Sometimes an article appears that says something important enough that I feel it’s worth dedicating this entire space to. When it happens during tax season, and it is not a tax issue, then it must have really done something to stand out.

So this week, I bring you an article from cfo.com - Internal Audit Losing Prestige, Survey Finds.

The title itself did not surprise me, as I have long thought there are some pieces of internal auditing that inherently make it a potentially unreliable practice. I believe it is practically impossible to get disinterested reporting through an internal audit, for even if not explicit, there are biases absorbed from the higher-ups and corporate culture in general that can affect how an internal auditor does the job.

What the article really keys on, though, is how internal audits aren’t even addressing the biggest challenges that a business faces, with two huge worries coming in the forms of regulation and cybersecurity.

With the recent fate of Republican attempts to reconfigure health care, maybe some of the worries of quick sweeping regulatory changes can ease a little bit. Just don’t let them ease too much, though, for what these issues highlight is how a business does not want to be caught unaware when disruptions occur.

All these worries are exacerbated by the pace of change in our world. The ever increasing move to digital platforms is changing the way every business operates. I daresay that is not a single industry that has not undergone significant changes over the past decade because of it. This has created some new vast areas of wealth, while leaving some companies behind when they could not adjust.

So just what can a business do if some of these old ways of doing things are no longer offering the value they once did, or maybe even are holding one back?

First, not only should you not be afraid of change, but you should embrace it. Those who thrive in emerging environments are those who looked forward, not those who only looked up when it was too late. This study was not about how businesses were not having concerns, after all, but rather that their ways of doing business were not addressing them. It is not too difficult to imagine where that could lead.

So second, do not be afraid to seek the help you need to move with the times. New regulations can certainly affect a business, but the organizations that survive are the ones who paid attention to when they were coming, and established a plan to deal with them prior to being enacted. And companies who don’t pay attention to cybersecurity until they have an issue with cybersecurity begin their fight from a losing position, a position that could have already damaged your customers’ trust.

You may not be a business that has ever done any exceptional sort of internal auditing, so the article that started this all off may not specifically speak to you, but these are lessons that everyone can learn from, even on an individual level. If you have worries or if you see potential future issues and the things you are doing are not addressing them, change what you’re doing. It may not be easy, and it may be something you need outside help to do, but that doesn’t mean it is not worth doing.

I know that I have been writing about little other than taxes for the last couple of months.  I hope you all can forgive me for that, however, as it is just a fact of life in my profession that the topic takes up most of my headspace this time of year.

This is something that became key for many of our business clients as they pushed to file their tax returns earlier this month, and will grow larger in the minds of many of our individual clients as the April 18^th deadline for their return rushes toward us.

(And there is also a rush filling up our calendar, so if you have not made your tax appointment yet, you should do so soon!)

Even as one prepares their information and gathers documents for a tax return, though, other thoughts can sneak in. Almost all of us (and yes, that sometimes even includes us professionals) think about simple actions we could have taken during the year to make the tax-time crush a little lighter. This can be something as simple as being better at filing receipts or as complex as wanting a more complete bookkeeping system.

Unfortunately, such thoughts tend to linger for only a short time before being forgotten until next year. After all, there are 11 ½ months or so when you do not feel the pressure. But is not a little bit of effort throughout the year worth easing one’s life during tax time? For no matter how much one may want to avoid it, these obligations come back year after year.

So when it comes to such issues, remember that taxes are not all that we do. We cannot help you remember to put your receipts and bank statements together in an easily retrievable place, but we can help in many other areas even if just involves another meeting later in the year so you at least know what to expect come next tax season.

No matter what, chances are there is something in your financial picture that comes up at tax time that you wish was different. Consider this then a plea to not forget about it and commit to making it better for yourself. If we can help you with it great, and if not, we may be able to point you in the right direction. So do not hesitate to allow us to help you on your journey …

Even if we may need to wait til May to really deal with it. It is still tax time after all.

