The Accounting Podcast

Please note: This is a machine-generated transcript. As such, there may be spelling, grammar, and accuracy errors throughout. Thank you for your understanding!

Blake Oliver: [00:00:00] All right, David, I'm so excited because today we are going to try filing our taxes with TurboTax business.

David Leary: [00:00:07] You're excited. I'm like, we've been putting this off. It's today is what, June 3rd? This is supposed to be done March 15th.

Blake Oliver: [00:00:15] 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 they're getting into version of TurboTax.

David Leary: [00:00:36] You could buy, though, right? You could use.

Blake Oliver: [00:00:38] It's like a desktop version, I think. Yeah, but 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 E, you go to a professional tax preparer. And now Intuit is getting into the tax prep game for business, competing directly with CPAs. And as 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. So we're going.

David Leary: [00:01:17] For a ride and we all we've done so far is went to QuickBooks, created our cash basis reports. But other than that, we haven't started anything yet. So this would be you're on for the ride.

Blake Oliver: [00:01:28] We did reconcile, so we.

David Leary: [00:01:30] Did reconcile.

Blake Oliver: [00:01:31] 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 there 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?

David Leary: [00:01:49] Yeah. There's some ad revenue. There's obviously software expenses, some contract labor and merchant fees, and that's kind of it.

Blake Oliver: [00:01:57] And this is an LLC. It is a partnership. You and I are 5050 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.

David Leary: [00:02:26] I feel like that's maybe what I've paid for my returns before for my business returns, 1500, 1700, somewhere in there. So.

Blake Oliver: [00:02:34] So here's how it's supposed to work. It's perfect for partnerships s corps and multi member LLCs. We are going to securely upload our tax docs. Then we're going to get matched to 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 filed. 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.

David Leary: [00:03:08] It's interesting that you're getting unlimited access to your preparer. Like obviously nobody's going to know. Okay, there might be somebody who abuses that, but in general, like it's okay to promise those types of things, Right? Right. Because not everybody's going to take advantage of that.

Blake Oliver: [00:03:25] 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.

David Leary: [00:03:36] Control plus to zoom in. Blake, just a little bit. Oh, sure. Perfect.

Blake Oliver: [00:03:40] There we go. Tell us about your business. Is the business an LLC? Yes. How is 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. So I guess we can't do anything until we meet with somebody. So let's find let's find a date. David, when both of 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 at 1 p.m. MST. And that's it.

David Leary: [00:04:22] So they're calling our cell. That's my thought. I thought this had like a video type Zoom experience, but I guess this is a handoff. This is this is. This is probably more like a traditional account experience and not like a. Turbotax live experience.

Blake Oliver: [00:04:40] I don't know what this means. It says next steps. I guess I need to share docs. Okay. See my doc checklist. So 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?

David Leary: [00:05:00] Do we need to upload both IDs for each partner?

Blake Oliver: [00:05:03] I'm going to assume yes, that 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 will 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. So there's our. Corporate documents. Organizational documents. All right, Let's do the financials. Ad file. You said you put them. Now it's asking.

David Leary: [00:05:34] Specifically for financials or just saying financials.

Blake Oliver: [00:05:37] They want a profit and loss or income statement and a balance sheet.

David Leary: [00:05:40] I'm going to have to go to my other computer. So give me a second. All right.

Blake Oliver: [00:05:43] I got my notification for the call. That's my text message notification from TurboTax.

David Leary: [00:05:49] Now, now, now, here's kind of the insanity of this whole thing in a way. I'm in QuickBooks. I run these reports, I download on my computer. I open up Google Drive for you to go in and download from your Google Drive to re-upload them to TurboTax, which is Intuit. It should just have a question Do you use QuickBooks? And then it should just connect and pull the reports itself out of QuickBooks. This is a silly dance.

Blake Oliver: [00:06:10] 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.

David Leary: [00:06:23] And I get it. You might be not using QuickBooks at all, but TurboTax even ask for using QuickBooks. Like this is your opportunity to ask, Are you using QuickBooks? Can we go grab your reports for you? Yes. And that would be a delightful experience.

