Where did January and February go?
Also, I found a racist
Wow I’ve not updated here. January was a month, and February is just about over. For that, I’m incredibly thankful.
It likely comes as no surprise that I try to stay somewhat active and involved within my communities. That includes maintaining memberships in professional organizations. Like the Oregon Association of Tax Consultants. Apparently one of the benefits of memberships is the ability to get the email list of members. You get a little bit of insight I didn’t have when I received an email, for the second time, highlighting a job available in the area. It wasn’t from an email list, I couldn’t unsubscribe, and I had not signed up to receive this email.
So I responded. I stated I had not signed up for this email, and that I would like to be removed from the email list.
The sender responded apologizing. And they received my auto-responder as a result. At the time, my auto responder was stating the reality that the US tax system is racist at it’s core (or something to that effect).
She did not like this auto-responder.
She replied demanding to be removed from my list, and stated she wanted nothing to do with me.
I informed her all she had to do was not reply and her worldview would not be challenged again. I also mentioned that I pay attention to and follow CAN-SPAM to the best of my ability; that I don’t send out mass emails soliciting a response to people who have not already opted in to receiving those emails.
I have not heard from this person sense.
I also have ended up deflecting a few clients in the same manner. A few years ago, I would have been panicking about how forward I am with sharing a bit of reality with clients, potential clients, and others who receive emails from me. That also now includes some family as they send me emails about my grandmother. It doesn’t happen often.
It feels right and better to keep those auto-responders up though. They detract the right people, show a little bit of my own humanity, and they get clients to read my emails!
Client Communication Process Updates
Late December last year, I dove into the 7216 active consent sea, built a form, sent it out to my client list, and crossed my fingers. Lo and behold, it worked! The clients who don’t want to return have stated as such. The clients coming back have been filling out those consents all on their own, to the point where it’s February 17th and I’m just now building out the list to directly send a request to clients who haven’t completed that consent. Granted, it helps that the last two weeks of January I spent in nearly back-to-back new client onboarding meetings. It seems my, “get in early or don’t,” communications also worked. Win for me.
Internal Processes
It wouldn’t be Marchternity without a roller-coaster from the IRS. After the final instructions for K2/K3 were released, I spent a weekend reading, fretting, writing, and building. I came up with an FAQ and a Cognito Form to send to clients. And, as things go, we now have an active way out of filing these forms for the 2021 filing season. Ah well. There we go.
As my client list has grown, I’m finding it harder and harder for me to just keep the checklist in my head. It really doesn’t matter what that checklist is. I’m not surprised by this, especially since the niching hasn’t quite happened yet. So a checklist-a-making I went. And oh am I happy to have those at my side. Not only did I build checklists, but I built them with the active intention of them being more useful with growth. It was a good flex for my brain to think outside of myself and my needs and think about what I need from future support, whatever that may look like.
As of right now, I’ve only turned around one tax return. Though that’s not stopped me from finding errors galore in spreadsheets I had set up to help me find errors. I’d rather find them now than on April 2nd.
It’s 5:30 on the 26th of February, and I’m just getting started with my work day. For paid subscribers, I’ll leave links below to checklists and the now-somewhat-unnecessary foreign income/foreign tax reporting questionnaire for pass-through owners.