead if you need to but I think you will find watching this entire video incredibly valuable all right let's go ahead and dive in with number one what Most accountants do so let me give you some context of education so you know how to choose the right accountant so in general you learn how to do accounting by going to college or university and what we are taught there are the technicalities that go into good accounting best practices this will be stuff like creating and analyzing financial statements how to properly categorize transactions and journal entries business law and ethics and overall how to be compliant with the government or the IRS and usually if an accountant decides to pursue higher education such as a master degree or a CPA license then they would go even deeper on these same topics and so a lot of education is geared toward how to be an accountant inside of a corporation but not a small business which makes sense because College is very expensive and graduates want to get paid a great salary after they graduate which big corporations can usually afford to offer but a portion of these accountants whether it's after they graduate or after they work in a corporation for a few years decide that hey I want to go out there and start my own accounting firm and so then they start working with a few new entrepreneurs and small business owners like maybe you and so a lot of accountants focus on hey give me your p l give me your tax forms and let me prepare your tax return which is great everyone needs that every small business owner should be filing their taxes on time and accurately but the problem is Most accountants think their job is done after that all right Sean your tax return is prepared I'll see you next year but that's just tax preparation right and that's exactly what Most accountants focus on that's the compliance piece that's what we're taught in school but what about tech strategy because there are things that you should be doing throughout the tax year to properly prepare for your next tax season so you are paying fewer taxes for example you could be looking at ways to maximize deductions or change up your legal entity structure or different retirement strategies Insurance strategies illegal tax loopholes and so on which is why when I'm talking to people about working with us they say stuff to me like man I have to tell my accountant about the Tax Strategies I'm learning on this YouTube channel or man my accountant didn't even know about this tax loophole or my personal favorite I only hear from my accountant during tax season and so that's something that you should know as you select who you are going to work with which by the way if you need help with tax planning or tax preparation and you're looking for a good team then we may be able to help go ahead and click the first link down in the description below to learn more about how you can work directly with our team alright let's move on to the second part of this video with number two what questions to ask your potential accountant so if you are in a position to book a discovery call with an accounting firm which by the way sometimes that can be difficult especially during tax season because every accountant is busy during tax season and that they're not then that's probably a red flag as well like every tax season so far unfortunately we've had to stop accepting new clients simply because we reach full capacity anyway if you are lucky enough to book a discovery call then here are some questions I want you to consider asking number one directly ask do you offer tax planning all right not tax preparation but tax planning and if their answer is they wait until tax season to help you save on taxes then that's a red flag because either a that accountant doesn't know what they're doing or B and even worse they are not doing things legally and can land you in big trouble with the IRS in fact let me tell you you one quick story so for years my dad and I worked in an office Park doing tax returns and one tax season a new accountant had moved into that office part and so his firm was getting tons and tons of new clients and my dad and I were like man what kind of marketing is this guy doing to get so many new clients Well turns out he was getting his clients huge tax refunds and word got around town fast but guess what he was doing some very shady and illegal things and fast forward six months later after tax season had ended he left an office Park and we never saw him again and for that next year or so we had tons of his past clients knocking on our door asking hey have you seen so-and-so I have I have this letter from the IRS he really messed me up and now I have this penalties I have these interests and I can't find him anywhere and of course we didn't know where he went either so we ended up having to work with a lot of his past clients trying to solve this huge mess that he created so I'll always tell people to work with a good ethical accountant because if you don't it's going to cause you more headache more inconvenience and more money in the long term alright sorry about that quick Side Story let's get back on track so ask them if they do offer tax planning if they say no don't expect any proactiveness from them okay they don't do tax planning you're just going to do your taxes and push you off if they say yes then challenge it a little bit with question number two and ask directly how much tax savings do you see on average for your clients and you want to hear a solid confident number okay you don't want to hear well it depends or I have to look into that and get back to you no like for us I can tell you pretty quickly that on average our clients are saving somewhere between 15 to 20 000 in additional tax payments now the next question if you're feeling really challenging is ask them question number three what is the most amount of tax savings they found for one client that might give you an idea of what level of skill they have when it comes to tax planning okay question number four would be do you work year-round you may be surprised to find out that many accountants only work during tax season which typically is from January till about the beginning of May and this could potentially be why it takes your accountant so long to get back to you during the off season even local tax franchises start to close around junis so that's very important for you to know up front now what are some bad questions to ask right well you don't want to ask a very technical question on a discovery call like should I be an S corporation because that requires more information and more research on you right because in some cases you should in some cases you shouldn't it really does depend there are many factors that go into making any tax recommendation which is why it's something you should work with someone one-on-one on who totally understands your business business and your personal financial situation now another question many people may ask is are you a CPA which is a fine question but that doesn't give you enough insight into how they work and if they can strategize with you like I said in the intro just because someone is a doctor doesn't mean they are the right doctor for you and the last question I don't think is super helpful for you to ask is are you local because the federal tax code is where you pay most of your taxes and generally the state follows the federal and these days workers remote in a great Tax Strategies can help you anywhere if you're in the United States all right so those are some questions to think about asking and maybe some to steer away from if you have some on your list that I didn't touch on make sure you tell me down in the comment section below what question you think is very important you ask a tax accountant before you work with them all right let's go ahead and move on to the third part of this video with number three what to expect with pricing so when you find a good good tax accountant what should you expect to pay let's go ahead and start off with tax preparation so when you are individual and you're just filing a 10 40 return Then typically you're going to pay somewhere in the ballpark of 300 to 1 000 and that one thousand dollar upper limit is really reserved for people who have a lot of things going on like some rental property maybe some stocks some crypto and so on now when you are filing a business tax return the price really starts to shoot up somewhere between one thousand to thirty five hundred dollars which really depends on if you are a single member loc an S corp or C Corp if you have any other Partnerships and so on so that's tax preparation on the tax planning side of things ing to a survey from Intuit tax planning can cost five times more than tax preparation so on the super low end it costs about twenty five hundred dollars and on average I think it costs about five thousand dollars and on a high end I mean some people will try charge you one percent of your total revenue which means if you're making one million dollars or more then you should expect to pay ten thousand dollars in upwork now you may be thinking to yourself man I don't know Sean I don't think I need any tax planning well I want you to consider this okay many small business owners overpaying taxes simply because they don't know how to leverage the tax code like the rich and the wealthy do think about former president Trump for example and how he almost paid nothing in taxes but we know he makes millions of dollars so yes tax planning May cost five thousand dollars but what if you save ten thousand twenty five fifty thousand dollars in additional tax payments what would that mean for you okay usually that means a positive return on investment so this is something where I don't want you to just think about the cost but also think about your returns all right and lastly when it comes to ongoing tax consultation or tax advisory on average that's about 175 dollars per hour but for really experienced tax strategists like myself my rate starts at 500 an hour and more experience means more money alright so I hope that video was great I'm a bit sick so I know my words sound a bit muffled please forgive me on that and I hope you could tolerate some of my Shameless plugs coming up next I have two more videos you may enjoy as well so check those out if you haven't already and I'll see you over there