Author: Navaal Mahdi

By Jonathan Rivlin, CPA, and Al & Christine Giovetti, CPA

[Ed. Note – Going forward, Jonathan Rivlin and Al and Christine Giovetti will be co-authoring some short articles for publication in various Maryland Society of Accounting and Tax Professionals newsletters and such. This is the first in that series. Please let us know if you have any tech questions that we can address for you!]

Phishing emails are getting more insidious. I received a different kind today. [Ed. note – I received a similar email. – Chris] It’s supposedly from PayPal, referencing a transaction I did NOT make and asking for money. A screenshot of the request is below.

A few items of note:

• The last name (Williams) doesn’t match the requester’s last name (this was in the address line of the email, which is not part of the screenshot above).
• The comma in the salutation is after the ‘Hello’ and not after the name (in small print, at the top).
• I had to look up Cardano – it’s a type of cryptocurrency.
• I Googled the 1-888 number and it did not come back as anything recognizable.
• The requester was asking for the funds to be sent in Mexican Pesos (again, not part of the screenshot, but in the email).
• I have no connection to anyone in Mexico or by the name of Andrea Williams.

I logged into my PayPal account – I went directly to PayPal, without clicking anything in the email – and found, under the tech support option, a message about phishing emails right at the top of the page, directing people to forward such emails to them directly and then delete the emails.

Like any phishing email, it falls apart pretty quickly upon even a little scrutiny, but if you’re rushing, it’s very easy to fall for it.

You see, this is why we can’t have nice things …

By Jonathan Rivlin, CPA

One consequence of the nightmare that is COVID19 has been significant progress towards the dream of a paperless office. All things considered, I could do with more paper and less virus, but that’s not up to me.

Many pixels have been spilled about the need for firms to implement a secure portal. We covered one such portal, CanopyTax, about two years ago. Our firm has been using this app since 2018 and we love it. The company was founded by CPAs who handled a lot of controversy work. Their creation has many different features to it beyond just a basic document management system. This post will focus on a relatively new addition that is super relevant to what we’re all dealing with in this remote work environment.

The company publishes a mobile phone app for both practitioners and clients to download to their phone.

You’re probably thinking, Another app to clog up my phone. Really?

This app is actually useful. It has many features, but the most important one for now is that it can take pictures of documents and automatically upload them to your client’s specific profile on the portal.

But clients can take pics from the phone already — why is this different? Great question; I’m glad you asked.

Taking a pic with the phone’s camera app produces *.JPGs of dubious legibility. CanopyTax’s mobile app produces *.PDFs.

While working from home, and separated from our firm’s $10,000 all-in-one high capacity scanners/printer/copier, I’ve found myself using the mobile phone app to upload lots of documents such as bills, IRS notices, notes from meetings, etc.

It’s fast and easy to use — for us, and most importantly, for our clients.

Let’s face it, our clients are already using their phone to take pics of notices and other documents that they like to send via email (blank checks, W2s…sigh…), the notion of a ‘no click policy’ was never really workable, now in the age of COVID19, it’s impossible.

So, since we can’t eliminate a bad behavior of sending docs with PII through email or txt msg, we can at least redirect that same behavior to this app. Instead of taking a pic with the phone’s camera, they’re taking a pic with this phone app that posts the doc in *.PDF format to our secure portal.

It’s the little things.

If you’re interested in CanopyTax, drop us a line at the email below. Good luck and stay safe!

We’d like to hear from you! Please submit your own tech tips to us! We will award a free subscription to The Tax Book to the person who submits the best tip. Please submit your tips to this email address: techtips@msatp.org.

Thanks, and catch you next time!

TT

Code Section 7216, or as I like to refer to it, ‘the law of unintended consequences’, is always there, bubbling away beneath the surface like a slow growing tumor.

Here at the MSATP, we’ve produced a seminar on this subject and have also published a series of articles in The Free State Accountant that covered the law in depth.

For this Tech Tips post, we’ll keep it brief.

Many app providers are based outside the USA. Some of those apps have servers in the USA thanks to AWS, but others are based in their home countries. It’s important to look into these app companies to see what their processes are so you can get whatever disclosures are required.