Blake Oliver: [00:06:35] Okay, so the last thing I have to do is upload my driver license. Okay. I think that's everything. David, we have 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, you know, 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.

David Leary: [00:07:19] I feel like the instructions are a little vague. I almost feel like I'd upload nothing and have to wait for the phone call first.

Blake Oliver: [00:07:25] And that might be what happens with most people is they like, get on the phone and they haven't uploaded anything in their tax expert has to tell them what to do. That would be normal. But we are extraordinary individuals.

David Leary: [00:07:34] 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.

Blake Oliver: [00:07:45] We'll find out.

David Leary: [00:07:47] Stay tuned.

Blake Oliver: [00:07:48] See you in about a week and we'll we'll find out. He's calling. Hello?

TurboTax Expert: [00:08:00] I would like. My name is. I am your TurboTax expert. I'll be preparing your tax return. I'm an enrolled agent and I've been preparing taxes for over ten years. How are you guys today?

Blake Oliver: [00:08:10] Doing all right. How are you?

TurboTax Expert: [00:08:14] It would think you guys have already exploited your profit statement, balance sheet and some other information. What type of business do you have? You think you guys have run podcasts or something to that effect?

David Leary: [00:08:24] We produce 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 assist.

TurboTax Expert: [00:08:35] You guys this first year in business.

Blake Oliver: [00:08:37] Yeah, 2022 was the start of it.

TurboTax Expert: [00:08:40] Do you have an LLC? So you guys are a partnership. Did you file a form 2553 with the IRS to be treated as an S-Corp? Are you guys operating just as an LLC partnership?

Blake Oliver: [00:08:50] Just an LLC partnership.

TurboTax Expert: [00:08:52] So what basically happened is I'll prepare your temperature. It's gonna be at 1065 MetroHealth Medical with the process because you guys are not in an escort. You are not employees of the partnership. You guys are partners. Therefore, any profits that are generated by the partnership is going to be reported on your individual tax returns. The way that's done is I'll prepare the 1065 that's going to report all of 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 helped the partnership. Divided height don't see a partnership agreement. You might have a partnership agreement.

Blake Oliver: [00:09:33] No, we do not.

TurboTax Expert: [00:09:34] In order to put 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're if you feel like doing this to yourself. If not, I would recommend finding an attorney who can assist you with drafting a partnership agreement that outlines those things. So we have them because you guys are partners. The profit and loss, whatever that may be, gets reported to you on a K-1, so each partner in the partnership will receive a K-1. It's not a W-2, but it's similar to a W-2 and a sense that it reports your profit and loss from that partnership and then use that K-1 to report on your personal tax return. You guys already filed your individual tax returns or did you file an extension?

Blake Oliver: [00:10:19] We filed extensions.

TurboTax Expert: [00:10:21] Okay, perfect.

Blake Oliver: [00:10:22] So we have articles of organization. Is that not sufficient? You have to you have to get our partnership agreement. You won't do this without it.

TurboTax Expert: [00:10:28] 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. 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 temperature and according to the partnership agreement. So that's why we have to have it. We can't just rely on verbal communication.

Blake Oliver: [00:10:53] 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?

TurboTax Expert: [00:11:08] Yes, that's right. I'm sorry that it wasn't in the list of documents. I'll make sure to bring it up during our next meeting. Our true taxable service for business is actually brand new this year, so there are a lot of things that we're changing and adding on the fly. Normally, you would be told that during your interviews, this is the process that's 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, your year end bank statements for all the bank accounts that you have listed on the balance sheet to make sure that the year end batiments match what's on the balance sheet to make sure that we're filing accurate.

David Leary: [00:11:43] So just making a checklist here, we need our operating agreement. We now need bank statements for December 31st. Anything else that we need?

TurboTax Expert: [00:11:54] 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 scheduled trip, in which case I would have to call up to you first in that chat, just since you a list of documents that we need. I don't believe I have your general ledger, so I need your general ledger. We need the year and bank statements and that it will like you guys don't have any wages on your property. And so I'm assuming you didn't pay any employees. So we don't need to see the W-3 or the W-2. But you do have on there that you pay contractors. So we are going to need the 1096 and the 1099 miscellaneous that you or the 1099 that you guys filed for the contractors.

