Tips On Importing Stock Transactions To Intuit Tax Online

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Beginning in tax year 2013, Intuit Tax Online finally was equipped with some limited import capability thru excel file or .csv file to improve data input efficiency.  As mentioned in my previous post, importing stock transactions in this manner is not straight forward, it requires us to scrub the spread sheet to comply with the software's import format.  One issue that the software's import instruction doesn't mention is that there should be no special character in the "Description" column on your spread sheet before import, because the software  doesn't take special character such as ",  or #".  Remember to scrub out all special characters before importing, or you will be flashed by the software  with error message about "missing required description column".  Once your spread sheet is successfully imported, you have to check the "Ignore" box next to the heading line imported from your spreadsheet, and then select in the above drop down boxes (see picture above) the appropriate headings. Only columns that are selected through the drop down box are imported.  So make sure you select all the headings that are relevant to your columns in your spread sheet to ensure a complete schedule D import.

Intuit Tax Online 2013 Finally Allows Import Of Excel File Or CSV File

I finally got my day trading client's years of past due tax returns caught up.  In my last post, I had mentioned about my dissatisfaction with Intuit Tax Online's lack of capability of importing 1099s. After manually typing in hundreds and hundreds of lines of stock trades from several years back, I have to say that it's not fun at all, even for a fast typist like myself.  I ended up billing my client a lot more for my extra typing.  Thank God that beginning in  tax year 2013, the software finally allows Excel file or .CSV file import.  It's still not as efficient because it depends on whether the brokerage provides the trade records in excel or .csv format.  One of my client's brokerages is Fidelity which unfortunately claimed that trade activities weren't available in any type of spread sheet format other than Pdf.  I have no idea if the customer service reps there were telling me the truth or they were just plain stupid,  because it's hard to believe any data that is stored in the computer to generate any statement in Pdf  without being able to generate the trade records in spread sheet format.  After calling Fidelity back and forth and being bounced from one customer service rep to another, while being put on hold with annoying music forever, I just gave up.

This is what I have been putting up with for many years since I started working.  It always amazes me that how the USA is the superpower of the world when there is so much inefficiencies everywhere, whether it's with the Big 4 accounting firms, or with Wall Street, or with the healthcare industry.  Anyway, I finally decided to just convert my client's thick pile of pdf 1099s into excel, using the Adobe converter, which is about $24 for a year's online subscription.  The pitfall of doing that is, the OCR technology that is used to do such conversion causes the excel spreadsheet to come out in the exact same format of the Pdf brokerage statement where one stock transaction was spread out in multiple lines.  This means I had to scrub the excel spread sheet to put the data in the import format specified by Intuit Tax Online.  This took quite some time too, even though it was still somewhat faster than typing into the software from scratch.  

How about you, what type of tax software do you use in your tax practice?  Which tax software do you think  is the most efficient in terms of data entry?  I would really appreciate it if you could share your experience with me.

Intuit Tax Online Can't Import 1099? Sucks!!

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I can't believe it when I see this.  I am told that I have to manually type in my client's dividend income and interest income because Intuit Tax Online doesn't have the capabilities to import 1099 forms. This is a cloud based software supposedly caters to professional accountants and yet it is less capable than Turbo Tax that caters to the mass "Do It Yourself" market.  Is this a joke????  Yes, Turbo tax can import 1099 forms very easily.  I am a fast typist, but I still don't like to manage my tax practice as if I am still in the last century.  Unfortunately, I only have a very small tax practice and I don't mind typing.  Gee!  I realize that Intuit is really competing with the professional accountants by equipping the mass market DIY software Turbo tax with more capabilities than the cloud based software it sells to the pros.  Is it Intuit's agenda to cripple us, the accountants?  I will switch cloud based software if my tax practice grows.  Intuit's Tax Online is just ridiculous.

Critical Diagnostics: Underpayment Penalty Interest Rates Missing

Technology can't do everything, and there are many things it can't do in the accounting profession.  I had said in my last post that the accounting profession was often lagging behind in technology because we are just never the creative and the forward looking type.  Sometimes, I wonder if it's because our training and our profession require us to look back so much that we are over time losing the ability to look forward.  This is why our software just never quite work efficiently or effectively as it is supposed to.  This has to do with the people who took part in designing it and testing it (we the accountants).

I had started using Intuit Tax Online since I started my own practice.  My main practice area is litigation and forensic work. But I do taxes in between my litigation projects.  Yes, I can do taxes, and I am very good at it because I had worked all over the map of public accounting in various firms. I had excelled in quite a number of tax seasons.  I love doing taxes.  The Big 4 once told me I had to specialize and I wasn't supposed to do more than auditing a specific industry.  This is why  I didn't like to work for the Big 4, they love to pigeon-hole people and it's just too limiting and boring! Why can't a CPA love more than one thing?  After all, we didn't go to school to study only taxes or to study only auditing.  We didn't take the exam on just one subject area either.  

