handling client reservations about overseas outsourcing

I used SurePrep for the first full year this past season for most individual and trust returns. Not full prep, but OCR with human verification mostly. For most of the verify returns I used SP's domestic-only service, so I didn't have to get client approval.

I want to switch to mostly using SP's India located staff verification of scanning, but know I'll get pushback from clients.
Offshore is both cheaper, faster, and their work hours are closer to my night owl one.

SP has been around for something like 15 years. Have various heavy security certifications. They tell me two of the big 4 use them, which I have no reason to doubt but no way to verify for clients.

Really, i don't see how getting hacked by someone in India vs someone in the US who has friends in Ukraine makes a never mind. Your US financial institutions will compensate if you detect the fraud in time.

No, I'm not going to use any outsourcing domestic or offshore for public figures.

How have other firms gotten client acceptance of offshore processing?

I would strongly recommend you check with your E&O carrier if their policy will cover your liability if you outsource some aspects of tax prep offshore. I recall my policy will not cover any outsourcing UNLESS the work is done by my employees.

Also you will need to talk to an attorney to get strong disclosures if you wish to move forward to cya!

Whether your client actually gets hacked because of your action is immaterial once they actually get hacked for any reason, they will point the finger at you because you already disclosed that you are sending sensitive private data offshore, especially to India where a lot of these suspect call centers are already in the news. It is not a winning proposition once your good name gets dragged into the mud whether you are responsible or not.

Also, SurePrep told us that the offshore service is full. Not that we were going to use it.

ATSMAN, what carrier was that?

I'll check my Camico policy.

sjrcpa: it's probably their onshore human services that are now full. That fills up by March of the preceeding year because most practitioners don't want to spook their clients etc. with offshore. SP's full prep for business returns is only offshore.

They offer an automated ocr of pdfs /wp service without human verification that is more accurate than bleary eyed tax preparer humans especially if the pdfs are original W2's, brokerage stmnts, 1099R's etc.. But since many scanned docs do not ocr with 100% accuracy, the human verification flavor of SP is preferable. Don't know whether that's filled up yet.

For certain software, ProFx, Axcess, GST and maybe UT, they will ocr your submitted handfilled tax questionaires. That's dicey without verification. Because GST's tax questionaire is so bad, I didn't bother using it with most clients this year.