Be Humble: ADMIT to Clients When You Don't Know the Answer

CPAs: PLEASE stop taking on clients and advising them on things you know NOTHING about.

There are plenty of things I’m not good at. Plenty of areas where I have no experience and limited knowledge. You can’t be an expert at everything.

But if a question pops up in an area I am not familiar with, I TELL THE CLIENT and refer them to someone knowledgeable in that arena.

Not so with most other accountants, it seems.

Had a conversation with an online business owner who is a foreign national with no ties to the US. He is not a citizen, not a resident, does not work here, does not ship goods here - NOTHING.

A CPA advised him that he was liable for US income tax and set up a corporation for him. The CPA charged the client $1,000 for the entity creation and advised him that he owed several thousand dollars in taxes (with that number likely growing as his business continued to grow).

Thankfully, we were able to step in before the tax return was filed – so all he was out was the fee paid to the accountant for the corporation. But if you compound that error over the next several decades he plans on working, we are talking about the potential for hundreds of thousands of dollars in unnecessary taxes, legal costs, and accounting fees – on top of a tremendous amount of hassle and wasted energy.

All because some CPA didn’t realize or didn’t want to admit he didn’t know what he was talking about.

Y’all are killing me this tax season. ??