Anyway, with my small volume of tax returns that I am currently doing for passion and leisure, I feel that Intuit Tax Online can be the perfect software for me.  But like all software I have been using, there are limitations and inefficiencies.  One of them is the critical diagnostics that pops up to tell you that the interest rates for underpayment penalty for your state is missing, yet, it doesn't tell you how to resolve it.  I can't believe at this day and age,  a tax software still can't come up with a more helpful and problem solving diagnostics mechanism.  

This is not a big deal if you are a veteran tax accountant like I once was, it took me a couple minutes to fix it and make the diagnostic go away.  Because I am used to dealing with all kinds of inefficient tax software, I knew right away I just had to go to the right input screen to input the state interest rates "manually".  

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I'm a fast typist but I still hate doing mindless data entry like this. Can any software developer explain to me why the interest rates can't be automatically provided and updated by the software?  For those of you CPAs who need to input the rates for your California returns, you can click here for the rate table.

I Don't Want My Accountant To Embrace Social Media! Do You??

Having many years' experience working with accounting firms of all sizes, one characteristic that I often see in the accounting profession is the lack of creativity and individual thinking.  I can understand why accountants aren't the most creative people in the world, because there really is no such thing as creative accounting.  Often times when accountants tried to be creative, they got themselves into troubles with the SEC and the IRS for "fraudulent financial reporting" and "tax evasion".  Many accountants who think accounting can be creative are delusional and they are the ones whom I don't want to hire to do my taxes or my accounting.  It's because I don't need my accountants to be "creative" and dream up some accounting schemes that only work in their own mind.  I only want my accountant to be resourceful, insightful, and highly competent in navigating the existing accounting standards and tax codes.

Because of the nature of the accounting profession, typical accountants tend to be bookish. They are often trained to follow the rules and the standards.  Such kind of training also renders many accountants to be followers, instead of thought leaders.  This is also the reason why financial crisis often happened way after the accountants issued clean audited financial statements, and will continue to happen in the future without much warning.

Being followers, many accountants naturally tend to lag behind in technology and often follow the herd in embracing the hype.  The latest so-called technology hype that many accountants are embracing is "social media".  They think it's high-tech and it's the magic that can grow their accounting firms and make their accounting firms better. I personally don't consider social media as high-tech.  It's actually low-tech to me.  It's based on the similar platforms that chat rooms, web journals, internet messaging were built on many many many years ago when I was a kid.  I don't see anything disruptive in social media except that many people are now logging  onto very simple and basic websites,  sharing their every thought and everything moment.  In my opinion, social media is more like a gigantic transparent fish bowl for identity thieves to fish information, it's useful to mass marketers and ID thieves but it's totally useless to me. May be it's because I was staying up too much as a kid in internet chat rooms chatting to strangers aimlessly, or may be it was because I had used the internet messaging, roommate, dating and friendship sites too much when I was in college before such sites changed their names to become MySpace and Facebook.  It's just the same old sites with new logo to me. So I am not impressed with social media.  I was done socializing on it years ago before I became a CPA. Social media reminds me of the the part of my life when I was immature, bored, and didn't mind to share my life with the world since I hadn't really much too share to begin with.

But now, as a business owner, I don't want my accountant to be social on social media.  I don't want my accountant to communicate, interact or serve me through Facebook, Twitter or Linkedin because I don't think these are technologies that can serve my need for accounting and tax service. The last thing I want the world to know is who my accountant is, and who has his hands on my most private financial information.  Therefore, if I am to choose a CPA among hundreds of thousands in America and God knows how many more are supplied to the USA from the 2nd and 3rd worlds,  I will first eliminate those who embrace social media.  It's because, I don't want to hire any CPA who is a gullible follower who can easily be herded into any fad.

This Is The Reason Why You Shouldn't Major in Accounting Anymore

To all American college students, and to all of you out there who think you can make more money by getting an accounting degree or a CPA license, please do yourself a big favor and don't  waste your precious life on earth like my niece is currently doing at one of the Big 4 because there are just too many CPAs in America and many more are being imported from the U.K., India, China, Japan, Malaysia etc, etc..  If foreign accountants aren't imported through the use of H1-B visas, then the accounting jobs are out-sourced to other countries.  So either way, America is not lacking of  CPAs!!  But American CPAs are lacking of decent paying jobs or even a job.

The following hiring ads is quite typical these days even the USA current unemployment is supposed to be at the lowest for 7 years.  Anyway, who is so retarded to actually listen to the idiot in the government who calculated the unemployment rate?

