Advocating for Client

In November, I was contacted by a prospect who had sold quite a bit of real estate during 2020, and needed to run a projection, pay in Q4, and onboard for tax prep in the spring.

This prospect's former spouse also contacted me, and I agreed to take both on as clients as there would be synergy. They are on good terms and agreed to a conflict of interest waiver, as well as me sharing data between the two related to the 2020 tax year.

After year-end planning engagement letters are signed, it comes to my attention that the spouse has severe ocular issues, and cannot effectively use email to communicate nor the internet to access a client portal. These issues were not brought up at the outset.

I agreed to work with the spouse, and generally send texts whenever I need to communicate action items or updates. The spouse is able to get help to upload to the portal whenever necessary, however all docs are uploaded as individual pictures.

The spouse also began calling me multiple times a week. The calls started the week before Christmas and didn't take a reprieve Christmas week. Notable calls were twice at 7-8 pm my time on a Friday evening. Twice on a Sunday. I did convey where I was based to the spouse at the outset (we're in two different time zones), however perhaps the spouse thinks they're calling an office phone that no one hears ringing, so I don't fault the spouse or think it's intentional, however I have started letting the spouse's calls go to voicemail.

My issue is this -- this arrangement is massively inefficient for me. My realization has suffered on the year-end planning engagement. I really should have quoted double.

I believe this spouse really needs someone local, in which the spouse can book an appointment, bring all source docs as hard copies, and the professional can look them over and see if they need anything else. This client is not a good fit for a remote relationship.

Would you have any problem declining to provide a compliance engagement at this point in the season? Really I'm advocating what's best for everyone here. The spouse has not signed a compliance engagement letter and I also have not quoted a fee for that yet. We have only discussed a compliance engagement up to this point.

I get the synergies, but I think you need to encourage spouse to move to a more local professional as soon as possible. Mind you, if her ocular issues are severe enough, perhaps she cannot drive and would be reliant upon others to get her to and from appointments. I do not think that is your problem, though.

I am puzzled that spouse can use texts but not e-mail. Hmm.

I am puzzled that spouse can use texts but not e-mail. Hmm.

Believe me, that has me scratching my head too.

Text to voice on the phone? Voice to text to respond? Has someone close buy read it aloud and send a response? I don't know...

Thanks for commenting. I think the best all around is that I let this client go and encourage them to hire a local tax professional, even if it's late Dec / early Jan and even if I'm reversing course on a previous discussion.

My longtime friend and attorney had a recent medical spell that resulted in the loss of vision for no clear definable reason.
I guess a few months in a hospital bed on a vent could do funny things to the brain. Also rather advanced in years as well.
Point being, he has to use the text to speech to receive and send texts, and he uses the read function on emails, and also has a great little attachment on his glasses that can read typed text (books/letters) to him, and act as his eyes.
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All that being said, be careful with the ADA and all of that.
You can't really fire a client because their disability makes it hard for them to fit your business model.
I can truly appreciate where you are coming from and you might need to set a higher target price to either make up for the extra time and effort, or until they chose to find more affordable services.
If you let them go, have a good reason that doesn't involve their vision. They should have enough time to find another accountant.

That's a good point Recked. Thanks.

I've decided to keep the client on through 2020 filing after reflecting.

After the 2020 returns are wrapped up, the client's returns get much, much simpler. i.e. just 1099s from retirement income.

I am very transparent to prospects that if you have a simple tax situation -- i.e. just W-2s and 1099s from retirement, banks, brokerages, etc, I generally can't provide a strong enough value proposition to justify my fee.

Reiterating this to the client for the 2021 return 12 months from now will be consistent with what I constantly convey to prospects and clients alike.

I am very transparent to prospects that if you have a simple tax situation -- i.e. just W-2s and 1099s from retirement, banks, brokerages, etc, I generally can't provide a strong enough value proposition to justify my fee.

Don't you have tax software that "rolls" forward all the prior year's data?
You can do these returns in a few minutes, efile in a few minutes and
charge a good fee $350 +, for little time, less than 30-minutes - and
not have to meet. Bill by Paypal, get paid, done for another year.

If the client is a retiree who has liquid investments of at least a few million, sure I'll take them on. We'll likely encounter planning opportunities with that client.

For the "average" American family that just has W-2s, 1099s, and maybe a 1098, and whose biggest liquid investments are their retirement accounts, those aren't my target market. I don't want to crank out a bunch of those returns for $400-600 because I feel the prospect gets more value from DIY software, and I'm transparent about that opinion with prospects.

If they want a paid preparer anyway, I can understand that, but they'll either have to pay my fee, which won't be cheap (some of these prospects expect a preparer to work for $100 for these returns), or have to go with some other firm.

And, even if they're willing to pay my fee, I might not take them on if I sense they're not going to make a good long-term client or if I sense they're going to jump ship after a year.

I see many taxpayers who do not want to learn turbo-tax, they want to pay a CPA to do their returns, however simple we may think it is - to us. I accommodate most of them - if their records are organized, they send me images of their tax docs, they sign by e-sig, and pay by PayPal. I don't have to see these folks or take a stack of original tax docs. If I have to meet, take originals, do the work, get 8879s hand signed, hand back the originals - I triple the fee, for the extra handling.

That's understandable nova. Especially as you're in NoVa. A lot of wealth up there.

My point is this --

High earner (doctor, etc) with W-2, brokerage 1099s, etc. I can work with that. There's planning opportunity there from a few different angles, even if they don't have a side business, own rentals or partnership interests.

Middle class couple with AGI of $150k. W-2s and 1099s. No short or intermediate term prospects for value add. It's very likely I'm going to pass on them by conveying DIY software offers a higher value proposition than I can as it relates to their individual situation.