And speaking of tax time, rarely a day passes this time of year when someone does not ask us when they will receive their tax return. I know I have mentioned this recently, but as it keeps coming up, and the IRS recently put out a notice about it, I wanted to pass on some of their words:

Taxpayers eager to know when their refund will be arriving should use the "Where's My Refund" tool rather than calling the IRS and waiting on hold or ordering a tax transcript. The IRS updates the status of refunds once a day, usually overnight, so checking more than once a day will not produce new information. “Where’s My Refund?” has the same information available to IRS telephone assistors so there is no need to call unless requested to do so by ”Where’s My Refund?”

Contrary to a myth rumored in social media, ordering a tax transcript will not help taxpayers find out when they will get their refund. The IRS notes that the information on a transcript does not necessarily reflect the amount or timing of a refund. While taxpayers can use a transcript to validate past income and tax filing status for mortgage, student and small business loan applications and to help with tax preparation, they should use “Where’s My Refund?” to check the status of their refund.

“Where’s My Refund?” can be checked 24 hours after the IRS has received an e-filed return or four weeks after receipt of a mailed paper return. "Where’s My Refund?" has a tracker that displays progress through three stages: (1) Return Received, (2) Refund Approved and (3) Refund Sent.

Last week, reports came out that fewer people were filing their taxes than had at the same point of calendar year 2016. Bloomberg released an article that theorized taxpayer confusion was one of the reasons for this. Although the current political climate makes that more likely this year than others, it is not like taxes made sense to everyone in past years.

Talk of tax plans, health care, tax reform and repeal and replace, though, is making many wonder more about how everything is going to shake out and what our tax pictures will look like next year (and this includes myself and my team). Your responsibilities this year are set, though, so if you have been putting off filing, it is time to start moving on that, especially as our calendar tends to fill up fast time of year.

No matter how things fall in the future, though, it would involve a serious revamping to make the tax code something that is easy to understand. This is why one hears so much rhetoric about just how large and unwieldy our country’s tax code is.

So with all this talk of reform, just how big is that code?

Some of the biggest and most recent work on this subject appears to have been done by the Washington Examiner at the end of last tax season. It uses numbers from Dutch-based Wolters Kluwer to say the code has expanded from 400 pages in 1913 to over 74,000 in 2014, and that includes a jump from a number of just over 60,000 pages in 2004.

 The only problem is that this isn’t really the right number.

First of all, the tax code should be something that you can actually have and access, no? Well maybe not you, but someone (let’s say your trusted neighborhood tax professional), should have access to it and have it be something that is actually useable. 70,000 pages would not fit within it, as I cannot even quite imagine just what a 70,000 book (or series of books) would look like. Think about it, that would be 70 volumes of 1,000 pages each, which is simply ridiculous.

Instead, read this quote from Andrew Grossman in a 2014 article on slate.com about this topic:

So, how long is it? In the 2013 edition, the last page is numbered 4,037. Now, that’s not exactly right either, for two reasons: The book starts at page 100, and then skips 500 pages in its numbering (don’t ask me why), and this volume (like all other volumes I’ve ever seen) contains both the present-day tax laws and prior versions of the tax law. That is because tax lawyers like me often find it useful to refer to prior versions of the law. But the compilation of those old laws isn’t really the “tax code”—it’s just a resource for lawyers. I’d estimate that the old law takes up about 800 pages. So let’s say the tax code is about 2,600 pages long. It’s like 2½ times the length of Stephen King’s It—except you replace “scary clown” with “accounting methods.”

Now that sounds much more reasonable, and Grossman even goes on to try to figure out where the 70,000 number comes from. He finds that it began with equating the “CCH Standard Federal Tax Reporter,” with the US tax code. And although that tome does contain the tax code, it also includes history, commentary, regulations, etc. on tax law in general.

This still does not mean that understanding the tax code is easy, but it’s not as wildly complicated as some would have us believe, and that is worth knowing. It is also worth knowing someone who understands the code no matter its size, so if you still have questions or needs for your 2016 return, don’t hesitate to contact us.

Over the last few weeks, I have touched on both the politics of our new presidential administration and IRS audits. And I suppose it won’t surprise anyone to know there is a spot of convergence between those two worlds. After all, the future of the IRS does not appear as if it will remain status quo under the new administration, but it also appears impossible to determine where its future lies.