David Leary: [00:12:32] Can we just invite you to our QuickBooks? And just let you grab everything?

TurboTax Expert: [00:12:38] Unfortunately, not at this time. This is again, this is a hurdle that we're hoping to overcome by next season. But as of right now, we are not able to pull documents back and forth from QuickBooks. But you can hear this to me over the over the weekend can still require to return this Monday will come in at 9 a.m..

David Leary: [00:12:56] We should be able to do this today.

Blake Oliver: [00:12:57] 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.

TurboTax Expert: [00:13:09] What do you guys connected with the tax prep assistant or not? That's time. No. So ordinarily, you're supposed to be connected to a tax prep assistant and that for you basically speak to attach a persistent where they kind of go over the documents that you need before you get connected to your actual tax expert. You've arrived to me directly. So I'm basically just doing the welcome call, you know, and the job of the officer assistant with you now to make sure that you've got all your documents, if you're in the wrong place or anything, you just skip through and it's all your fault. I think you should a routing issue. But you skipped through the part where you were supposed to skip to attack fifth assistant first, and they were supposed to guide you on the documents that you need. It's not a big deal or anything. I mean, I'll be here next Monday. So as long as you guys have your documents, 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 in the balance sheet, and you guys are actually in pretty good shape. So you would be surprised how many clients show up in their balance sheet. Have you negative amount on it, like in accounts payable with a negative amount, which you know that 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 reconciled. So in nearby this case, it just seems like I'm kind of 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.

Blake Oliver: [00:14:26] Okay.

TurboTax Expert: [00:14:27] One little quick disclosure I want to give you guys just so you're fully aware. I do. You have a baby coming and next Friday, I will be going on leave, starting spreading as well as you guys provide me information by Monday. I don't see any reason why you should shouldn't have the stature turned on. With that being said, if for some reason you guys don't get me everything I need and I'm not able to prepare your tax return on time, I'm going to do a one transfer to one of my colleagues that see every single day I'll call them then. Exactly. The yelled towards Women2 tax assurance. And worst case 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 will see a reason they shouldn't have to dumped poop for you next week before I go on leave.

Blake Oliver: [00:15:07] Got it. Well, thanks for the heads up and congratulations.

TurboTax Expert: [00:15:11] Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you, David. It was a pleasure getting to know you guys. If you need to get a hold of me, please send me a message through the chatbox.

David Leary: [00:15:17] One other question, too, actually, before you're done. We're late filing a return. Right. This is due March 15th, I think.

TurboTax Expert: [00:15:23] That is correct. You all. Did you guys file an extension for the partnership?

David Leary: [00:15:27] No, we did not.

TurboTax Expert: [00:15:28] Unfortunately, it's too late to file an extension at this point. What's going to happen is you won't receive a $200 penalty for each partner for each month of the tax return was late because it's your first year in business. The penalty to come to the partnership, to the address that's on file for the partnership. How can it 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 IRS and ask for a first time penalty abatement. 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 IRS agent. So long. It is the first time that you're filing late.

Blake Oliver: [00:16:04] And is that something that you or TurboTax helps with?

TurboTax Expert: [00:16:09] Unfortunately, no. We're not able to discuss the tax return with anyone outside of you. And the IRS will not discuss your tax return with anyone unless they have power of attorney at this time. With TurboTax, we do not offer tax resolution, so we would not be able to get a power of attorney from you in order to correspond with the on your behalf, so long as your partnership is in otherwise good standing and you don't have any other penalties or feed outstanding with the IRS, they will typically grant the first time penalty abatement.

Blake Oliver: [00:16:41] All right. Thank you.

TurboTax Expert: [00:16:43] Guys. You're welcome. I'll talk to you on Monday.

Blake Oliver: [00:16:45] All right. Bye.

TurboTax Expert: [00:16:46] Day tripping. Shootoff Fee-for-service. Howard Razor. I'll talk to you soon.

Blake Oliver: [00:16:53] Tell us that you need an operating agreement and we'll have one for you.

David Leary: [00:16:57] But don't make statements because we took time to upload all these things and we could have we could have just had all our ducks in order for today's phone call.

Blake Oliver: [00:17:03] 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.