According to this ads, the compensation is $1000  for 40 hours per month.  So a licensed CPA with 4 to 5 years' accounting experience  is only worth $25 per hour for doing all those high level work from tax research, partnership and corporate tax filing, accounting, and forensic auditing?  Now my niece's big 4 job does look a lot better.  Because most of her job duties, aside from the occasional vouching of bank statements with a tick mark, is just coffee runs, meals runs, postal service runs and yes, scanning!!  She doesn't have to put her name on anything that is subject to huge legal risks.   I don't understand, does the firm which writes this ads really think there will be any CPA who is going to let the firm use his / her license for only $25 per hour?  After gas and mileage and health insurance, any experienced CPA who is going to be so lucky to score this job will be making less than $20???  Is there any experienced CPA out there who is this desperate to want to make this kind of supplemental income.  If there is, why don't you just go baby sit or dog sit?

This is so sad.  The CPA profession in America  has become really really sad for the last few years.  

Recommeded Reading For CPAs: Spam Nation

While small CPA firms are often vulnerable in terms of protecting their clients' personally identifiable information, the Big four firms aren't particularly breach proof either in terms of safeguarding personally identifiable information.  Despite the firm policies and all the CPEs on this topic that the Big 4 Firms use to increase awareness of the firms' employees to the theft and misuse of personally identifiable information (PII), it's all up to the employees who have access to the personally identifiable information to follow the rules and be cautious.  The mere size of the Big 4 firms makes it almost impossible to ensure that everybody who handles or who has access to the personally identifiable information is going to be very cautious and is following the information security rules.  It's because there are just too many people in the big four firms who handle clients' PII, many of them are new college grads who just got hired, more of them are offshore employees and outsourced contractors in India. PII just passes too many hands in the Big 4 due to the size of the firms and the high employees turnover.  Many new college hires don't even know or care about the significance of PII because they are so young and inexperienced.  They received some training on this but their mentality just doesn't take this seriously.  The more experienced managers and senior managers are also young and naive about the seriousness of identity thefts and the consequence of a breach of PII security to the firms and their clients.

In the small firms, many professionals there don't even know what PII is all about, or do they have a clue as to how to safeguard it.  I recommend all the CPAs to do yourselves and the public a favor and read this book, so you don't smirk and just brush it off casually next time when someone talks to you about safeguarding PII.

Do You Need A Master Degree in Auditing To Serve As A Maid???

Obviously you do, according to one of the Big 4 that brags about being the best big 4 accounting firm to work for.... or to wait on???

This is one of the most rotten and wasteful practice in any accounting firm. The smallest accounting firms don't make any associate drive around town to buy the managers and partners coffee.  They don't make the associates work as take-out delivery boys and girls either. Even the smallest of the small 4 accounting firms know that it's cheaper just to give a few dollars' tips for delivery service than sending college grads and associates who passed the CPA exams to go buy lunches, dinners, snacks, coffees,  do post-office runs and other errands.  I sincerely hope no CPA candidate is cleaning toilets in any of the big 4.

From one of my cousins who has been working with this so-called very women-friendly Big 4 firm since her passage of her CPA exam and her graduation of her Master Degree in Accounting, most of her work experience in her 6 months of employment  in this "prestigious" firm has been stuffing many many envelopes, making many copies, filing long expense reimbursement reports because she was made to buy so many dinners,  lunches, coffees and had to run many non-audit related errands that her firm sponsored credit card bills are  flying through the roof.  She has been spending a lot of time talking to the internal audit department to respond to questions from the T&E auditors. I don't blame the T&E auditors either, the parking expenses charged on my cousin's credit card in any one day is outrageous.  The numerous parking tickets from the same expensive parking lot in the same day do look suspicious to any T&E auditors who don't know her story. I guess this answers her question as to why the managers and partners in her firm rarely volunteer their firm sponsored credit cards to pay for some of those so-called engagement related business expenses.  Getting the reimbursement from the firm can be a pain and a hassle.  Managers and partners often don't want even to charge their own meals on their own credit cards probably because they don't want to spend time to do their expense reports and explain the charges to the internal auditors.  To me, running most of the expenses through the young associates' credit cards are so unethical.  I was so appalled when my cousin told me this.  In my entire life working in public accounting, I had never worked in a firm that has this practice... I am shocked this is the accepted culture in the big 4 firm.

Instead of dragging the audit into a 12 + hours day, why can't the audit team make good use of the intellectual power within the team and delegate more audit work to the highly educated associates???  What benefits do the audits get when the engagement teams are sending off the CPA candidates  to work as maids and servants on duties that are not really related to the engagements?  In one way or another, the audit clients are paying for these unproductive hours that my cousin and her peers spent on that had nothing to do with the audits, regardless of how the firm can explain its way into saying such meals and coffee breaks are indeed vital to the audit engagements that they can't possibly let anyone who don't have an accounting degree to do them....