A recent New York Times article discussed the different outlooks on the agency presented by President Donald Trump and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin. Trump, who the article slyly points out has had issues with the IRS in the past, has advocated plans that could drastically cut agency funding. Mnuchin, on the other hand, believes that the IRS needs an increased budget to regain some of the power it held in the past.

With ever decreasing funding, the IRS has been carrying out fewer audits, which inevitably leads to less collection of taxes owed. In a way then, it seems counterintuitive to make the IRS suffer more cuts, for it seems there should be a sweet spot where the increased funding pays for itself?

That seems to be the tact Mnuchin would prefer, but whether him getting his way seems unlikely. Just where the final allocation of funds lands, however, is impossible to determine. So just remember the recent things I have written about audits, and how one does not need to fear one if turning in a valid tax return. Then at least if an audit does happen to you, there can be confidence that it will not result in drastic negative findings for you – even if the wait times in dealing with the agency’s customer service is maddening, for again, less funding means less manpower.

This story further illustrates how we cannot be sure about how tax law will change over the next year. Indicators say that many taxpayers can expect a decreased tax burden, but it promises to be months before we have any sort of final answers in this area.

(And with a likely protracted battle over The Affordable Care Act, those issues could linger right up to next tax season.)

One thing that can help in times of uncertainty, though, is taking control of the things over which you have power. One of those can still be your 2016 tax return. There is already only about six weeks left in the tax season, so if you’ve been procrastinating filing your return (or even starting to get your paperwork together), then do it now while you still have enough time. The more time you have to get everything in order, the more chances we have to turn things more in your favor.

From this end, let me also give a warning that this is the time of year when our calendar can fill up fast, so the sooner you set up an appointment with us to handle your taxes, the better chance you have of being able to do so at a convenient time for you.

Finally, I want to let this also serve as a time for us to remain committed to bringing you valuable service that you can count on. In these time of uncertainty, we want to be one of the things you know you can count on. Let our service prove it to you this tax season, and for those beyond.

I know that is has only been a couple of weeks since I last mentioned audits, but it remains a hot-button topic this time of year – as it should be, really. It was reported last week that the number of audits the IRS is carrying out continues to decrease, but remember they are far from nonexistent.

That report seems to be what triggered this recent article on Forbes.com, which goes into ways to try to avoid being audited. Much of what is in that article is similar to my recent writing on the subject, but there were some new additions that I think are worth highlighting.

The first comes under the heading of “Call Home,” referring primarily to the number of college students away from home who may be filing their own tax returns, possibly for the first time. If they are doing such a thing, what will they mark it comes to whether they are a dependent on someone else’s tax return? And most importantly, will it match what their parents claim? This is something that a phone call will figure out in a few minutes. That time commitment is quite worth it to make sure that everyone’s return says the same thing.

The next thing heading I wanted to mention is “Don’t make up stuff.” Granted, this is as obvious as it sounds, but I enjoy the story shared to highlight the issue – a client at audit who claimed expenses (without receipts) with all round numbers, but not just to the nearest dollar, to the nearest hundred or thousand. It serves as a warning that if numbers look made up, the IRS will know it. If putting something on your return makes you uneasy, you probably shouldn’t’ do it.

There is, however, another topic in the article with which I wanted to raise some issue, and that is “Be as normal as possible.” Now sure, if your only goal is to not be audited, yes, you should be as normal as possible, for outlying numbers are ones that can raise red flags when the IRS is reviewing returns. But even if being as normal as possible may keep you from an audit, I don’t think you should withhold anything legitimate on a return, even if it lies outside the norm.

So think of the college student and his parents whose audit issues could be avoided with a couple of questions. Think of the business owner who didn’t keep good records and ran with guesses and estimates because they thought they were entitled to something. And then think of someone facing an audit because they knew they were due to more of a tax break than most in their situation.

Who would you rather be?

I think we will all pick the last of the three, and that is because they are the one who filed their return with not only confidence, but with the necessary knowledge. It’s a good thing you already know a tax professional that you can trust, isn’t it?