Episode Details

On this podcast, Mark Gallegos, a partner at Porte Brown, provides advice for getting ready for tax season. He discusses the importance of preparing staff, communicating with clients, managing workloads, taking care of yourself, and setting expectations. With the right preparation and mindset, the next few months leading up to April 15 don't have to be too difficult.

AICPA resources

Tax season resource center — Access the AICPA's central hub for guidance, tools and developments throughout the tax filing season.

Beneficial ownership information (BOI) reporting — Access resources to learn about the beneficial ownership information reporting requirement under FinCEN's Corporate Transparency Act (CTA).

On today's podcast, listen to hear how to get a jump on your to-do list for tax season.

April Walker: Hello everyone and welcome to the AICPA's Tax Section Odyssey podcast. Happy 2024. On this podcast we offered thought leadership on all things tax facing the profession. I'm April Walker, a lead manager from the Tax Section and I'm here today with Mark Gallegos.

Mark is a partner at PorteBrown. He's on the Tax Practice Management Committee, which I'm the liaison for and he's quickly become one of my favorite volunteers. Don't tell any of the other volunteers, Mark, but I do mean that. Welcome.

Mark Gallegos: Thank you for having me appreciate it.

Walker: We're recording this today on January the 17th and as always, there's a lot of noise in the tax world. There's potential for tax legislation, there's an impending government shutdown, there is filing season is getting ready to start in a couple of weeks.

I thought it would be nice to remind our listeners to take a deep breath, first of all. But, then I'd love to hear what's on the top of your mind as we're getting ready to take a leap into tax season. How does that sound Mark?

Gallegos: Sounds great. I think there's a lot to unpack there.

Walker: Absolutely. Start at the very beginning. What are the top couple of things on your to-do list today? What are the most urgent items that you're trying to get accomplished in the next couple of weeks.

Gallegos: Yes. Right now, there's a number of things.

One, from the firm's standpoint, making sure everyone's up to speed on everything we do to get ready for tax season. We're already in the flow of it as a firm from the audit department and accounting and consulting department. But for the tax side, really getting them up, ramped up and ready to go.

As a firm, we are very processes- and procedure-driven. We break out into teams and trying to figure out what's the best practice for us as a firm to truly make sure everybody is prepared as we go into the preparing business returns, trust returns, individual returns, and everything else that goes with that.

We spend a lot of time trying to meticulously make sure that our system is proper, so we're doing a lot in that area.

Then you have making sure everyone's up to date on all tax law changes that are effective for this filing season. The good thing is headed into the beginning of this year, there's not a massive amount of tax law changes.

However, yesterday there was an agreement between Senate Finance Committee and the House Ways Committee regarding a potential tax legislation. Again, just an agreement, not law. But as I look at that and I start to communicate with the firm, some of these th