David Leary: [00:17:08] And apparently it sounds like from interactions with who is our tax preparer, there should have been another onboarding call, maybe in between.

Blake Oliver: [00:17:15] There was supposed to be an assistant who got on with us and told us everything we needed, and that didn't happen.

David Leary: [00:17:21] And then the other part that caught me off guard, I guess, is like two two things I thought were really strange. A We can't invite them to our QuickBooks. And then the other thing, he's an E, but he can't represent us to the IRS.

Blake Oliver: [00:17:33] He said they don't do tax resolution. It's not that they can't. He can. It's just. It's not part of the package.

David Leary: [00:17:41] Well, yeah, he can't because of the way TurboTax Live is structured, per se. Same thing with connecting to the QuickBooks. This is this is a policy. So we're spending what it's going to cost us. 1700 bucks.

Blake Oliver: [00:17:52] 1500?

David Leary: [00:17:53] I think. So if I was using an outside of this for 1500 bucks representation, would that be kind of included? What's your gut? I mean.

Blake Oliver: [00:18:01] My guess is that most CPAs or EAS or tax preparers 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, we'll do that for you.

David Leary: [00:18:18] Well, in theory, they get a special line to call into and it'll be faster than us calling in.

Blake Oliver: [00:18:22] Right? So. So two strikes against TurboTax 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.

David Leary: [00:18:42] 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, our first business, especially if it's your first business, right? Yeah.

Blake Oliver: [00:18:51] I mean, we're all about customer experience. David Right. So those were two negative customer experiences that we just had.

David Leary: [00:18:59] So some of the simple things like the meeting, the bank statements and the 1099 and the 1096, I'm like, I could have done all those and we could have uploaded those last week. Yeah, the bank statements.

Blake Oliver: [00:19:08] We have the 1099 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 preparer for an operating agreement. That's not something that I expected. I wonder if that's just a CIA kind of thing.

David Leary: [00:19:27] That's that. Well, I think it's more I think it's maybe know your customer. Historically, people have exploited TurboTax to commit lots of fraud. Here's fake bank accounts, fake Social Security numbers, things like that. And maybe this is a this is really a know your customer situation. Could be they they want to they don't want to be fined. That's the last publicity TurboTax 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 it felt like calling into a tech support agent where they can only say certain things. So I was thinking though, we should use ChatGPT and we could have that right. Our operating agreement.

Blake Oliver: [00:20:10] And this gives me an opportunity to try to really test out this prompt creator prompt that I've been.

David Leary: [00:20:15] Using and that pop creator prompt in theory, the way I understand it, it should ask us questions like, Well, who are the partners? And then it should get into that situation.

Blake Oliver: [00:20:24] 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 Blake, Oliver and David Leary. The entity is Earmark 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.

David Leary: [00:20:57] Prompt and let's how it has its own legal disclaimer it puts in first.

Blake Oliver: [00:21:00] Should we try submitting this to TurboTax?

David Leary: [00:21:02] No, that's my total intention. Like it gives what he needs. He needs to see. That's 50%. They need to see that we have your declared as the tax person. I love number five. That's awesome.

Blake Oliver: [00:21:12] Read that out. 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 ChatGPT to decide the best course of action. You know, this is like. I mean, I'm kind of impressed.

David Leary: [00:21:26] It's close enough.

Blake Oliver: [00:21:27] Shall we submit it and see what happens?

David Leary: [00:21:29] Good to go. And then you'll put it in DocuSign so I can sign it.

Blake Oliver: [00:21:31] Yeah, I'll put it into a I'll put it into a Google doc. I mean it's better than having nothing but.

David Leary: [00:21:38] Well my. I want to see what happens just a minute. Like this without us checking it.

Blake Oliver: [00:21:42] And see if they say anything. Yeah. All right. All right. Well, you take a look at the 1099 stuff.

David Leary: [00:21:48] Oh, 1099 and the and all the bank statements, and you finish up this and we'll get them uploaded up. If we can get all that to him tonight, then maybe we'll have another interaction, maybe in the chat.

Blake Oliver: [00:21:57] Well, it might just be via the chat.

