Welcome to the Escaping the Accountants Trap podcast. It's a podcast to help accountants, CPAs and bookkeepers escape what we call the accountants trap. It's where accountants are now, getting paid for their value and are forced to work long hours with high demand clients with little pay. Well, how do you escape the trap? One way is the topic of today's episode, and that's by offering a tax advisory service to help your clients save on taxes.

To help me with the discussion, I've invited Jacqui Meier, the founder of Tax Plan IQ, who helps accounting firm owners implement tax planning solutions for their business while increasing revenue and saving time. Jacqui, welcome to the show. Thank you so much, Adam. Really appreciate it. Yeah, I'm really excited to have this conversation. My first question is why tax advisory services?

Why did you get into this and why do you advocate that accountants offer this. Yeah. So I kind of fell into it, and realized it was kind of my passion and purpose in life, which is so weird just to think that tax advisory is your passion and purpose, but it really is for me. You know, I was worked full time throughout my college career, and I thought I would be a financial planner, actually.

And I my undergrad is in finance, and I started working for a financial planner slash tax, CPA. And he had me do some tax returns. And I realized how much I loved finding additional savings for the clients. Like, you could be a detective and you could, like, magically produce the savings legally, right? And so you're if you're a tax advisor, you're, like, the smartest person in the room.

Everybody knows that you're going to bring something awesome on the table, right? So I went down the path of getting my master's in taxation. And, I ended up starting my own CPA firm, but it was actually a pretty traditional practice. We were doing bookkeeping, accounting work, tax prep, talking about strategies. You know, you should fund your Roth IRA for your kid and or, you know, basic stuff like that, right?

And very typical standardized pricing, hourly fees, whatnot. And that was great. I grew very quickly, you know, within a few years I had several hundred clients that were paying probably maybe a thousand each year, average. But, then I had children and my life got rocked, my world got rocks, and I couldn't be a workaholic anymore. And work nights and weekends and have a crazy tax busy season and so I sought out, business coach at the time.

His name is Chuck Bauer. And I said, hey, I, I can't do this anymore. Something needs to change. Like, I've got a good practice, but I'm feeling burnout. I don't feel like I'm getting paid my value. I feel like there's a lot more. I could be bringing the table for my clients, but I'm too busy to do that.

And so he helped me by asking a very simple question who do you like working with and why? And based on my answer, which was high net wealth executives that we're doing consulting work, you know, semi-retired in my local area of South Lake, Texas, which is a pretty affluent area. I crafted tax advisory packages around that, and I just started pitching clients one by one into this ROI that I could bring the table and it quadrant pulled our revenue, our client satisfaction, went through the roof, and I sold 60% of my clients that were not a good fit for that service and still, you know, had substantial, substantial results for my family, my clients

and myself in the firm. And so that's why I love tax advisory work. Long story short, no, I, I, I love it. That's fascinating to talk us through the sort of the business model behind this service. Like how do you price it, how how do you recruit clients for it and what is the deliverable look like? Yeah. Good question.

So it's definitely a little bit different from kind of the typical accountant meet and greet arrangement. A lot of accounts are out there. You know, they wrap up someone's tax return. They do a post-tax meeting. They throw out some ideas about yeah, you should probably be a different energy type. Maybe an S-curve. You should probably be paying yourself reasonable salary.

Yeah. You definitely need to get that trust done eventually. Right. And then the client never gets it done or does it really badly. And you can't help because you're too busy under the hourly model to really, like, provide them the highest quality solution that you can. And so I've really kind of flipped the script on that. And it's all about value pricing the services.

And I even trademarked what's called the ROI method of tax planning. And so my, my tax software tax plan IQ was selected by the AICPA this year in their what's called their accelerator program. For for company cohort where they are spreading the word about the ROI method of planning, which is super exciting. And, how our software can, can help, accountants and firms.

So you kick off with a complimentary proposal to the client that's literally estimating the savings. You can get them showing the cost or their investment in you. And then what that ROI is that you're estimating. Obviously, you cannot guarantee the tax savings or results. But you can guarantee their satisfaction. I always did that. If if I can't come through with my promises or my estimates and it's my fault, I'm going to make it right.

Right. So there's there's always ways to work through if, if situations arise, they either accept the proposal and onboard, and then you give them a full tax plan. You can do an onboarding meeting if they want to hear a lot of details. My high net worth clientele did not want to hear any details on what their plan was about.

They just wanted me to implement right, and be their concierge accountant. And so, you know, I formed this kind of concierge CPA model and ran with with these plans, and the clients would pay an onboarding fee and that would be at least, you know, we wanted to always get at least a 200% tangible ROI in tax savings for our clients.

