The New Role of a CPA
The New Role of a CPA: For many years, a CPA’s role was mainly just the tax and accounting that most people are familiar with, but fast forward to today and there’s a whole new species that are needed of CPA in today’s culture.
The reason – there’s a lot more than just tax and accounting, that is disrupting people’s lives. Anything that affects your life financially, is what your accounting firm or financial professional should be looking after for you.
Many people are coming to us not happy with their current CPA firm, because either their CPAs, just doing taxes with their head down, not doing much with write-offs, or even any kind of tax planning, and not discussing important financial matters with their clients or because of bad bookkeeping, which is really the important preparation for taxes.
Strategic tax planning is based on the individual and starts with a conversation.
What is your status in your business?
What is your status in your life?
What is your status in your money situation?
The CPA doesn’t need to know everything but be good at expanding their team with experts, resources, and tools. Doing so in a remote and mutualistic way allows for better expertise and less cost.
Tax Planning and Types of CPAs
Most people understand that with any type of business, they need the CPA to be more involved. However, on the personal side, sometimes people think their returns are easy and simple, and they don’t need a CPA but then they end up being shocked at how much they pay in capital gains, or how their Social Security is taxed…
Financial oversight is just as important for individuals as it is for businesses.
Often it is more strategic and beneficial for people to file for extensions because it gets it gives you more time to go through not only what to write off, but how to do all the other things like estate planning, investment planning, better cash flow management, distributions, or whatever that might be.
Discuss with your CPA or financial professional, all things that affect your life financially.
It encompasses more than just taxes and bookkeeping; it also involves managing your estate, investments, and all the financial flows associated with everything. Your CPA or accounting professional has a fiduciary responsibility to oversee it all. (with the help of a team of course!)
There’s like, kind of two types of CPAs. There are the ones that have a team and are trying to provide oversight and do everything the right way, but that is a smaller percentage of CPAs today.
Then there’s the other CPA that will just give you an answer but because he has no expertise on the topic, the answer will just be no.
When talking about financial oversight, Ii’s not about that CPA, being the one person that answers everything, because they can’t by themselves. It is about having a strategic team and knowing who to go to to find the answer.
Some CPAs feel rushed and give an answer because they know their client doesn’t want to pay for it but not everything needs to be billable with a model like this.
If a CPA doesn’t have the right mindset then asking their opinion can be like backing them into a corner. Either they’re going to tell you. Avoid it, as they may not grasp it. If it saves taxes, they might like it but fear client backlash, pretending they knew but dislike it.
The best way to assess if your financial professional is a good fit for you or not, is if they can stay open to the complexities of you as an individual. Do they prepackaged things? Or do they just sit there and listen and ask good questions and take their time and find what may be good options to discuss with you?
The New Role of a CPA: Referrals vs Mutualism (aka family business management)
A family business management team is cohesive communication and coordination with each other. It’s much different from the traditional referral approach,” Hey, I got a guy who does…. give him a call.”
Referral connections between CPAs, advisors, and estate attorneys can favor advisors, often at the expense of client benefits.
There’s so much crazy discord with politics and money and life and everything. Business and life are hard enough, working in a non-cohesive way with multiple advisors is an outdated business model.
If you lack guidance for family business and finances, don’t hesitate to reach out. Let’s chat about it.
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