About Brian Day
My Name is Brian Day i have been in the tax preparation field for over 27 years and this is my story. When I first became interested in this field it was because I loved numbers. The government allowed taxpayers to use a schedule (G) this form was used and was call income averaging. We would look at tax payers last three years of tax returns, the only condition the government had at this time was and increase of $3,000.00 per year, using this form was great because in most cases it would eliminate their entire tax liability, because the taxpayer received a large refund. My company took off during these years the government did not request social security numbers so tax payers would deduct their cats, dogs, birds whatever they had, I looked as if I was very good in the tax preparation business not realizing what I was getting into or what I should expect. The tax preparation business is a very strange business because you can take your W-2 forms to many different accountants or tax-preparers and everyone will come up with a different figure, funny right! because it should not be the number should always be the same no matter who you went to unless you provided a different set of numbers. The real reason is perhaps not the accountants perhaps tax payers are looking for the best refund they can get even if they have to cheat. I will never forget a story that it went like this in 1988 I prepared my first tax return this client was my mothers next door neighbor, I was traveling to my clients homes to handle their business, I would only list the items that was provided to me by the clients on their tax returns, if you did not have a receipt, I would not give you the deduction after three or four years had gone by I notice that, my mothers next door neighbor had not called me anymore during this time, I was wondering what people thought of me, I wanted to be the best at what I was doing because, I felt. I was the best or was. One day when I visited my mother, I ran into the neighbor, I stopped him and asked. !Hey!, what happened? why did you stop bringing your tax return to me?. He stated to me that I was to straight or by the book, and I said what I was to straight?. After this day I began to look at what I was doing and began to prepare tax returns the way the tax payer wanted, not looking at taxpayer as being cheaters until I experienced the audit process. I can recall a client that I believed to be a honest church going woman, she was about 62 years of age, she stated to me that she paid 20% of her income to her church, so whenever I prepared her tax return, I would give her this deduction after about 7 years of preparing her tax return. The government audited her tax return, she contacted me and I requested the proof of the 20% that was taken on her tax return, keep in mind that her income was over $150,000 so the 20% was about $30,000 as a tax deduction. Instead of providing me this information, she was ignoring me for a while, this went on for about 30 days or so. I insisted that she tell me the truth, did you have the proof or not. She stated. No. I was devastated because now, I was looking bad in front of the government it appeared that someone cheated and it looked as if it was me. This was the first time I thought about my mothers next door neighbor again . To be continued on next blog