But then there's also a ton of intangible stuff that you bring the table as an accountant as well. And so, let's say I could find $100,000 of tax savings for a client. We would have a $30,000 onboarding fee. And then the client would go on to, maintenance plan of some sort with us where we're doing all their tax prep.

We might provide audit protection, IRS notice protection. There were different packages, three different package levels involved, and people can actually go to my website if they're interested in that. It's Jackie Meyer cpa.com/packages. And I've got exactly what we provided out there. So you can swipe and deploy all you want. But and then we go from there.

Every year we would revisit in tax plan IQ what we projected. We would save them what we actually did. We would raise our fees or go on to a new phase of tax planning. And I'll tell you what, if you don't want a single complaint from a client about fees, show them the ROI that you're bringing to the table and they're just like, happy as can be.

They're just happy little plants. Okay, so that's that's the secret to never having a billing problem again. And of course everyone was on ACH and paid upfront. So no accounts receivable. None of that nonsense. Right. And so that's essentially the model. I have a complimentary CPE session on CPA Academy that people can check out that talks about the, kind of flywheel workflow method of the ROI method of accounting.

And so people can go check that out for sure. Got it. Okay. So you're still providing tax services in addition to the tax savings. Like you're actually doing the tax filing tax prep. Yeah I wish I could have figured out how to separate that. And I know some people that have because the implementation fee is by far the like highest net profit margin out of any accounting or financial service that you can provide compliance work.

Not so much. But I found that other accountants got very defensive if I tried to work with them on a tax plan. Right. So we just took on the compliance work as well. Just made sure that was all good to go. I figured if I'm going to come up with a plan, I might as well back it up and sign that return.

And so that's the model that we went with. Got it. Okay. But can it be if somebody is listening that can they separate the two or would you recommend that they do it together. No. I mean, if I would do it again I would try to separate it. I would because again, that profit margin is insane. I mean, it's 70, 80% plus when it comes to just implementing a value priced tax plan and then handing off the compliance work.

You would have to have a good network of, you know, open minded, smart accountants that are not interested in tax advisory but that want to partner with you on it. Okay. Right. And there's a lot more people that are in that wheelhouse now than there were, you know, when I was doing this, you know, 6 or 7 years ago trying to to, to work it out.

Interesting. Okay. And then what are the qualifications for doing this? Could a bookkeeper do this. Can somebody and enrolled agent. That's a good question okay. So this is a very controversial topic. So I need to think because you know I'm a CPA I've got my credentials, I've got my master's degree, I've got my, you know, 20 years of experience or whatever.

Of course you have to have prep experience, tax prep experience to be a planner. This last year, I have completely changed my mind on that, because it really doesn't matter if you can do tax prep or not to be a good tax planner. Again, it's about being a detective. It's about like always going for the right answer and knowing if you don't know the answer, you're going to figure it out.

And there's so many resources out there. And tax IQ itself has 100 strategies and educational content that can help you learn how to do that. And so, yes, while that tends to offend some of our accountant friends, because I know we've put a lot of work into our credentials and our experience, and we say that everyone has to do that, you know, meager prep work before they get to the big gun stuff.

It's I really don't think it's true. And I think that it's it's keeping a big gap in the profession of people that probably we really awesome at tax planning, but aren't doing it because they don't have that prep experience. Interesting. Okay. Yeah, that makes sense. So switching gears just for a moment, you do a lot of work with I, I do, I do I am obsessed, I'm obsessed with GPT four.

Now, if if someone is new to these chat bots and OpenAI G. GPT 3.5 is like the education of, like a 20 year old, maybe a college student. GPT four is like the wisest human being. Not that they're human, but the wisest person you've ever met in your life. Okay, so there is a huge difference between the two.

And so if you are going to go with the free version or pay 20 bucks a month, pay the 20 bucks a month and you will be very delighted. Now, I have been using it since it came out, you know, January, February. I'm sure you might have heard there. I prep the tax return. It was a like 2019 return, and everyone was up in arms about how all our jobs were going away and so I'm just trying to figure out how do we best utilize AI to our advantage to still like, sit in our passion and purpose and really bring the most value to the table that we can for the clients?

Okay. And I was at a AICPA, let's see, it was at ESPN gauge the summer. And the executives at AICPA said the firm that will go out of business from AI is the firm that's not using AI. So you need to embrace it because it's pretty darn cool stuff. And I've used it from everything from you can pop in bookkeeping entries and have it try to categorize them for you.

You could have it analyze a PNL to give suggested strategies for taxes, let alone financial strategies. You can. I had it produce a firm health audit this morning so it you know, it helped me figure out ten questions I want to ask my accounting firm coaching students to measure their health. And it really comes down to kind of like what that firm owner is, how many hours they're putting in in the business compared to what their net profit margin is, because at the end of the day, like, you could be working 90 hours and say you have this excellent firm, but that's actually not a healthy balance.