Review question on this blog post:  How can any accounting firm that can't effectively make good use of its human resource be trusted to produce an effective audit that the public can rely upon???  Please feel free to leave your answers in the comment area below.

Big 4 Equals Big Scam

One of my friends had joined one of the Big 4 a month ago. But until now, he had not been paid. Since his start date, everything had been bumpy, from attending the B.S. mandatory new-hires training to navigating  the firm's software to activate the firm sponsored credit card to book travel for audit field work. Of course. why should he even expect to get paid punctually after every mul-functions of the firm he had been through in just one week?

The poor guy had been working for more than 12 hours everyday for 7 days a week since he joined. But he hadn't been paid yet...I'm sure he will eventually get paid when the firm finally fixes whatever problem that caused this mess up... According to my friend, nothing is smooth or easy with the firm... He is already an experienced CPA and he joined because he got sucked into the marketing hype and the "Big 4 experience will enhance your future career" marketing pitch.  He got sucked in and so far he says this is the worst first month he had experienced with any jobs he ever had. Of course, this is the first accounting firm he had worked for that hadn't paid him after over one month's work....When there is even a tiny problem within the firm, it's very hard to fix because the firm is like a world that is governed by some kind of "being" whom nobody knows, and nobody ever met....If you think the CEO or the Managing Partner or any Partner is running the firm, you are wrong. They are controlled and dictated by some sort of authority too. Who and what it is????  Well, who knows... It's not like anyone can just simply  fix my friend's payroll problem there.... like the regular smaller accounting firms. He needs to go through layers and layers of platforms and be bounced around  and around..... So far, he is still not paid.  But why?  Who knows!!  

Well, may be he just joined in the wrong time when the firm is scrambling to issue the 10Ks for its clients?  But should busy season be the excuse for the firm to mess up the IT infrastructure,  pay information and miss the employee pay dates???

The quote "Bigger is not better" holds true to everything, including accounting firms.

What Losers Work For Big 4???

Every time when I was completing the independence checklist on my audit of non-public clients in the small firm I worked, or every time after I was forced to take the boring ethics CPE that nags me year after year about "Auditor's Independence", I couldn't help but wonder,  with such a wide net to restrict auditors and our family and possibly relatives from having "financial or other relationships" with the audited clients, how do the Big 4 manage to keep experienced  and top talents within the firms???  For my small firm and me, the independence compliance was extremely easy to follow.  But for people who work in the Big 4, the "Independence" compliance can be a huge pain in the bottom.

Most of the banks, mutual funds, publicly traded companies are all audited by one of the 4, and they are financially related to most of the Americans who ever held a job and had a 401K, or savings, or loans or credit cards of some sort.... I mean no wonder the Big 4 only seem to be interested in hiring 20 something year old children, who are fresh out of college, because they are broke and they have "zero" savings and no investment. They may still have a student loan they wasted on majoring in accounting though.  But that was easier for the firm to manage, compared to an experienced and talented CPA who had amassed a nice portfolio of stocks, credit cards, home loans, and other partnership interests everywhere.

One has to be really  a broke loser to work for the Big 4, or has to be really stupid about investing and money to have not much investments with the Big 4 clients in order to work for the Big 4. Neither of these is a desirable attribute for a competent accountant.  Either that, or they are so young and so fresh out of college that they have yet to establish any financial relationship with any entities.  Now this kind of projects the caliber of the people who are working in the Big 4 firms... Do you still think they are smarter than the rest of us like the firms claim they are???

If you are an experienced professional and you are looking for jobs with the big 4, be prepared to sell your investments and other financial interests in order to maintain your firm's independence and your independence  as an auditor or advisory professional, unless you are totally broke and you have nothing.

Don't Work For The Big 4 If You Want A Nice Office

Lack of work-life balance, comparatively low pay (sometimes even for the partners), long hours, office politics, are often listed by former Big 4 employees as "reasons why any talented CPAs or accountants shouldn't work for the Big 4".  To most former and current Big 4 employees, the most annoying negative of working for a Big 4 accounting firm is the lack of a decent office room for the professionals.  In smaller accounting firms, it's not unusual for even senior associates to have their own office rooms.  But for the Big 4, even the senior managers may just have only cubicles...and for certain partners, a closet size fish tank as an office room....

So if you are dreaming to be promoted to that dream management position in a Big 4 firm so you can command a corner office, dream on...and be ready for one day to be asked to bring your own folding chairs to go to work...  or be told to go use the public toilets in the neighborhood, since now some Big 4s are thinking that taking away everybody's permanent desks and make everyone drift around the office with their computer equipment and belongings like a vagabond are so chic... The day when the Big 4 get rids of the rest rooms may be nearer than you think...