By Andy Frye

Holy smokes, it’s almost October.  That means it’s almost January.  That means it’s almost tax season.

 Here at Pronto Tax School, in addition to providing you with your yearly CTEC continuing education course, we’re always looking for ways to increase the earning potential of our Members.  With that in mind and with tax season rapidly approaching, we see three big & good opportunities right now for CTEC Tax Preparers. 

If you’re interested in big & good opportunities, and you’re a CTEC tax preparer, keep reading because we have a somewhat long-winded but information-packed blog post to share with you today…

Raise Your Prices

Many CTEC tax preparers are stuck in the 1980s when it comes to their prices. 

Listen, I am not saying this out of judgement, believe me at Pronto we have had so many challenges with our low low pricing it’s not even funny.  The reality is that CTEC tax preparers are on the front lines dealing with an American Taxpayer who typically has little to money in their bank account when they come to see us for their tax preparation, and believe me I am intimately acquainted with that reality, so I’m not saying it’s not reality.

Just look at the recent statistic that 63% of Americans would have trouble coming up with $500 for an emergency.

Yes well tax preparation is the yearly emergency, isn’t it?

And the 63% without that $500 in savings are often the 63% who use CTEC tax preparers as opposed to a high-priced CPA, aren’t they?

And CTEC tax preparers love to help our clients and hate to see our clients in financial distress, wouldn’t you say that’s true?

Well then, I’m starting to see the conundrum here, as to why so many CTEC tax pros are undercharging.

Listen, the major tax prep chains are getting like $300 per client in net fees these days, and their clients aren’t making any more money than yours are.  Meanwhile we see many of our Pronto Tax School Members, even experienced CTEC Tax Pros, struggling to get $120 average client fee.  As the old saying goes, “You can’t get blood out of a stone,” right?

WRONG.

You can use bank products or other alternative payment methods to allow your clients to pay you closer to market rates.

Getting your prices up is the biggest, lowest-hanging fruit opportunity there is for CTEC Tax Pros.  Period!  Everyone else is charging way more and with good reason; the amount of work involved in preparing a tax return now is so much more than it was back when we could do short forms all day for $40 a head.

If your prices are stuck in the 80s or the 90s, you have a great opportunity sitting right in front of your face.  If you need help with getting your prices up, don’t be afraid to call our Business Opportunity Hotline 310-574-2740.  There is a right way to do it where you won’t lose significant clients.

Fire Unprofitable Clients

Closely tying into Opportunity #1 comes Opportunity #2:

Because CTEC Tax Pros often deal with client who are not rich, we end up dealing with some people who…how do we put this…don’t particularly care whether you make a decent living or not, they are just barely getting by in their own financial life, and they may feel like it’s “either me or you who needs to lose here, and I’m going to do everything I can to make sure it’s not me who loses, so if that means you need to lose then so be it.”

Hey, again, no judgement here. 

The good news is, in most cases, this is a small percentage of your clients.

The bad news is, if you don’t take action, this small percentage will continue to negatively affect you this year and beyond.

This tax season, you have the opportunity to help these special individuals “opt out” of using your service. There are different ways to do this without unnecessarily making people angry.  The easiest way is to just raise prices on these clients, respectuflly and calmly listen to them complain about the raised prices, and then ask them directly, “So, do you want to take care of this then?”  And then just let them choose to either pay more or not use your service.  Super simple and super effective and will lead to you either making more money or having less unprofitable clients, or both, all of which are good outcomes.

If you need help “cleansing” your database of clients that aren’t profitable and don’t ever intend to be, feel free to call our Business Opportunity Hotline 310-574-2740.

Ongoing, Massive Consolidation

Last but not least, if you’re in the market for a good opportunity, be on the lookout for a wave of consolidations of tax offices over the next five years.  The aging of the tax and accounting community, along with the way that IRS regulations and technology concerns are making the business more and more complex, will be driving a lot of people out of the business.  You may be considering exiting yourself.

If you want to exit, that’s an opportunity.

If you want to grow your business via someone else’s exist, that’s also an opportunity.

Liberty Tax® is on an acquisition spree and so is HR Block®.  The people at those companies who handle acquisitions are far from dumb, I can assure you.  They know an opportunity when they see one and so can you.

If you’re thinking about selling your tax business, or want to buy one, feel free to call our Business Opportunity Hotline 310-574-2740.  We have people in our network who are interested in both and we can give you a no obligation, unbiased, confidential consultation.  And that reminds me of my last point:

The best opportunity in the world for us independent tax professionals is to be in touch with each other and look out for each other and help each other and that’s why we are so happy we have found a wonderful community of CTEC Tax Pros right here at RenewCTEC.com!