For 1065, 1120, and 1120S returns, a simple paragraph in your firm’s engagement letter is enough to satisfy the requirements. For 1040 returns, you’ll need a letter using mandatory language, that must be separate from the engagement letter, and notably, must state the name of the person receiving the taxpayer’s information. When it comes to such apps, I don’t know how you’d identify the recipient’s name – these robots don’t have names; this isn’t Star Trek or Star Wars. (For information on the specific language for a 1040 engagement requiring a 7216 Disclosure consent, see IRS Rev Proc 2013-14, page 19.)

The other question to ask, when researching apps, is to inquire if they make use of offshore labor. Because the law defines the type of data covered as ‘taxpayer information’ as much broader than ‘personally identifiable information’, when a company uses ‘anonymized data for algorithm improvement’, its possible that this could be covered under 7216.

In other words, even if you don’t offshore, even if you look down on the notion of offshoring, you are not clear from 7216 if you use certain apps.

When it doubt, get the form filled out.

As an update on an app we covered about two years ago, SurePrep and its client facing TaxCaddy, recently announced that they are rolling out a feature that will make it easier to obtain the 7216 Disclosure Consent through their workflow for this coming tax season.

Good luck and stay safe.

We’d like to hear from you! Please submit your own tech tips to us! We will award a free subscription to The Tax Book to the person who submits the best tip. Please submit your tips to this email address: techtips@msatp.org

Thanks, and catch you next time!

TT

By Jonathan Rivlin, CPA

There’s an old ‘School House Rock’ song about ‘Mother Necessity’. Without technology, where would we be? With all the edu-tech options out there, I find myself bringing up these old videos to show my school aged children. It’s odd thinking about such things from my own childhood as ‘vintage’, or ‘retro, but time marches on.

A few years ago, in preparing for the coming tax season, we looked at one of the primary bottlenecks to our process, engagement letters for businesses. Lacerte makes engagement letters and organizers ‘easy’ for 1040s, but the process for businesses was not as strong as it could be.

Enter the technical solution: two apps, GoProposal and Practice Ignition.

The apps aim to take the pain out of building an engagement letter and proposal, getting it signed, and the best part, once the client signs off, an invoice is created in your accounting system and emailed to the client – as if there was another reason to switch to Xero, the integration between these apps is such a time saver.

That’s not the end of the story though. As with all things in our profession, there are a few details to attend to.

The most important thing to understand about these two apps, and about Cloud Accounting Services in general is that it requires a different way of thinking about accounting and tax work, from a business prospective. We spend so much time working in our businesses that we just don’t have enough time to work on our business. These apps can help you take a big step forward in that direction.

We’ve been told to ‘productize’ and standardize our offerings. As if it were that simple. All of our clients are snowflakes; infinitely different from one another, and infinitely complex. And yet, there are elements of the process that can be standardized.

With apps like GoProposal and Practice Ignition, you can set the types of services you offer, group them by type (i.e. individual tax, business tax, payroll, bookkeeping, advisory, attest, etc), and set the way each of them are billed out (i.e. flat fee, $x per y#, etc). You can also link them to specific lines in your firm’s Chart of Accounts.

You can then build templates in advance and/or customize an engagement per a unique situation.

The document that is delivered to the client is a professional looking PDF that contains a proposal that summarizes what you’re offering (and charging) and an engagement letter. Embedded in the PDF is a button that allows the client to accept and sign for the proposal. That workflow then creates an invoice in your firm’s cloud based ledger and sends same to your client.

Like anything, the apps do have a learning curve, though they are intuitive enough that you can work your way through them in time.

Now is the time of year to consider such an app for your practice. Not only will you add efficiency to your practice, you’ll cut down on paper and make your firm’s operations just a little safer in this age of COVID19.

We’d like to hear from you! Please submit your own tech tips to us! We will award a free subscription to The Tax Book to the person who submits the best tip. Please submit your tips to this email address: techtips@msatp.org

Thanks, and catch you next time!

TT