u/EchoesInSky

Since leaving B4 and a large regional firm, I’ve become a partner at a 17 person operation. We are constantly looking for people so we can grow. The amount of work we have to turn down is staggering because we don’t have the capacity.

I’m only 1 year into being at this firm (brought in as a partner by the existing partners I knew for many years), so I don’t want to rock the boat but it’s very easy to understand why no one wants to work at our firm.

In my 14 years of experience it boils down to 3 simple things, pay, workload, and location (office, hybrid, remote). That’s it. Anything else is noise and can’t overcome the core 3. A 10/10 culture will never make up for low pay and in office.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard “we can’t afford what these people want or what they’re currently making”. Not only is that not a good excuse, I’d argue you have to pay even more. Like most small firms we are mostly in the office since our clients are. That means your 1-2 day a week hybrid offer is going to have come with a bigger check. You’re already fighting an uphill battle as anyone who is young and determined is going to want to start their career at a larger firm to learn more. The more experienced people you have to not only beat industry pay, but you’re going to have to offer very high compensation or equity path because why would they work for you when they can do it themselves? Everyone loses their mind when a 8 year experience person wants $170k total compensation and/or outlined path to partnership. To me this isn’t unreasonable at all. But to my peers it’s so offensive they don’t even entertain it for a second. You would think they’re also asking to fuck their spouse that’s how offensive they think it is.

I don’t know if this is because they’ve been drinking the small firms kool aid too long or what. And don’t get me started on workload. Do we work B4 hours? No. But we are damn close to the regional firms I spent many years at. It’s literally a wash. So you can’t even argue a pay discount because you work less. But in my peers minds, they think maybe 100 hours less a year is worth a $20k discount. Why wouldn’t they take it?!

I don’t know what to do. We have some really smart people and a ton of work waiting on the sidelines. We could easily grow 15-20% for the next few years if we got more people. But when I express the elephants in the room, like pay, like in office, like every firm is struggling and we offer worse everything, I’m treated like a crazy drama queen. In my mind there is more than enough money to go around, it’s just changing the mindset that a kid coming out of college isn’t $50k anymore, it’s closer to $70k here in Michigan and resetting expectations that we don’t really offer anything other firms don’t and what we do, is not at a magnitude you think it is to make a difference in a new hires choice to come here.

This topic seems like a common theme on this sub. I wouldn’t be surprised if my managing partner has made posts/rants on this sub about not being able to find staff.

Edit: And before anyone says well the firm has 17 people, they clearly can grow. The firm has been floating around 15 people since 2012. So…….

I’ll start off with saying I don’t have a lot of experience with Ohio returns and Ohio residents, but I find myself in a situation where I’m very confused.

I have a PE company partnership that has an Ohio resident (many actually). They always do PTET where they can.

Let’s say for simple purposes there is $1M of income and only one partner. The company pays through the PTET 3% Ohio tax of $30k. This flows through to the individual and they get a credit for this $30K on their Ohio return AND their federal income is now $970,000.

The problem is to my understanding Ohio gives businesses a free $250k deduction. So that $1M is really $750k taxed at 3%. Against now a $30k credit, the individual gets a $7,500 refund.

Now here is where I’m confused. You got a $30k federal deduction doing this. Shouldn’t you have to pick up the $7.5k the next year? But how? The company took the deduction but the individual got the refund?

I know 7.5k isn’t a lot, but it’s a “free” couple grand federal tax savings because of the mechanics unless you just report it as other income on schedule 1 the following year?

Anyone have any experience with this? I want to make sure I’m not missing anything. Seems like I’m doing something wrong.

We use safe send to deliver the returns, which I believe also sends reminders for estimates.

Beyond that do you email clients reminders that “hey with your return we provided estimates and second quarter is coming up!”?

I’ve been torn about this my whole career. Even when there wasn’t a safe send automated reminder.

I use to do email reminders all the time, but then sometimes I’d forget and clients wouldn’t pay their estimates and try to blame me for not paying. It would also take a lot of time to do, especially if the wanted me to resend all their vouchers for that quarter. It was hard to bill for that. So then I started to walk away from that and made sure the estimate instructions provided with the return said there won’t be reminders, track it yourself.