David Leary: [00:21:58] Yeah. He might just say we're good to go. Yeah. And it'd 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. 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 preparer.

Blake Oliver: [00:22:19] That's right.

David Leary: [00:22:19] 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 ChatGPT I really thinking about it.

Blake Oliver: [00:22:30] 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.

David Leary: [00:22:40] Yeah, there's nothing because I think he was giving us a lot of canned answers which could have just been done through a ChatGPT type tool.

Blake Oliver: [00:22:45] Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

David Leary: [00:22:48] Yeah. The organizer is going away. It's just going to be this 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.

Blake Oliver: [00:23:01] 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 start up costs. Basically, I just told him like we did our own legal stuff. We did our own accounting stuff. We didn't have start up costs in that respect. So. Okay. But he needs me to write.

David Leary: [00:23:16] Question I'm glad you asked that.

Blake Oliver: [00:23:18] 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 start up 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.

David Leary: [00:23:54] So and then I guess there's a signing.

Blake Oliver: [00:23:58] They do DocuSign. I think we're almost there.

David Leary: [00:24:00] He called you. Did you like chat with you first? Hey, can we talk on the phone or was it. He just called you blindly. How did that work?

Blake Oliver: [00:24:06] No, he just called me and 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 they all the incoming calls or the outbound calls come from that number. So it was I was happy that it called to make sure that we could still stay on track because, you know, obviously he's going on leave. So he wants to get this wrapped up.

David Leary: [00:24:30] We're assuming that we're responsive to these being more responsive as well. Right. Like we said, hey, we'll upload those today. We uploaded them immediately that same day. Right. Didn't sit on it. Yeah. And we're getting rewarded with him being responsive.

Blake Oliver: [00:24:42] Hopefully I'll keep you posted. Beautiful. We are 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 that could have been asked for originally.

David Leary: [00:25:13] Oh, because I uploaded the bank statements and now he wants the reconciliation reports from QuickBooks.

Blake Oliver: [00:25:19] So I uploaded those. And then he said, you have one unclear transaction totaling $10 in the account ending in 1739. 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.

David Leary: [00:25:39] Yeah, $10. I suspect it's a merchant service fee for an ACH deposit through QuickBooks.

Blake Oliver: [00:25:46] Something like that. Yeah. So assuming that $10 doesn't derail our tax return, we should be good to go.

David Leary: [00:25:53] And this is where, like, I think if you have and I've had an accountant do things before, like they'll just journal entry that out and not even ask me about it.

Blake Oliver: [00:26:01] How have you felt about this whole process so far?

David Leary: [00:26:03] 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 like lots of complications, rental houses and you sold stock. You did this. I don't know how you do this process like that. Yeah. But I think for what we had, it was fairly simple and it still had a lot of hoop jumping though.

Blake Oliver: [00:26:24] 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.

David Leary: [00:26:34] I should be figuring out these docs and renaming them as they get uploaded.

Blake Oliver: [00:26:37] I noticed that that they have been renamed. I don't know who's doing that, but they have been renamed. Oh, they have.

David Leary: [00:26:42] Interesting. And I think the bigger experience is why are we doing? Phone calls like no Zoom call or, you know, or even that tool Intuit has for these calls.

Blake Oliver: [00:26:54] And 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.

David Leary: [00:27:05] Inside the.

Blake Oliver: [00:27:05] App. They don't have that capability yet for the full service. Oh, here we go. Hello.

TurboTax Expert: [00:27:12] This is from TurboTax. Hi. Hi. Okay, so I wanted to give you a quick update because our meeting today at noon was conditional upon your action being approved through our review team. And at the moment they were having an issue with the 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, $10 hours doing this now, we don't have to worry about it. So I'm waiting to hear back from Chiwaki. But at this point, are the tax returns not considered final if they have not gone through review because they were missing those reconciliation reports? So if you wouldn't mind giving me a couple more hours to get this taken care of and see if we can get this squared away. In the meantime, is there any way to potentially get that $10 reconciled? So if they are pushing to have that, how do they announce that you'd be able to tell them it's $10?

Blake Oliver: [00:28:10] It doesn't matter. Let's just push it through. We can make the adjustment in 2023. It's immaterial.