Right. And so it's just it's it's amazing. And so we're incorporating it. I have created my own chat bot based on GPT four called Jane J. I in E! And she is going to be the smartest tax manager you have ever met in your life. And we're getting her up to speed because, OpenAI, technology cuts off as of September 2021.

Knowledge. Okay. And so there obviously tax stuff has happened since then, right? Yeah. So we're getting her up to speed on that as we speak. We're beta testing it as we speak. And users of tax plan IQ will be able to load a return, get suggested tax strategies from her and, brainstorm additional ideas, create marketing email messages.

I mean, there's really nothing that she can't do. So I, I am just so, so excited about this progress that we're making. And I think it's going to make users about 70% at least more efficient in their tax advisory process. Wow. Okay. That's exciting. Yeah. Speaking of AI, where do you see the you mentioned what that director at the executive director or whatnot at that convention that you went to the AI CPA convention said about AI that is going to disrupt the companies not using AI.

Where do you see AI going for the for our profession in the future? So I do see it taking over a lot of the compliance work. Tax prep I think is going to be one of the easiest things for it to do. Yeah. So that's why we got to look towards advisory services. Right? We got to look towards how are we going to bring more value here.

And I mean, really I would tell you it can't replace a tax advisor, but I can't tell you that either because Jane is a tax advisor. Right. She's a tax manager. So there are ways that people are going to be able to directly interact as taxpayers with AI and get their own strategy, ideas and that kind of thing.

Now, here's the differentiator. People that understand the nuances of a strategy are able to interact and get much more accurate information. So if the taxpayer asks AI, hey, do I qualify for this like kind of exchange, it's going to give some pretty baseline information about, you know, whether they do, it'll actually tell them if they put in dates of like when they sold a property versus when they're going to purchase a property, it'll actually say, yeah, I think you do qualify.

Here's the way you qualify, blah, blah, blah. But then there's little nuances that are missing that an expert can really bring out further. So for example, the fact that you need to use a qualified intermediary in a like kind of exchange that is very important to the whole thing falls apart. And guess what? GPT four didn't mention that, but I knew that.

And so I asked it about it. And then it's like, oh yeah, we need to do that too, you know? And then it gives me all the details about that. So it's a collaborative effort. It's going to be completely replaced. Yeah, exactly. It's a collaborative effort of knowing how to interact with the AI, to use it to your best advantage, and then staying on top of your expertise.

And, you know, being that that smartest person in the room. Right. Makes sense. Okay. So tell us about you. You mentioned tax plan IQ, which is your software. Tell us tell us about that. Yeah. So I was 12 years in my own CPA firm. It turned into this like concierge, high net wealth, boutique firm. We ended up with 56 clients.

I was able to sell for seven figure. So I was very happy with that last fall, because of this ROI method and the tax advisory solution that we were able to provide, and I've refocused all my efforts on, I don't know why. Don't ask me why. I'm crazy becoming a software developer. So I now have tax and IQ.

I've created this full end in tax advisory product for other tax advisors. I have a lot of empathy for the accountants and the nonsense that they have to go through every day, and the fact that they're not bringing the most that they can to the table. And so this is the solution to that. This is bringing together everything from the initial proposal that you provide the client, the presentation that you can give them to the task that you track on the back end for the strategies and the full educational library.

It's an end to end solution for tax advisors to optimize their entire tax advisory process. So it's it's pretty fun. It's very challenging. It's like starting all over again, in a new world. But, you know, I like a challenge, so. Wow. Okay. Well, that sounds really exciting. So somebody is listening right now and they're thinking, I want to learn more about that.

Maybe I want to subscribe to the software, the tax plan, IQ or learning more about your ROI method of, of planning. Where do they go? What do they find you. Yeah. Just go to Tax plan icon. And yeah you'll find a lot of resources. We found that there are so many hurdles to get people from A to Z when it comes to tax advising.

There's so many hurdles that are so many distractions for the accountant. And so we have put so many resources into our website. We've got ways to do marketing to get more tax advisory clients. We've got, you know, the ROI method, educational content that I mentioned. We've got, how to grow your practice. So, you know, I do a lot of coaching with accountants and on general best practices and leveling up their firms.

And so we try to provide a lot of that kind of information there. Wow. Okay. Excellent. We'll put that in the show notes Jackie, thank you so much for being with us today. Yeah. Thank you so much. I want to thank you for letting me geek out on my favorite topic, of course, and to everyone listening or watching, thank you so much for spending the last few minutes with us as we discussed how to escape the accounts, trap.

Bye for now.

Things to do.