What’s everyone doing? I’m now at a point where I only remind A clients and/or ones where the dollar amount is massive (6-7 figures).

Weird that I rarely seen him mentioned on this sub, when this sub is full of small firm owners.

I’ll say most of his videos and posts are common sense to me, but every once in a while he will talk about a software or process that I would have never thought of.

Is it a first dose kind of thing or a couple weeks into it?

This has always caused me grief as it’s a 100% crapshoot it seems like.

I’ve never “estimated” right ever as I can never predict what is going to come up.

Most of my experience is leading the tax side (gain calculation / state treatment (apportionment / PTE) / PPA / etc) for large sales anywhere from $100M to in the billions.

I’m now a partner at a much smaller firm where sales are more in the $5M to $25M range. On my larger clients before I would quote let’s say $50k up front as a retainer and then bill the rest hourly if I used it up. Really no issues other than that second bill was always after the sale when they already paid the lawyers 5x what I’m charging and everyone else. So there was always huff and puff with the second later bill.

I’m not sure how to handle this with these smaller clients. They always want a quote or range and I honestly have no idea what to say. It’s so fact dependent and it can change instantly. I’ve had deals where the buyer is supposed to do the PPA and I do it as the seller and they just agree to it in 5 mins. I’ve had others where it’s a back and forth that’s 20 hours long.

Is going with a retainer first and then hourly still the play? I don’t even know what to charge these days to be honest. There really isn’t much difference in a company that sells for $100M and one that sells for $10M besides the number of 0s and the quality of the people you’re working with (counsel / buyer firm / client themselves) assuming state exposure is similar and no foreign. But a $100M sale can stomach a $100k tax bill much easier than a $10M one.

Feels really strange to me because the time spent might even be more on a smaller sale because of the quality of the people I’m working with. The larger sales usually represented by B4 or national firms just never cared about push back because the PE wants the deal done asap. The small clients I’m dealing with the C team of the accounting and legal world. I once had to explain the difference between capital gain rates and ordinary gain rates to a deal lawyer when he wondered why I was so pushy about a PPA……

Thoughts?

Ideally I’d like it to replace my notepad on my desk as I bounce between in the office and working from home and sometimes I forget my notepad in either place.

The problem is, I can’t find a quick way to use the tablet and Samsung notes at all. I’m guessing these are all setting issues in the tablet.

For example, if someone comes into my office to talk it’s a cumbersome process to navigate to the notes app and create a new note and then start writing down what they’re saying. Is there a way to speed this up?

The other issue is in meetings the tablet will time out super quick when on the notes app. I’ve tried adjusting so many settings but it seems as soon as I look away from the tablet, it locks itself. This is a chore compared to just a notepad in a meeting.

I’ll fully admit this probably 99.9% user error. I haven’t used an android device since the original Motorola droid back in 2009.

Can anyone help me or suggest other tips for quick note taking?

I’m about to pull my hair out.

I have a partnership return that’s only activity is outside K-1s from rental properties in various states. Each of these has a state K-1 wherever that property is located.

How do I enter the state K-1? I can’t figure this out for the life of me. In other softwares this was pretty easy, but in UltraTax I don’t get it. I can’t tell what software the prior accountant used, but it looks like he had a similar problem and just made up apportionment numbers to get it to the correct income allocation to that state.

Do you just have to override the hell out of the state?

Would be Q1 - Q3 + YEP.

Each would include a business projection calculation + 1040 implications and a meeting. I’m assuming maybe 30 min meeting for Q1 - Q3 and then 1.5 hours for YEP meeting.

I was thinking $4,000 - $4,500.

I keep reading that Foundayo was rushed to market and there are serious health concerns, but I can’t find anything firm about that.

I see both sides of this argument.

On one side it helps understand the possible fees. On the other side I think it opens the door for scrutiny in billing by the client.

I can’t give a fixed fee for this service as it’s related to maintaining their books and fixed assets. That can vary wildly every month/qtr.

Everyone was freaking out about the 0-60 time pre release.

Is it a big deal? Do you notice poor performance compared to the vehicle you’re coming from?