TurboTax Expert: [00:28:16] All I'm going to do the best I can to get this to go through. So I'm working on it right now.

Blake Oliver: [00:28:21] Yeah. Also, we didn't know that we needed to upload those reconciliation reports.

TurboTax Expert: [00:28:25] You're right. Yeah. This is a new thing that they're doing. It wasn't a part of the documents that you were supposed to upload originally. So this is a new thing that they want to see now. So it kind of caught me off guard as well. Hopefully that's okay for the charity team if they want it reconciled. Unfortunately, there's nothing I can do about it. I'm not able to file a tax return until it's proved. All right. Well, it's $10, so I'm hoping it's not an issue.

Blake Oliver: [00:28:47] If we if we change the bank rec. Right. If we 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.

TurboTax Expert: [00:28:58] Out, like I said, it would potentially actually said in Finland as well. Yeah, you're right. Potentially you'd have to re upload your proper statement balance sheet the whole nine. Yeah. So like it 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 as soon as they do. I also want to get this deal filed and done with. Today is my last day here before I go on family tomorrow. So if I don't if I'm not able to file this tax return today, then you're going to have to be resigned to another tax expert who's going to have to review the tax return with you. And I really don't want that to happen because we already know gone so far in this process. So, yeah.

Blake Oliver: [00:29:40] Yeah, neither do I.

TurboTax Expert: [00:29:43] 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. Yeah, there's nothing more that I would love to do than just give this texture and done. I mean, it's the first year tax return fairly straightforward and you guys don't have a ton of things going on, so it should be a no brainer, basically, in my opinion.

David Leary: [00:30:05] 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?

TurboTax Expert: [00:30:12] No, not until it's been approved. Once it's been approved and I can upload the draft copy so you're able to review it, but you're able to upload the draft copy until it's approved as complete.

Blake Oliver: [00:30:22] Okay. All right. Well, we will look forward to your call or your update.

TurboTax Expert: [00:30:28] To no matter what stuff that you see. What's Bill.com?

Blake Oliver: [00:30:31] Thanks.

TurboTax Expert: [00:30:33] You're welcome. Bye. Week.

David Leary: [00:30:34] I find it odd that you can't get a draft until.

Blake Oliver: [00:30:37] It's approved by.

David Leary: [00:30:38] Basically. And the way it feels like the approved. That's like this big a review process, which means basically it's going to be done. And you're going to we're going to get a draft of the final one. And at that point, it's not really a draft.

Blake Oliver: [00:30:51] Well, it's a draft until they file it, I guess. Hopefully we can get this done today before our pair goes on leave.

David Leary: [00:30:59] He's going to call later today. I was going to try to adjust my workout schedule around his call, but there's no there's no earlier classes.

Blake Oliver: [00:31:07] I got to say, as we are nearing the finish line, my expectation was that Intuit 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.

David Leary: [00:31:26] So would you say this feels like a normal accounting firm experience?

Blake Oliver: [00:31:29] 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.

David Leary: [00:31:43] I mean, I've now done four, five different firm experiences to get either business or personal taxes done.

Blake Oliver: [00:31:50] How does this feel to you?

David Leary: [00:31:51] 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.

Blake Oliver: [00:32:06] Wow, that sounds nice. Actually, the.

David Leary: [00:32:08] 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 like 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 it cost me 350 bucks to connect the QuickBooks data. He pulls what he needs out of QuickBooks. You don't even have to invite them doing that. Like invite my accountant game or any of that. You just through the APIs, you reads the QuickBooks data he needs and moves on, which I didn't upload anything. Maybe a photo ID, that was it. I don't I don't even know if I did that. Even so.

Blake Oliver: [00:32:53] Well, we'll be back hopefully with the final portion of this episode today. How are you doing?

TurboTax Expert: [00:33:05] Hey, Blake. Hamdullah. I just wanted to give you a quick call that you know, that I've got your tax return back. It's ready to be reviewed, so I'm just gonna go ahead and upload the draft copy for you, see if you wanted some time to get David on the phone.

Blake Oliver: [00:33:18] I'm going to try to dial him in.

David's Voicemail: [00:33:20] Please leave your message for David Leary.

Blake Oliver: [00:33:25] I could not get through to David. So it'll just be you and me.

TurboTax Expert: [00:33:28] Okay. No problem. Are you signed in to your TurboTax account? And are you able to see the document that I just uploaded labeled 2022 1065 review Copy.

Blake Oliver: [00:33:38] All right. I'm logged in. I'm going to the documents tab, and I see. Review. Copy. There we go.

TurboTax Expert: [00:33:45] It should open up for you in a setup window because it's a PDF. The very first page that you see is an 8879. This is the authorization form. The second page is the 1065 serves the actual partnership return. It's the first page of the tax return. You guys are using the cash accounting method. There are two partners total, so you guys are gonna be issuing two K-1. That's the item on line I write on the information. Jovita is gross income for the year. It was. You can see that you have other deductions on line 20. There is a statement attached further on in the question. That statement just basically outlines what those expenses were for. You had some advertising expenses will get them contract labor and some other things. Um, small school office supplies. So all that will be listed out when we subtract. 53. And three were left with. $187. The following pages are just the basic information for the partnership. Most of the stuff will not pertain to you, as you're aware. Only 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 that are getting stood up onto the K1.

TurboTax Expert: [00:35:00] So everything that you see here is going to get divided by half, 50% and you guys are each going to receive your own K1, 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 it's going to ask you to review and sign your tax return. Ayerza 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 countersign the tax return. Once I countersign it, then I have to e-file it. And once it's e-file it, it's going to be pending for about a day or so. So if you can sign at the very least today, that way you can hit the file. At that point, you know, there shouldn't be any issues and you should just get a text message from another expert letting you know that everything's been approved and you're good to go.

Blake Oliver: [00:35:55] Okay. I will right after this call. I will do all that, the signing.

TurboTax Expert: [00:36:00] Awesome. Thank you very much, Blake. 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 click the refresh button as well. And then it should give you an option to proceed to checkout. So let me know if that's happening.

Blake Oliver: [00:36:18] It's working.

TurboTax Expert: [00:36:20] It's working. Okay, perfect. There will also will be a short survey will be it's only five questions long. It takes less than 30s. 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 you might have. So if you have any feedback, whether it's positive or negative, please take the time to read it. So that way, you know, you have some reassurance next year if you have any questions or concerns, I just.

Blake Oliver: [00:36:47] Want to say thank you for all your effort and getting this done before you left. We really appreciate it.

TurboTax Expert: [00:36:52] Yeah, you guys are both very welcome. Tell David I said hello and I look forward to working with you guys. I sure can come back.

Blake Oliver: [00:36:57] All right. Sounds good. Thank you.

TurboTax Expert: [00:36:59] Thank you. Have a great rest of your day. Thank you for being a top five customer by.

Blake Oliver: [00:37:03] So we've paid for the return and now we are going to try to file confirm my identity. All right. I'm signing my return. Ten out of ten. 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 E-File signature authorization form. I am now signing it. I've uploaded the Arizona filing form. So now we're just waiting for TurboTax to file and hopefully we're done. So I've got good news, David.

David Leary: [00:37:44] I see that on the screen.

Blake Oliver: [00:37:46] Our federal return for 2022 was accepted, as was our Arizona partnership return.

David Leary: [00:37:53] So three weeks. I think we did on Friday. Two weeks later, we had our meeting and then it was done this Friday.

Blake Oliver: [00:38:00] I'm pretty happy with how this went. Overall, I wish you could have been on the calls with me yesterday when we were finalizing this thing. I was ten.

David Leary: [00:38:08] Thing. We got over that hurdle.

Blake Oliver: [00:38:10] 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. E-filed 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 ask me, David, would I do this again, I would say, yeah, actually I would do this again.

David Leary: [00:39:12] Yeah. It wasn't super painful. It would have 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? That was uploading the docs enough. I mean.

Blake Oliver: [00:39:32] 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.

David Leary: [00:39:38] And when we upload because you were actually doing the uploads, because I've had this experience with other tax product tax portals where if I upload a doc, I get to like say what kind of doc it is, put it in a special folder or bucket or you know what form it goes to. Like you just upload it to one spot, you just.

Blake Oliver: [00:39:55] Upload it, you don't have to name it, you just upload it. No 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. Oh, by the way, I was able to do the whole checkout experience. So I put in. We actually had to pay for this. Yeah. So I put in our 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, deliver you file, 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. Amend You can.

David Leary: [00:40:46] Find that $10 and we have to redo everything.

Blake Oliver: [00:40:49] I can view the 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.

David Leary: [00:41:01] Open up with the TurboTax product and view it that way. I guess.

Blake Oliver: [00:41:03] So I.

David Leary: [00:41:04] Can or hand it off to another accountant, right? Yeah. That's nice actually, that you're not like locked in.

Blake Oliver: [00:41:10] 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.

David Leary: [00:41:40] Maybe we should use our backchannel connections to the IRS to get us audited so we can test this part of the TurboTax service as well.

Blake Oliver: [00:41:48] I don't know if I'm that 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?

David Leary: [00:42:06] I think if I stacked 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 preparers working for TurboTax Live. Good luck with your return. I don't think our EA was not capable in anyway. I never got that vibe at all.

Blake Oliver: [00:42:29] To be fair, 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 it was the extra effort, like the personal effort that really. Made me happy with this.

David Leary: [00:42:48] I think more wow would have been the connection to QuickBooks. Yeah, we should have just enabled. I did all this work that he could have just gone to QuickBooks and done and pulled the data right. Instead of us printing reports, which he's probably scanning to import into TurboTax Proconnect. Right. Mapping it in, you know, and I think that that if you if you take that work off our plate for the same price, that's pretty amazing.

Speaker5: [00:43:11] Yeah.

Blake Oliver: [00:43:12] 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.

David Leary: [00:44:05] Tax pros exploit this and guess where it exploits isn't the right word. But I could have a store on Amazon not own any physical product. Amazon drop ship, 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.

Blake Oliver: [00:44:35] Are services like that. I was talking with Will Lopez. He sold his firm, but he used to do that toward 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 they partnered with accountants. So 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, like whether or not you're doing it yourself or whether or not you're outsourcing it, Like 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 like 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.

David Leary: [00:45:22] Did you have to do any like signing with him to get him to file it or any of that dance?

Blake Oliver: [00:45:26] Yeah. So the federal return I was able to sign with DocuSign, and the only reason we couldn't do all of it E-sign was Arizona's laws require a wet signature.

David Leary: [00:45:35] Congratulations. We got our we got our first ever partnership return done.

Blake Oliver: [00:45:40] I would say this is a pretty good result for Intuit. 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, you know, if you're a if you're a tax preparer 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 we can do the same thing.

David Leary: [00:46:11] A lot of it's the communication. Yeah, that was that was the vast majority of our frustration along the way is just lack of communication. Me that before now we just took a phone call and now oh now you need this. Why didn't you say that last time? We just talked the other day? I'd say yeah, it's definitely a four star, not five star.

Blake Oliver: [00:46:26] But there's room for improvement, right?

David Leary: [00:46:27] But I think so. So let's rewind then. What did you think was going to happen? Do you think this was going to be a nightmare?

Blake Oliver: [00:46:33] I didn't think it would be a nightmare because I know Intuit 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 TurboTax experience, I was expecting high quality. I got that. I think I got what I expected. So for the money. For the money, Yeah. You know, the assisted is half the price which is like to pay like $800 or so for a business return would be Intuit assisted would be great. I can't wait until we get to try that. Hopefully we can try that next year.

David Leary: [00:47:03] Because that was the one surprise to me is like, we really didn't do anything on this.

Blake Oliver: [00:47:06] It's yeah, we didn't touch the forms, right? We didn't know work. We didn't, we didn't do any like filling out forms or like doing a interview or anything. Yeah, I think it was a good value for the money.

David Leary: [00:47:17] Plus I think the other value is because we didn't do it, it act ually got done.

Blake Oliver: [00:47:21] Yeah, that's. True. And we had somebody helping push us to do it.

David Leary: [00:47:24] Exactly. Exactly. That helped a lot actually, to get it done.

Blake Oliver: [00:47:27] Looking forward to doing this again with you next year. David Beautiful.